text:
December 23, 2007
"If I had the choice of being waterboarded by a third party or having my fingers smashed one at a time by a sledgehammer, I'd take the fingers..."
47 comments:
- rhhardin said...
A sharp stick in the eye is the traditional standard of unpleasant alternatives.
- vet66 said...
It is presumptuous to contemplate what one would do under those circumstances. Hopefully, we would never be in that position.
Personally, I could care less what happens to a captive who has sworn to kill all that is dear to me. Make him/her as uncomfortable as possible because the alternative is that I am dead and the moralty is moot.
- AJ Lynch said...
Did he ever have his fingers smashed with a sledgehammer? If not, he may wish he chose waterboarding. I once smashed a couple fingers between two large pieces of concrete and a small sledge and it was prolonged agony. A doctor will tell you most crushing injuries produce agonizing excruicating pain.
If he never had his fingers crushed, the two choices presented are like asking an only child if he preferred being an only child- the only child has a single frame of reference from which to base his answer.
Can I assume this article was from the NYT?
- Slim999 said...
The "horror" you don't know is always worse than the horror you do know.
It is instructive that this person has only experienced ONE of the alleged horrors.
Waterboarding, as it has been described by many, is merely the experience of a natural bodily function - essentially a gag reflex.
Without even looking into this person's background, I can predict that he is a BDS-sufferer.
It's quite predictable. And sad.
- Paddy O. said...
Of course he would choose waterboarding over getting his fingers smashed by a sledgehammer.
He already did.
He did one and not the other.
Not to discount how awful an experience it was, but his actions belie his rhetoric.
Course it would have been much harder to type the effect had his fingers been smashed and he likely would have been committed somewhere after telling people what he had done. I guess waterboarding himself isn't as much cause for psychological worry.
- Cedarford said...
Slim999 has it right. A Lefty BDS sufferer out to make an Internet show out of himself so he can call waterboarding the penultimate in torture - and equate it to real, gruesome torture. (which he wisely refuses to experiment with..."I had a friend then start smashing all my fingers with a sledgehammer next, just to verify waterboarding was worse, but we stopped at the 1st finger..."
We already have a very large cadre of people to ask about it and whether or not they would choose to have all their fingers smashed by a sledgehammer instead. That would be the tens of thousands of Americans who have been waterboarded over the years at US military SERE (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape) school. A few such graduates have posted here with Ann Althouse describing it and simultaneously saying it works in getting accurate truthful info from the subject and endorsing it's use on terrorists to save American lives.
Their opinion is it is most unpleasant, but not in any way bad enough they would prefer all their fingers smashed or other grisely torture, to it.
Perhaps another choice.
1. Decide that thousands having a choice between jumping from or burning to death in the WTC or future victims of Jihad in similar circumstances is far more terrible than waterboarding just 3 enemy Islamists who target civilians over the last 6 years. A technigue that offers no excrutiating pain or lasting physical harm. Continue work on scientifically advancing other interrogation methods such as drugs, brain scans that can get life-saving info and make waterboarding obsolete.
2. Decide that terrorist rights under laws and conventions they reject following themselves trump saving innocent lives.
- EnigmatiCore said...
Reading some excerpts, I came across this (ellipsis mine):
"There was no choice, or chance, and willpower was not involved.
I never felt anything like it... where I was ... never in any danger."
So we have here a method that triggers reflexes, where there is no real danger, and where the subject is deprived of choice, chance and willpower.
Sounds exactly like what I want in an interrogation technique. Irresistable, with no permanent harm.
Let's have Congress write up a law expressly permitting, or expressly outlawing, this, and have them vote on it.
- From Inwood said...
Trooper York
I thought that Paul Newman, in character, looked real good after his character had his fingers crushed. And he beat Jackie Gleason!
Obviously this is a childish stunt to embarrass Bush.
If I had a choice of being water boarded or reading BDS stuff….
- Synova said...
Penultimate means the next to last, not the first.
Yeah, not having his fingers smashed with a sledgehammer sort of makes the comparison suspect.
It's not the same, I suppose, but I thought I'd prefer to C-section to regular birth which I'd gone through often enough to have a pretty good memory of. I was glad. Cut me open! Just do it!
I was also *wrong*. Drugged up and cut open avoided the whole painful labor thing but the lesser pain afterward went on and on and on and the scar has itched for Ten Freaking Years.
No one who defends waterboarding suggests that a person can "take it" or that it's anything other than psychologically terrifying. That's the whole point, really. That *no one* can take it even though it's over quickly and doesn't cause injury.
But better to smash fingers slowly, one at a time with a sledge hammer?
Yeah, right.
- Doyle said...
Ann do you suppose you could pinpoint the moment you became the sort of person who went around defending acts of torture as being really not that bad?
I mean, did you "evolve" towards a more favorable view of torture on 9/11, or have you always thought it was an underused method of ensuring national security?
- Danny said...
I don't understand why waterboarding is limited to terrorists. If it's effective against them, it should be used on all criminals who might have information to divulge. Drug dealers, cheating businessmen, prostitutes, corrupt politicianas, NYT journalists who don't divulge their sources, DOJ officials who have "trouble recalling" certain details... strap em all to the table and get the party started. HOOAH!
- DocWashboard said...
I'm struck by the way that torture proponents always assume that everyone in custody is, in fact, a terrorist. If I'm remembering correctly, there were mass releases of prisoners from Abu Ghraib who turned out not to be guilty of anything at all. The same holds true with some Guantanamo prisoners: they haven't done anything at all, let alone "sworn to kill all that is dear" to vet66. That's one of the reasons why they occasionally let some detainees go free.
- Chip Ahoy said...
by a guy who waterboarded himself but did not sledgehammer himself.
That's why I keep visiting here.
I guess I'll just have to accept this discussion gets picked up at square 1 every time the subject is broached. It feels retarded but that is the world I find myself in and so must abide. It's sort of like skiing. No matter how good you get, you don't just hit the black diamond slopes straight off first thing after breakfast.
I'll concern myself with waterboarding suspected terrorists, snagged under the most compromising situations, when we as a group concern ourselves with outlawing fisting, water sports, and CBT, activities which I understand are undertaken for fun.
You can't waterboard yourself. The full horror would come from your enemies controlling it. I want the enemies of my country to be horrified. I'm a mean person that way. I want the enemies of my country to lose their religion.
Jesus appeared in my cell and told me all that's OK, things will sort themselves later.
- rcocean said...
I just want to say I'm against Torture because I'm such a morally superior person -unlike all you right wing Nazi's.
I'll now go and hug myself.
- michael farris said...
"I'm struck by the way that torture proponents always assume that everyone in custody is, in fact, a terrorist"
Well, if they're not terrorists, they're at least muslim and for many, many people, where there's smoke there's fire.
And, remember since this guy made a rhetorical error (comparing a real horror and hyperbolic hypothetical situation) proponennts of waterboarding other people can continue to tell themselves that it's all okay. That's all that matters by now anyway, being able to tell themselves that it's all okay. They can be shocked and against it the whole time later.
- Danny said...
I believe someone has just introduced 'fisting' into the discussion.
- Revenant said...
I don't understand why waterboarding is limited to terrorists.
It isn't constitutionally permissible to use aggressive interrogation techniques on criminal suspects; the information so gathered isn't admissible in court.
If you've no intention of ever holding a trial, however (i.e., because the person is an enemy combatant, not a domestic criminal), the fact that the information won't be admissible in court doesn't matter.
- Revenant said...
I'm struck by the way that torture proponents always assume that everyone in custody is, in fact, a terrorist
When you drop a bomb from an airplane, can you know with perfect certainty that every single person who will be killed or injured by it is an enemy combatant?
Of course not. You have to play the odds. It may well be that some of the people we've interrogated had no involvement in terrorism, but that's war for you. The duty of the American military and intelligence community is to protect Americans -- not to protect foreigners.
- garage mahal said...
Is waterboard torture? hmm, good question. What kind of waterboarding, Medieval.....Viet Cong style? And who's doing it? Us? God this is all so confusing! So many layers, so nuanced! And if we're doing it, I'm sure it's okay???? And I'm sure it was to save us from a ticking time bomb? Can't we just all agree that waterboarding isn't a black and white issue? And terrorists are blowing up children's hospitals!
Oh.....we have a trail of evidence and tapes of us waterboarding people?
Definitely not torture then!
- Lawgiver said...
I don't understand why waterboarding is limited to terrorists.
I understand your point Danny. Maybe we should incarcerate terrorists in the Huntsville prison complex. We could give then cell mates with names like Bubba or Meatrod. The terrorists would probably tell us a lot of neat stuff, maybe even plead to return to Gitmo!
- vet66 said...
Jeff Jacoby has a good article out today on the Islamic war on women. Honor killings, stonings, gang rape sentences, rape rooms, genital mutilation dictats against female teachers, teaching females, and the list goes on!
How about some of you yahoo, bleeding heart,moralizing, effete, pseudo intellects stop defending the indefensible. Your whining costs more muslim women their lives every year and continues in an outrageous vacuum of silence.
Any religion that puts up with that kind of torture and coercion is a production line of jihadi terrorists and need to be labeled as such. They are guilty by association or silence in condemning their atrocities.
Continue making yourselves warm and fuzzy by hiding behind moral equivalency. People are dying because of you and our troops are holding the bad guys feet to the fire to slow down the carnage.
If it makes you feel better, consider waterboarding the terrorist baptismal.
- EnigmatiCore said...
Does there exist a type of interrogation technique that you can imagine, that totally overwhelms an individual's capacity to resist, that you support?
If so, can you please detail. If not, can you explain why not?
- DocWashboard said...
"Of course not. You have to play the odds. It may well be that some of the people we've interrogated had no involvement in terrorism, but that's war for you. "
Ah. So you're saying, then, that the September 11 attacks were not atrocities, but merely another day at the office. We should, you think, learn to accept those deaths with good grace. Sh!t happens. After all, that was how those terrorists chose to prosecute the war against the west, and everything's fair game.
Your view--and I just want to be sure that I have this right--is that the utter innocence of those who died at the WTC in no way made the attacks more brutal. "That's war for you," I think is your Grand Unifying Theory of the Universe.
Innocents are fair game, you opine. Does that go both ways?
- Danny said...
It isn't constitutionally permissible to use aggressive interrogation techniques on criminal suspects; the information so gathered isn't admissible in court.
So even if a little water could make a guy fess up to a child porn ring, you think it's still ok that the constitution lets these pedophiles pedophile freely? Either change the constitution or bypass it altogether. If we're allowed to waterboard Ahmed and pals we should be allowed to do the same to Judith Miller, despite the fact that she somehow retains US citizenship. Whatever you want to call them, these people are aiding the efforts of terrorists and recovering what they know will save innocent American lives. No exceptions.
- Synova said...
"I'm struck by the way that torture proponents always assume that everyone in custody is, in fact, a terrorist"
I'm just struck by the way people are compelled to lie about the arguments made by the other side.
Why not just waterboard everyone? Ohhh... that is *so* clever. How can I answer such an argument. Oh, Muslim is the same as terrorist! Why didn't I *ever* think of that one!
I, too, want to know what *effective* interrogation method the bleeding hearts approve of. Any of them? Why or why not? What is it OKAY to do in order to get terrorist suspects to talk?
It's easy, oh so easy, to put on this semblance of righteousness, pat yourself on the back for being such a good person, and never EVER say where you draw the line or why that line is correct or what interrogators are *supposed* to do in your name.
Can we play mind games with their religion? Smear real menstral blood on a Koran? Wrap them in an Israeli flag? Feed them pork?
Can we make them *think* they're in physical danger? Can we disorient them with lights or sensory deprivation?
Oh you who are so very righteous, tell me what we CAN do.
And while you're at it. Please state clearly, yes or no, is waterboarding worse than smashing fingers, one at a time, with a sledgehammer?
- John Stodder said...
Ann do you suppose you could pinpoint the moment you became the sort of person who went around defending acts of torture as being really not that bad?
I mean, did you "evolve" towards a more favorable view of torture on 9/11, or have you always thought it was an underused method of ensuring national security?
Doyle do you suppose you could pinpoint the moment you became the sort of person who fell in love with your image in the mirror as a person of superior morals who perceived the most profound ethical quandaries of national security in a nuclear age with such perfect black and white clarity?
I mean, did you "evolve" towards a more favorable view of yourself after 9/11, or have you always been crippled by the kind of vanity that takes your own personal safety for granted while thinking you could provide such security in a more self-enhancing way than those with the actual responsibility for doing so?
- DocWashboard said...
Can I assume that you will not complain about "enhanced interrogation" (and remember: the interrogator gets to determine whether or not it's torture) if it ever occurs to our folks?
Also: is the concept of "war crime" now obsolete, since, by your lights, anything now goes?
- John Stodder said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- John Stodder said...
Can I assume that...
I realize that depriving you of the "you said this, so I assume you believe that" fallacy will leave you pretty much empty-handed in this debate, but sorry, I'm not playing.
My point was what I said. Doyle's vacuous moral vanity is deeply unserious. It's a feel-good. But we're living in an era where the feel-goods are cheaper than ever.
What I think is that the question of enhanced interrogation is a different subject matter than torture. Torture is something I would expect 99.9 percent of all Americans to oppose. Enhanced interrogation is a closer call.
Ideally, we'd never use it. But I am instinctively nauseated by the front-parlor assertions of people like Doyle who really have no clue what professionals in the field, responsible for protecting us from secret plotters of mass death, have to deal with.
I trust most American law officers to do the right thing most of the time no matter who happens to be president. I have no choice but to do so. If on extremely rare occasions they believe waterboarding is the only way to get information out of a suspect, information that will save thousands of lives, I'm not comfortable second-guessing them.
If I was told waterboarding was conducted as a matter of course in all interrogations, I would oppose that. But in the gray area where trained officers have to make judgments between two wrongful positions, I don't think it's up to me to tell them, in advance, and on behalf of thousands of potential victims, which way they must choose. What is my expertise to make such a judgment? What is Doyle's? What is yours?
It's a slippery slope, one might argue. On the other hand, I don't think we've ever lived in an era of this country where the principles of civil liberties are so widely respected and honored as they are now. I realize this statement isn't the conventional wisdom, but anyone who reads the history of America in wartime knows I'm right. A few dozen jihadist warriors in Gitmo, three instances of waterboarding in six years since 9/11, expansion of police powers in only the most surgical and particular circumstances while we basically do not interfere with the lives Arab Muslims in this country at all -- that is not how America reacted in the Vietnam era, during the civil rights movement, during the first decade of the Cold War, during WWII, during the post-WWI Red Scare, during WWI, during Reconstruction, during the Civil War, and so forth. In the wake of an attack like 9/11, I think the real story is about America's restraint, and what that says about this country's values.
- Blake said...
It's interesting to me that the anti-torture folk (as they style themselves) are compelled to change the argument whenever the topic comes up.
...remember since this guy made a rhetorical error...
This wasn't a rhetorical error. If we take this guy at face value, it was an honest attempt to understand how horrible waterboarding is. Conclusion: Very much so.
But, of course, he wouldn't smash his fingers--even a pinky. There is an element of that (lifetime disability as well as ongoing persistent pain) waterboarding lacks.
It's a poor comparison. Even if he had done both, neither compares to the actual circumstance, which is something none of us here can comprehend.
Just like none of us here can comprehend being a torturer/interrogater. (OK, I'm playing the odds.)
It's not an easy question. Banning torture seems like the moral high ground, right up until a failure to get intel results in a lot of innocents dying.
- Synova said...
"Can I assume that you will not complain about "enhanced interrogation" (and remember: the interrogator gets to determine whether or not it's torture) if it ever occurs to our folks?"
"Our folks" are waterboarded regularly. Thousands and thousands of them.
By us.
Some of them determine to shoot themselves in the head before they are ever taken captive because of that experience.
Considering our enemies, this is the right response.
If waterboarding were what "our folks" could reasonably expect to look forward to if they were captured by our enemies I would throw a G*d D*mned PARTY you MORON.
Your post doesn't make much sense. You're using mostly English words, but they're put together oddly, and it seems like some ideas are missing that would make the thing flow a little better.
Remember that you can't have half the argument in your head. You have to type it all out so people can read it, even though some of the letters are hard to find.
I'll try to respond, though, to what you appear to be trying to say.
Your argument seems to be that waterboarding is so horrific that people who know about it would rather commit suicide than undergo it. Is that actually the point you wanted to make? To underscore how awful waterboarding is? Because, frankly, that seems to run counter to what I could pick out of the general drift of your post.
Also: remember that "enhanced interrogation techniques" covers a lot of territory, of which waterboarding is presumably only a part.
- Peter said...
When I first took my job we gave all suspects their rights. And sometimes a couple of lefts. It became very unfashionable to smack a suspect, we adapted. But every working deputy chose what situations we'd risk our pensions and our freedom.
I was lucky enough that I never had to cross that line.
I'm really tired of the excuse that we can't be mean to the bad guys for fear they'll be mean to us. Tell that to Daniel Pearl.
I wish you moral types would figure out that we didn't start this fight and things are going to be awfully damned ugly if we lose it. That Dutch moviemaker, van Gough never tortured anyone. The people in those embassies in Africa weren't torturing anyone. Those sailors on the USS Cole weren't torturing anyone. And it wasn't because of Bush, those yahoos didn't know who the governor of Texas was. They will kill us all if we don't get in the fight.
- Synova said...
Firstly, assuming that we, in order to be consistent, have to approve of someone else doing what *we* do is logically wrong.
As an example, we spy on countries. We can be expected to spy on countries. Knowing what other countries are up to is important for our national security.
The opposite is also true. Other countries spy on us.
Does this mean that we will not *complain* about it if we find out? No, it doesn't. We do not have to accept or approve of other countries spying on us just because we have a spy program.
With me so far, Doc?
The logical "gotcha" you were attempting saying that we ought to approve of others doing to "our folks" what we approve, under specific conditions and rarely, to do to "their folks" is not a "gotcha" at all but a logical fallacy.
But, illogical or not, the fact is that if our enemies did what WE do, we should throw a party.
It's not that we wouldn't complain if an American were captured and waterboarded, of course we would. We would complain if an American were captured and held even in humane circumstances because it is in our interest to ALWAYS push to better the situation for those we are responsible for.
But we're not in a position to argue about an extra meal a day or access to a Chaplain or enough blankets for those in enemy custody.
Because what happens to OUR FOLKS isn't even that they are subject to something as unpleasant and traumatic as waterboarding. What happens to OUR FOLKS is that they get their testicles cut off and stuffed in their FREAKING MOUTHS while they are still alive and then they get their heads sawed off.
Oh please GOD if they were only waterboarded!
And oh please GOD let the squad mates of anyone captured get a clear shot off.
- DocWashboard said...
Oh please GOD if they were only waterboarded!
And oh please GOD let the squad mates of anyone captured get a clear shot off.
Got it. Now you're advocating our own soldiers shooting each other to death. Way to "support the troops." With friends like you, who needs enemies?
- Synova said...
Yup, Doc.
You see, you try to compare, to make an equivalence between nice, clean, abstract notions as if that means something.
It doesn't.
Would I want our soldiers to shoot their friend to keep him or her from being captured by Al Qaida in Iraq?
What sort of monster are you that you would not?
- Synova said...
I'm waiting for this, Doc.
Explain to me why it's more moral to allow someone to be captured alive, knowing that they will be tortured to death slowly and their body desecrated than it would be to stop that from happening if you could.
Explain why *you* would not pull the trigger, Doc.
- Revenant said...
Ah. So you're saying, then, that the September 11 attacks were not atrocities, but merely another day at the office.
I briefly tried following your reasoning, but then I got bored. Congratulations on arriving at the least intelligent possible misunderstanding of my post.
- Synova said...
Doc seems to be making attempts at cleverness rather than reasoning.
Word games.
The problem with that is it results in a lack of overall continuity in his arguments. Each one is unrelated to any others and none of them address the overall issue of what sort of interrogation is appropriate and what sort is not.
John had it right, "I realize that depriving you of the "you said this, so I assume you believe that" fallacy will leave you pretty much empty-handed in this debate, but sorry, I'm not playing."
I'm just not as smart as John.
- Fen said...
is the concept of "war crime" now obsolete, since, by your lights, anything now goes?
Its been obsolete for some time now. Primarily because there is no equal protection under law. International laws and Geneva are perverted to hamstring US operations.
- Fen said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- Fen said...
Danny: So even if a little water could make a guy fess up to a child porn ring -
Weak argument. You are confusing criminal investigations with the gathering of war-fighting intelligence.
- hdhouse said...
Trooper York "Obviously this is a childish stunt to embarrass Bush."
ahemmmmm gentlemen. mr. bush needs no childish stunts to be embarrassed. Forget not that where we have been for the last eight years...and both tortures seem viable. pleasant repose. .. ho ho ho.
- Revenant said...
Doc seems to be making attempts at cleverness rather than reasoning. Word games. Gotchas.
It's just Cyrus again, I assume.
- From Inwood said...
It seems that we have a PR problem here.
As you know in the tax area
"tax evasion" is bad
"tax avoidance" is OK.
So when one pushes the envelope on his/her tax return, he/she's just "avoiding" some taxation, even tho some would think this person was cheating.
So let's just call waterboarding "torment" & go for it.
I think that reading the comments of those, as John S describes,
"crippled by the kind of vanity that takes your own personal safety for granted while thinking you could provide such security in a more self-enhancing way than those with the actual responsibility for doing so...."
amounts to torture.
- Fen said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- Fen said...
C4: Perhaps another choice.
Make waterboarding illegal in all circumstances. Revisit that decision only after Los Angeles, New York and Boston are savaged by WMD attacks.
Tellstar, et al: OMG! Please please PLEASE do WHATEVER is necessary to stop this! I don't want to see my family choke to death on their own blood! after learning that their city is the target of a WMD attack.


text:
Burton is the chief scientist at RSA Laboratories. He can be contacted at [email protected]
Digital signatures are gaining in importance as nations around the globe pass legislation giving them equal legal standing with traditional handwritten signatures. By doing so, governments are paving the way for purely electronic transactions of all kinds, significantly reducing the need for paper documentation while providing the opportunity for tremendous efficiency and productivity gains. As a result, digital signatures are poised to enter the mainstream as the primary vehicle for establishing trust for a wide variety of electronic transactions.
Most secure web transactions today are already dependent on digital signatures, which are included as part of the digital certificate a server presents to a client to identify itself. The digital certificate binds a public key with an identity and enables a receiver to verify the sender's digital signature, or as is the case when setting up a secure connection with a web server, enables a client to encrypt information such that only the identified server can decrypt it. The digital certificate carries the digital signature of the issuer of the certificate to enable the receiver to verify its legitimacy.
The RSA public-key cryptosystem and digital signature scheme are widely deployed today and have become essential building blocks for creating the emerging public-key infrastructure (PKI). Electronic commerce has embraced this technology as a way to associate documents, transactions, and so forth with their true originator, and to ensure their integrity.
Many standards for Internet and mobile e-commerce reference the RSA algorithm, often from the PKCS #1 v1.5 format developed in 1991. More recent proposals also use the RSA algorithm, including one developed by the U.S. banking industry, ANSI X9.31, and another being considered for new standards, called the "Probabilistic Signature Scheme" (PSS).
Considering all of the above, software developers may well be asking which standard for RSA digital signatures to follow as they develop new PKI applications. All employ the same underlying RSA algorithm, but they are incompatible with each other and offer varying degrees of security.
In this article, I'll examine three RSA-based signature schemes, illustrating how they are different, what the tradeoffs are, and where and how the industry should go over the next several years regarding these three approaches.
RSA Digital Signatures
The notion of digital signatures goes back to the beginning of public-key cryptography. In their landmark paper "New Directions for Cryptography" (IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 1976), Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman introduced the idea that someone could form a digital signature using public-key cryptography that anyone else could verify but which no one else could generate.
While Diffie and Hellman provided a general model for digital signatures of any kind, the method developed by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman in 1977, known as "RSA," has become the most proven and most popular, and achieved the widest adoption by standards bodies and in practice. Two other methods, discrete logarithm cryptography (including the Digital Signature Algorithm and the Diffie-Hellman key agreement method) and elliptic curve cryptography (see "Elliptic Curves and Cryptography," by Aleksandar Jurisic and Alfred J. Menezes, DDJ, April 1997) have also been embodied in several standards, but neither has yet been as widely adopted in practice as RSA.
The RSA digital signature scheme applies the sender's private key to a message to generate a signature; see Figure 1. The signature can then be verified by applying the corresponding public key to the message and the signature through the verification process, providing either a valid or invalid result. These two operations sign and verify comprise the RSA digital signature scheme.
Any signature generated by the first operation will always verify correctly with the second operation if the corresponding public key is used. If the signature was generated differently or if the message was altered after being signed, then the chances of the second operation verifying correctly are extremely small; with typical parameters, the chance is roughly 1 in 2160 or essentially zero. Although there are better ways to forge a signature than just guessing, the use of a sufficiently large key ensures security by making it computationally impractical to do so. For instance, it has been estimated to take thousands or even millions of years to break a given 1024-bit key (find the private key, given the public key), depending on the amount of computing power applied.
Taking a closer look at the signature generation portion of the process in Figure 2, the first step in generating an RSA signature is applying a cryptographic hash function to the message. The hash function is specifically designed to reduce a message of any length to a short number, called the "hash value" (typically 160 bits long), and to do it in a way such that two conditions are satisfied:
- It is difficult to find a message with a specific hash value.
- It is difficult to find two messages with the same hash value (an easier problem to solve).
While many hash functions are available, only a few are commonly used in practice.
Next, the hash value is converted into an integer called the "message representative," with a length that is the same as the length of the RSA key being employed. This is done by applying a padding format to the resulting hash value or embedding the hash value to produce the message representative. In addition to its length-matching function, the padding format also provides additional security and is the primary differentiator among the various RSA signature schemes.
The final step applies the RSA signature primitive to the message representative using the RSA private key to generate the signature.
In mathematical notation, the RSA signature primitive computes the equation in Example 1(a), where n equals the RSA modulus, d equals the private exponent, m equals the message representative, and s equals the RSA digital signature. The RSA private key is formed by the RSA modulus n and the private exponent d. Signature verification, likewise, starts with the message that is first reduced by the same hash function to produce a new hash value. The signature verification process then applies the RSA verification primitive to the signature using the public key, which consists of the RSA modulus n and the public exponent e, to recover the message representative m' by computing the equation in Example 1(b).
All that remains is to verify that the integer m', the recovered message representative, is a correct embedding of the new hash value through the verify process, where H'=hash (M) and M equals the original message. The verify process varies depending on the method used to encode the hash function as a message representative.
The RSA primitive has not changed over time and is the core ingredient of the digital signature. Hash functions have been studied and developed independently of RSA signatures, and it is generally assumed that they will vary over time from one signature scheme to another, but good hash functions are essentially interchangeable and don't impact the security of the digital signature. The three main RSA signature schemes PKCS #1, ANSI X9.31, and PSS differ mainly in the padding format the signature generation operation employs to embed the hash value into a message representative, and in how the signature verification operation determines that the hash value and the message representative are consistent.
With so much riding on the veracity of digital signatures, understanding the strength of the security any digital signature scheme provides is crucial. To forge a signature, an attacker needs to figure out a way to compute the RSA signature primitive without knowing the private key. Stated differently, given the RSA public key and a target integer m', an attacker needs a way to invert the RSA verification primitive and generate the digital signature s.
The strength of the RSA primitive is expressed as its average behavior. You can say the RSA primitive is good, on average it's hard to break the RSA primitive but may be easy in some special cases. Given any m', it's usually quite difficult to invert the RSA primitive to create the signature (or more generally, to find ways to manipulate existing signatures to create a new one). But as it turns out, this is easier to do for some m's than for others, and this depends on the padding format, the critical connection between the hash function and the RSA primitive. (As a simple exercise for the reader, it's trivial to invert the primitive for m'=0, 1 or n-1. Of course, the chance that m' happens to have one of these values is essentially zero.)
The padding format is crucial to a cryptographer's ability to prove the strength of a signature scheme's security. Over the years, people have discovered a number of ways to exploit the RSA primitive, taking the same mathematical properties that make it strong and using them to make it weak in some special cases. Proper use of the primitive proper embedding of the hash value ensures that the mathematical properties can be used to an advantage, and security is not compromised.
The state of the art has advanced to the point where it is now possible to mathematically prove the strength of the security achieved through using the RSA primitive. Although it is not yet possible to prove that the RSA primitive itself is secure that, as for most other cryptographic primitives, rests on a well trusted assumption it is possible to prove that a signature is as secure (within some factor) as the RSA primitive. But current signature schemes don't reflect this new knowledge and still employ padding formats that don't allow this proof. PKCS #1, developed in 1991, is the most widely used signature scheme today, and does not offer such a proof. ANSI X9.31, developed later in the 1990s though not widely implemented, also doesn't offer a proof.
A new signature scheme first proposed in 1996, Bellare-Rogaway PSS, is generally recognized to offer a very good way to achieve this proof, but it has not been considered in standards until recently. But this is understandable because it takes time to make the transition from research to standards, giving the standards communities time to review the methods and have confidence they are effective and determine whether there are any better approaches on the horizon. Today, several standards bodies are working on this new signature scheme, and developers should expect to see it specified in the near future.
Why Change?
The PKCS #1 digital signature scheme has proven to be quite reliable and secure, and over time it may well remain sufficient to meet users' needs. But on the other hand, because there is no way to scientifically prove the strength of its effectiveness, it might turn out to be insufficient. More importantly, there is no way to determine this today.
With methods for breaking security improving all the time, staying with the current scheme runs the risk of having to make expensive infrastructure changes later when PKI deployment is much more extensive and much more difficult to change. A change, if necessary, is sure to be reminiscent on a smaller scale of the work necessary to avoid the Y2K problem. As if presenting an omen of this potential problem, another class of RSA signature schemes thought to have been secure since the early 1990s not any of those being discussed here was found to be vulnerable in the summer of 1999 when methods were devised to break it.
The new technology offered by PSS provides a way to mathematically prove the strength of the security, as opposed to just guessing at it, and it comes at a time when it is still possible to plan a phased approach to its adoption that results in minimal disruption to the current infrastructure. PKI is still in its infancy and there are plenty of opportunities to piggy-back the transition to PSS with other changes that will be necessary as other standards evolve.
For example, new hash methods will need to be incorporated in current applications. The new hash functions, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512, which the U.S. government recently announced, are more suitable for certain applications. But changing hash functions does not require architectural changes, just supporting a new function at one place in the architecture.
Similarly, PSS involves only upgrading the padding format. The change is localized and no architectural changes are necessary. The same RSA algorithm is employed, meaning no new mathematical routines are needed, and the same RSA keys are used.
Which signature scheme to use should not be a question of what's in standards or what's in practice today, but what will ensure the integrity of the infrastructure for the longest term.
PKCS #1 v1.5
The most common RSA-based signature scheme was developed in 1991 as part of RSA Laboratories' Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS). In this scheme, described in the PKCS #1 v1.5 document, a simple padding format (embedding) is applied to the hash value to produce a message representative, as in Figure 3.
The format was designed with two main security goals in mind:
- It should be difficult to find message representatives that have some mathematical relationship: for instance, to find message representatives m1, m2, and m3, such that m1=m2*m3 mod n. If someone could do so, then it might be possible to forge signatures because the corresponding signatures would have the same relationship, and a signature on a new message could be forged by combining the signatures on other messages. The padding format achieves this property in part by padding the hash value to the full length of the modulus n.
- The message representative should identify the hash function. This is important because, in practice, many different hash functions may be used, and it prevents an adversary from trying to forge a signature by causing the verifier to use a different hash function than the signer intended.
The PKCS #1 v1.5 signature scheme has held up to scrutiny over the past decade and is widely deployed, though no formal proof of the scheme's security is known. Most digital certificates in the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol, for instance, are signed with PKCS #1 v1.5. The signature scheme is cited in many other Internet-related standards as well.
The PKCS #1 v1.5 document (as well as the latest version, v2.0, which continues to support the v1.5 signature scheme), is available at http://www.rsalabs.com/pkcs/.
Another RSA-based signature scheme, ANSI X9.31 was developed in the late 1990s by the ANSI X9F1 Standards working group, which produces data security standards for the U.S. financial services industry. This scheme is described in the ANSI X9.31-1998 Standard, "Digital Signatures Using Reversible Public Key Cryptography for the Financial Services Industry (rDSA)." Again, a simple padding format is applied to the hash value to produce a message representative; see Figure 4.
The format was designed with the same security goals in mind as PKCS #1 v1.5. For compatibility with certain international standards, a different padding format than the one used in PKCS #1 v1.5 was chosen. Like PKCS #1 v1.5, no formal proof of the scheme's security is known.
ANSI X9.31 standardizes other aspects of RSA digital signatures such as key size (the minimum is 1024 bits), how keys are generated, and the underlying hash function (SHA-1 or another ANSI-approved hash function). The signature operation also has an additional absolute-value step where the smaller of the values s and n-s is selected, and this saves 1 bit in the size of the resulting signature. The verification operation "disambiguates" between the two possibilities by checking the rightmost byte of the recovered message representative.
The ANSI X9.31 signature scheme has not yet been widely deployed, but it does have significant support by standards bodies. For instance, FIPS 186-2, the digital signature standard for U.S. federal agencies, lists the ANSI X9.31 signature scheme as one of three options (the others are the Digital Signature Algorithm and the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm specified in ANSI X9.62). IEEE Std 1363-2000, which specifies a large set of public-key techniques, and ISO/IEC 14888-3, an international digital signature standard, also include the ANSI X9.31 signature scheme.
The ANSI X9.31 Standard can be purchased online from ANSI at http://www .ansi.org/.
Bellare-Rogaway PSS
Addressing the concern that many RSA-based signature schemes had only ad hoc or anecdotal assurances of security, University of California researchers Mihir Bellare and Phillip Rogaway in 1996 proposed a new RSA-based scheme that enables a formal proof of security.
This security of this method, called "Probabilistic Signature Scheme" (PSS) because of its use of randomization, can be closely related to the security of the RSA algorithm itself. Bellare and Rogaway showed that any general-purpose algorithm for forging PSS signatures could be used to break the underlying RSA primitive. As a result, assuming only that the RSA primitive is secure, PSS signatures will be hard to forge by any general-purpose algorithm. (In contrast, PKCS #1 v1.5 or ANSI X9.31 signatures might be easier to forge than breaking the RSA primitive because no formal proof is known for those schemes.)
Figure 5 gives the specification for the padding format for PSS from draft D7 of IEEE P1363a, a proposed amendment to IEEE Std 1363-2000. The padding format is an adaptation of Bellare and Rogaway's original format that fits the model of producing a message representative from a hash value, and addresses other implementation issues.
In the PKCS #1 and ANSI X9.31 schemes, most of the bytes of the message representative are fixed padding. An attacker who can invert the RSA function for message representatives having those bytes can forge a signature. It is possible, although not necessarily plausible, that this is easier to do than inverting the RSA function on arbitrary values.
PSS overcomes this potential vulnerability by producing random-looking message representatives. Rather than concatenating a hash value with fixed padding, the padding format generates a random mask from the hash value and XORs it with the fixed padding. As further protection, PSS includes a random salt value that makes it difficult for an attacker to determine in advance what the message representative will be for a given message. This protection, along with other features, helps in the proof of security for PSS.
A variant of PSS, called "PSS-R" (where the "R" stands for "message recovery"), conveys part of the message being signed within the signature itself, thereby reducing the overhead due to the signature. The padding format allows this variant as well, which is the reason for some of the peculiar features in Figure 5 (for example, the first string of 00 bytes is the length of the recoverable part, which is 0 here).
Several standards are being drafted that include PSS or PSS-R. Among these are IEEE P1363a; a revision of ISO/IEC 9796-2, an international digital signature standard; and the upcoming PKCS #1 v2.1.
The latest draft of IEEE P1363a is available at http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/ 1363, while the latest draft of PKCS #1 v2.1 is available from the PKCS web page just noted.
Recommendation for Future Direction
The incompatibility of the PKCS #1 v1.5 and ANSI X9.31 signature schemes limits interoperability. Some steps have already been taken to address this concern. For instance, the National Institute of Standards and Testing (NIST) is allowing a grace period during the implementation of FIPS 186-2 whereby PKCS #1 v1.5 signatures will also be acceptable for federal agency use.
In the long term, the Bellare-Rogaway PSS signature scheme is preferable in standards and in practice because it has stronger security assurances. Although no weaknesses have been found in the PKCS #1 v1.5 or ANSI X9.31 signature schemes, no proof has been given that weaknesses do not exist. While there is no immediate need to change to PSS, a gradual upgrade process can begin, which will yield the eventual benefits. The standards development efforts already underway are preparing the path for this upgrade.
The primary area for interoperability is the padding format itself, but for full interoperability, additional aspects must be compatible as well, such as the choice of hash function and the range of key sizes supported. Other aspects can usually be left to the implementation, such as how key pairs are generated and how private keys are stored. These assurance issues are the ones where industry, banking, and government standards often need to diverge; the padding format itself need not be a cause for incompatibility.
Developers today have the opportunity to make a planned, gradual migration to an RSA digital signature scheme offering several compelling benefits, most notably provable security, continued use of existing RSA keys and hardware accelerators, and straightforward, localized software changes.
The time to act is now, and the industry is ready for this change. Already, extensive work has been done to make architectures algorithm independent, and implementing this improved digital signature scheme can build on that. Systems are constantly undergoing other upgrades and maintenance works as new hash functions, encryption algorithms (such as AES), and digital certificates (such as attribute certificates) are embraced. Over time, systems will need to be modified to accommodate these changes anyway. As systems are upgraded to support new kinds of information in their digital certificates, they can have their digital signature scheme upgraded as well.
You need to keep in mind that in spite of the changes, these are only changes in how the hash value is processed, not in any of the underlying mathematics or the keys or anything else. Investments made to develop software or hardware support to implement the RSA functions are preserved.
RSA Laboratories believes adopting the Bellare-Rogaway PSS signature scheme is a prudent investment for protecting the future public-key infrastructure by providing provable security with minimal disruption to the current architecture.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Have You Ever Gotten a Boner While Taking a Shower At The Gym? Did Anyone Notice?
Have You Ever Gotten a Boner While Taking a Shower At The Gym? Did Anyone Notice?
Yes I have, and yes he did.
Hockey players butts drive me nuts!
I've popped wood during my workout, after my workout, and during the shower afterwards. Did anybody notice? Nobody said so if they did.
I have but multiple times... at my most recent gym the showers are all separate with doors but the guy left it slightly open and I swear that fucker was putting on a show just for me....
He was probably seventeen though and I wouldnt do well in prison...
about 2 weeks ago my back went out and had to go to the ER cuz I could not move..... they gave me 2 types of pain shots and as the pain started to go away.....my dick got hard... my honey was sitting there with me and I was sleeping due to the strong morphine shot and he woke me up cuz I had a tent going and did not want all the people walking by to see me(ER rooms have sliding glass doors w/curtain) bu my curtain was drawn back.
I don't know why, but I was hard a rock for a good 30 min's yet my back still hurt....
You cant change the way the wind blow's, but you can change the angle of your sail to take you somewhere else!!
Yeah but not rock hard full-on fat...
Nothing that stimulating in there
got a cock
yea it a news sum lands but dudes got um
chess bored a onless 1 squareping
yes and yes .. like he was supposed to
Check out my very own Body Hair Lovers and Photography Groups!
I tend to get really turned on every time I do a leg workout. I think it has something to do with enjoying the feeling of my butt and thighs being all pumped up.
I'm really glad I work out from home, otherwise I'd have most definitely experienced many awkward moments at the squat rack or in the showers afterwards.
Yep sure have.
yes....many times....usually leads to a hook-up.....gay guys flock to my gym
Isn't that the point of showering at the gym?
To show off a boner?
I always get a Boner when I short lol but I've never showered at the gym sooooooo... No
I make my bed with the stars above my head and dream of a place called home.
Yes, I have had a boner in a gym shower. I was not embarrassed, I was happy it was in good working order. Granted, not exactly the most appropriate of places, but when it grows, it grows.
I have and I was quite embarrassed, had to rush out of the showers before no one noticed.
I used to do track and field when I was younger and had to wear lycra shorts. Standing at the startline with a glaringly obvious erection was a bit awkward.


text: So...Im collecting gear to start my kick panel fab and I am curious if anyone has used plate steel or aluminum as the mounting base for their kickpanel speakers? I have access to a CNC waterjet so I am either going to make a router guide and cut some MDF or hardwood plates or just go with a plate aluminum or stainless one. Either way they will be glassed in place. What do you guys things?


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El Molino High School is hosting a campus clean up day on Sunday and is inviting students, parents, staff and community members to show up and lend a hand.
The event will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday on the campus at 7050 Covey Rd. in Forestville.
Participants are encouraged to bring water bottles and tools. There will also be tools made available there.
Plans, headed up by Harry North, include landscaping and general clean-up. He is also planning to restripe/paint both campus parking lots. The issue of campus beautification, and the condition of the parking lot specifically, emerged as sore points for some parents in a town hall meeting school officials hosted in December.


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Lengthening its recent string of acquisitions to rapidly expand in specialty health markets, medical technology developer C. R. Bard Inc., in the Murray Hill section of New Providence, agreed Tuesday to acquire Neomend Inc. and its pipeline of surgical sealants for $140 million.
Through its lone manufacturing site in Irvine, Calif., Neomend produces and markets the Progel Air Leak Sealant, currently the only product approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for sealing air leaks in lungs after surgery.
As air leaks are common post-operative complications, often leading to extended hospital stays, Bard said in a statement the existing global market for surgical sealants like Neomend's sprayable Progel device is currently valued at more than $1 billion, and the firm's acquisition of the technology will "provide Bard a leading platform to begin its participation in this dynamic market segment."
Scott Lowry, vice president and treasurer for Bard, said Neomend's sealant is "a new technology for us, but it will expand and complement our specialty products."
"This is a relatively small company, but it has tremendous growth opportunity," Lowry said. "We're really focused on growth right now, and we'll continue to look to develop products demanded by customers and supplement our internal developments with more acquisitions in different markets."
Upon completion, the transaction will mark Bard's fourth acquisition since last year, when the firm bought Medivance Inc., Lutonix Inc. and ClearStream Technologies Ltd.
Following the deal, Lowry said, the company will maintain Neomend's manufacturing and R&D facility in Irvine, where Bard already operates a plant focused on developing minimally invasive devices for breast cancer treatment through its SenoRx Inc. subsidiary, which it acquired for $200 million in cash in 2010.
While Lowry said acquiring other firms has been "driving top-line growth" for Bard, he said the company will continue to invest in its own research and development arms, though he noted the company has "no plans to change anything in New Jersey right now."
Bard said the Neomend acquisition will expand business opportunities for its Rhode Island-based surgical specialties subsidiary, Davol Inc.


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The Always Attractive"Playoff" Beard
For those of you on campus this past winter you will remember the unusual amount of beards running around the quarter mile... the facial hair was not a response to the snow fall or wind chill hitting the campus, but a response to the mens hockey team making the playoffs.
The "playoff beard" originated in the 1980s by the New York Islanders... but the tradition did not catch until the New Jersey Devils dawned beards and won the Cup in 1995. Now the beard is a tradition practiced by almost all North American hockey leagues, including our RIT boys.
The idea of the playoff beard is this: when ones team makes the playoffs, players stop shaving their beards until their team is eliminated or wins the title (such as the Stanley Cup).
At RIT our boys rocked the beards during their adventures in the Final Four.... as did some die-heart fans who stopped shaving until our boys came home to Rochester.
Needless to say it was a hairy winter season.... I only bring up the subject because it appears the tradition is spreading beyond the hockey rink. My brother Justin recently moved back to campus a few weeks ago for football camp - where he and his fellow teammates have decided to grow "pre-season" beards....not shaving until their first game in September.
That's certainly on way to bond with your teammates! Here is Justin's beard after one week... its going to be a hott august for these boys!
Dr. Destler loves the Orange Hair Challenge for supporting the basket ball games.... maybe we should ask him to participate in the "Beard-a-Thon" for our hockey boys.... have you ever seen an orange beard??


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Newcastle's Moussa Sissoko feeling sense of injustice after Metalist draw
Moussa Sissoko admits Newcastle are determined to right the "injustice" of their first-leg draw with Metalist Kharkiv.
Last Updated: 16/02/13 11:48am
The Magpies were held to a goalless draw in Thursday night's last-32 tie in the Europa League after Papiss Cisse saw two efforts incorrectly adjudged to be offside.
Newcastle midfielder Sissoko claims the team are frustrated by the decisions but feels they can still progress in Ukraine next week.
"There is a sense of injustice in the team because of the goals," said Sissoko, quoted in The Sun.
"It is not good for us that the goals were wrongly disallowed but referees can make mistakes. We just have to do what we have to do when we get the chance next week."
The decisions were particularly cruel on Cisse given that the Senegal striker has struggled for form this season after enjoying a sensational start to his Newcastle career last term.
But Sissoko has every faith that the goals will soon come for the 27-year-old signing from Freiburg.
"Last time was not his night," he added. "He just could not score - or at least he could not score a goal that was allowed. But all his team-mates have a lot of confidence in him.
"We know exactly what he can do. I am sure that between now and the rest of the season he will find the net many times.
"Hopefully the goals will start to flow next week in Ukraine."


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Now for as long as I can remember sticking your middle finger up to anyone was a straight up insult and went hand in hand with strong verbal abuse.
This gesture got shortened to just the hand action without the need for words, nowadays however the middle finger often comes with a smile! Or a sticking out of the tongue, or a wink! And moreover it's coming from a lot more females than it ever has before!
Like a lot of new trends or behaviour I've witnessed over the last couple of years, social networking sites have had a big part to play behind it (sorry social networking sites, I know everyone seems to be blaming you for everything but...) Facebook was where I first saw those familiar 'GIRLS NIGHT OUT' albums with females enjoying themselves, getting lashed, and taking pics with their middle finger up uploading the day after for all friends/family to see.
This behaviour wasn't coming from loud rugby-playing, lager ladettes, no! These were hot-looking chicks that could pass as extras in Hollyoaks or Made In Chelsea! Pretty girls! They weren't pulling ugly faces, (or trying to pull ugly faces) or even drunk, they did it with winks, pouts and big sober-looking smiles!
Back in the day, (before the internet was big) If your mum saw a picture like the one above, put up somewhere your friends and family could easily see, you'd have a bit of explaining to do, but since seeing more of the same middle finger poses in Facebook albums such as 'GIRLS NIGHT OUT 2' and 'SHANNIES BDAY' I started to sense that the meaning behind the 'middle finger up' seems to have been super watered down.
Tumblr, the blogging social networking tool (in my opinion a Wordpress for kids, less text more pictures) was not the first, but definitely one of the most influential online hubs that took the female 'middle finger up' to commercial, acceptable heights. This is where girls swearing with their hands became cool. Some would say it was now fashionable and art, take a hottie looking like she just got out of bed, take a black and white grainy pic with her sticking up her middle finger, cap it off (no pun intended) with a Bulls or Raiders snapback hat and voila! You've successfully made swearing sexy.
Fashion without a doubt comes first from the streets, then it gets elevated to the stars. This hand swearing trend I would say is one of the only times a trend has come from celebrities first and then filtered to the general public.
Rock stars, rappers and celebrities coming out of courthouses were who we were used to seeing throwing up the finger, then middle-of-the-road, less dynamic stars started chucking up their 'onces' at the papz while walking the dog, at a restaurant and driving off from night clubs.
Slowly but surely a lot of these pictures of hand swearing celebs in tabloid papers and trashy magazines stopped being blacked out or blurred, and thats when it dawned on me, someone, somewhere, suddenly decided since it was a popular personality that gave the bird, it was now somehow seen as cool to cuss!
The likes of huge celebrities like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, who both have over 20 million followers on Twitter, and constantly trend on the number one social networking medium, show that a lot of what they say or do can influence their army of fans whether it be their call to stop bullying or cry to support a particular charity organisation.
Whatever Gaga's legion of 'monsters' (her nickname for her fans) see her wear it'll be known as fashionable, and if, like the above picture, she throws up her middle finger at a photographer
(who in most cases they may claim to be violating their privacy), her fans will probably dilute her gesture down and Tweet ''she rocks".
Justin Bieber has the same influential power, but his is more dangerous in the sense he can tap into a younger, easily manipulated public. Not suggesting kids will go to the extreme claiming ''Well I saw Justin Bieber put his middle finger up at a photographer so I thought it was cool to do it to my maths teacher" but they will be a constant battle between what their parents or guardians teach them about decorum/manners and what their favourite singer has been seen doing so casually and whether or not its as bad as the oldies are making it out to be.
I'm now waiting for the next watered down gesture or word to infiltrate pop culture and see if the media and internet is again, the catalyst.
*Chucks up deuces*


text:
Illinois Investigates ExxonMobil's Anti-Gay Employment Discrmination
ExxonMobil's practice of discriminating against LGBT applicants and employees is so long and storied that protestors demonstrate against the corporation each year in front of the annual shareholders meeting.
But Exxon's distinctly un-American practice will finally be placed under government scrutiny thanks to the Illinois Department of Human Rights.
The Illinois Department of Human Rights has accepted Freedom to Work's complaint of employment discrimination against ExxonMobil, the first known time an LGBT group has used a "tester" case — in which a group submits similar applications from fictitious applicants who only differ in the relevant characteristic being tested — in an organizational lawsuit.
"Freedom to Work decided to take a successful strategy from the playbook of African-American civil rights leaders by employing matched-pair employment testing at Exxon and other federal contractors that lack LGBT workplace protections," Freedom to Work president Tico Almeida told BuzzFeed. "We very quickly found evidence that Exxon has given unfair hiring preference to some lower qualified straight applicants over more qualified LGBT applicants."
Shareholders once again voted against adding an LGBT non-discrimination provision at this year's meeting in May, which finds itself at odds with Illinois law, which states that it is illegal to discriminate in employment based on sexual orientation.
(Image: Reuters)


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Submission + - China Begins Stockpiling Rare Earths, Draws WTO Attention (google.com)
eldavojohn writes: A report by China Securities Journal claims that that China is now stockpiling rare earths although it has not indicated when this stockpiling started. Many WTO members have complained about China's tightening restrictions on exports of rare earths while China maintains that such restrictions are an attempt to clean up its environmental problems. A WTO special conference scheduled for July 10th will hopefully decide if China's restrictions are unfair trade practices or if the US, the EU and Japan are merely upset that they can't export their pollution and receive rare earths at low prices. Last year, China granted its mining companies the right to export 30,200 tonnes but in actuality only 18,600 tonnes were shipped out of country.


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Fried shrimp coated in coconut flakes and panko crumbs straight from the fryer make me slightly weak in the knees. Biting through the crusty coating into the steaming-hot, succulent shrimp trapped underneath makes me deliriously happy.
The deceptively sweet orange marmalade sauce carries a surprise hint of heat that is a perfect counterbalance for all of the savory sweetness going on.
The sauce is made with just a few pantry ingredients: orange marmalade, dijon mustard, vinegar and red pepper flakes. If you don't like the sound of the sauce a store-bought sweet chili or sweet and sour sauce goes just as well. You can use sweetened or unsweetened coconut, I prefer the sweet ones for this.
To make things easy I buy shrimp already cleaned with the tails on so you have something to hold onto for dipping. You want to use shrimp on the large side, if they're too small you chance overcooking the shrimp before the coating crisps up. I butterflied these but you can skip that step as it makes no difference in the end result.
Deep-fried shrimp coated in coconut flakes and panko crumbs with a sweet and spicy orange dipping sauce.
- Set up a dredging station for the shrimp by placing the flour in a wide, shallow plate or bowl; beat the eggs in a small bowl and combine panko and coconut in a separate, wide, shallow plate or bowl. Coat shrimp with flour, dunk into egg mixture and then into coconut crumbs, patting the crumbs on if needed. Set on a large platter and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes.
- Meanwhile combine orange marmalade, rice vinegar, dijon and red pepper in a small bowl; refrigerate.
- Add about 2 inches of oil to large, deep pan or skillet and heat to 350 degrees F. Fry shrimp in batches until light golden brown. Remove and drain on paper towel lined plates. Serve with orange dipping sauce.
Copyright ©2013 Cinnamon Spice and Everything Nice by Reeni Pisano All Rights Reserved. No copying or duplication of any content (including photos) without the express written permission from the owner of this website.


text:
Ok, I am at a crossroads here. My DD is 6 weeks old and we have gone through periods of exclusively breast feeding and times when we supplement with formula after feeding because she just didn't seem to be satisfied.
Currently, she will nurse from both breasts and then she will still seem like she is starving. The past few days, she's been taking 4 oz of formula AFTER breastfeeding.
I usually pump once a day when she sleeps for a long stretch, and the most I have ever pumped is 2 oz on the left and 1 oz on the right. But what I normally get is 1 on the left and 0.5 on the right.
I know baby can get more out than a pump, but how in the world am I going to increase my supply to more than 4 oz so that she can be satisfied with just breastfeeding? I would like to get her off the formula, but I definitely need to increase my supply.
I have been drinking at least 3 cups of mother's milk tea, a ton of water, and eating oatmeal daily. The only thing I'm not doing is pumping aggressively.
So my questions are:
When should I pump? Before or after a feeding?
How often?
For how long? Timed or # of minutes AFTER it stops flowing?
Also, do I really need to rent a hospital grade pump? Are they just more efficient? Is it possible to increase supply using my PIS?
Thanks in advance!!


text:
Aurora Central Catholic's football team drew attention in the fall by qualifying for the playoffs for the first time in 14 years.
The Chargers' baseball team is in the midst of a similarly dramatic breakthrough.
ACC entered the week with a 12-1 record after sweeping Genoa-Kingston in a doubleheader on Saturday. This for a program that went 14-18 last season and has not had a winning season since 2006.
First-year ACC coach Sean Bieterman acknowledges being somewhat amazed by the team's sizzling play.
"A little bit, in terms of what our record is right now," said Bieterman, also the school's athletic director. "But we knew we had some talent. We knew we had some good kids returning that were going to work hard."
The 12-1 start was the best for ACC since the 1995-96 season, Bieterman said.
The Chargers have been led by a strong pitching staff that features Matt Miller, Andrew Bruss, Matt Rahn, Michael Filder and Michael O'Donnell.
Offensively, Bieterman said Phil Schuetz, Jake McCarthy, Steve Belovich and Shawn Soris are leading the way.
"I'm especially proud of Soris," Bieterman said. "He's caught every game for us. He's just a battler. He competes. It's how he was on the basketball court, too. He makes the most of what he has. Smart kid who works hard."
Leading up to Monday's game, ACC had won 11 straight after falling to Oswego in the second game of the season.
Maintaining the streak this week figured to be treacherous. Depending on the weather, ACC could play as many as eight games this week, including the Chargers' scheduled participation in a wood-bat tournament this weekend.
Games slated for Monday and Tuesday with St. Edward loomed especially large. Bieterman said St. Ed and Chicago Christian project as the Chargers' stiffest challengers in the Suburban Christian Conference Gold race.
Bieterman said ACC has been plucky in pulling out wins on days when it does not play especially well, but he thinks the Chargers still have another gear.
"We're happy with where we're at but we're even more excited about where we can be when we start playing at our full potential," Bieterman said.
Battllin' Bulldogs
Like ACC, Batavia is enjoying mostly smooth sailing, but that doesn't mean Batavia coach Matt Holm doesn't have some tough decisions to make.
Figuring out what to do in right field has been particularly tricky. Aaron Hurd figured to hold down that spot but missed some time with an ankle injury.
Hurd has been productive since returning but Colby Green impressed Holm with his performance in Hurd's absence.
"Colby's been doing a real nice job. … He's gotten some really nice, RBI hits," Holm said. "We're going to let them battle it out a little."
The decision is simplified when Green – one of the Bulldogs' top pitchers – is on the mound. Holm said Green is also capable of playing at third base or elsewhere in the infield.
North Star commits
St. Charles North pitcher Joe Barsanti committed last week to compete collegiately for North Central College, the Division III program in Naperville.
The 6-foot-3, 165-pound Barsanti pitched six innings of three-run ball Saturday as the North Stars fell to Elk Grove, 3-1, in a nonconference game.
Colby Green, Batavia, Jr., P
What he did: Green threw a complete game, two-hitter on Friday to boost Batavia to a 2-0 win against South Elgin in an Upstate Eight Conference crossover.
Jason Sullivan, St. Francis, So., P
What he did: Sullivan excelled on the mound and at the plate in the Spartans' 5-2 win against Marmion on April 8, earning the complete-game win on the mound and adding three hits offensively.
Bartlett continues to be a nemesis for Tri-Cities baseball teams.
The Hawks, who stunned top-seeded Geneva last year in regionals, handed St. Charles North one of the North Stars' worst losses in recent memory on Friday, crushing North, 13-2, in five innings.
Whether Batavia can keep rolling in conference play as the schedule turns to UEC River competition.
The Bulldogs open a three-game series with defending UEC River champion St. Charles East today. The teams are scheduled for games in St. Charles today and Thursday and in Batavia on Wednesday.
Don't count out Geneva.
The Vikings haven't had the start many would have anticipated, but it's way too early to write this team off.
If Geneva can get and stay healthy, especially on the mound, the Vikings have too much talent to go quietly this season.
Especially with the postseason format, where you can line up your top-of-the-rotation guys, the Vikings won't be a team anyone will look forward to playing.


text:
Rochester Institute of Technology President Bill Destler urged the university community to collectively "sustain RIT's momentum" in his annual welcome back address delivered today to students, faculty and staff.
Destler illustrated RIT's national and global trajectory by citing examples of student and faculty achievements. With the largest freshman class in history and an enrollment topping 18,000 students for the first time, Destler said RIT is poised to become a leader in areas that are essential to the future economic success of the nation.
"We need to continue on our path to extend our geographic reach in our recruitment of the most talented students, staff, and faculty," he said. "We must continue to grow our reputation as a place where innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship flourish."
Destler added: "Very few individuals have the opportunity to participate in the kind of transformation that RIT is undergoing, and that transformation, if we continue to make the kind of progress we have been making, will be your legacy."
Here is Destler's address in its entirety:
"First of all, welcome back to the beginning of another academic year. I believe that this coming year will be one of the most important in the history of RIT, for reasons that you already are aware of. Our three-year journey to a semester calendar is finally at an end, and this year we will find out what works and what doesn't, and we'll learn what we didn't think of at all. For all of the hard work by so many of you that has brought us to this point, I can only offer my heartfelt thanks. There will still be adjustments to be made once we gain experience with the new semester calendar, but I believe that we have laid a strong foundation that we can build upon in the years to come.
"And Genesis, our new student information system, is also up and running, and while this has been a challenging and often frustrating exercise for so many of you, we are likewise in your debt for your hard work and your patience. I don't know if this project will ever be really finished, since complex information technology systems are almost always a work in progress, but again your hard work has put us in a position to ultimately benefit from this transition. So again, to all of you who contributed to this immense project, heartfelt thanks.
"Now usually I spend a good deal of my annual welcome back address reviewing our accomplishments during the past year, but this year I've decided to spend this brief period with you to talk on a more personal level about what's on the horizon and what we need to do collectively to sustain RIT's strong positive momentum.
"As you know, when I first joined the RIT family I established a number of very specific goals around student application numbers, retention and graduation rates, fundraising and alumni engagement, etc., etc., ad nauseum, and the initiation of new academic programs needed to fill out our curricular offerings. I did this because in many ways we were not performing in these areas at the level of the best private universities, and while these metrics do not by themselves define greatness, greatness cannot be achieved without competitive performance in these areas. After six years, I am pleased to say that RIT has made real progress in all of these areas, and as a result we are beginning to successfully compete for the best students, faculty, and staff.
"This is important because I believe that in the next year or two RIT will move from a national ranking in the "regional – North" category to the "national university" ranking category. We actually do not get to choose which category we are ranked in. As soon as we begin to regularly produce 20 Ph.D. degrees or more on an annual basis, and this year we will probably clear that threshold, our Carnegie classification will change and we will be ranked against the best colleges and universities in the nation and the world.
"Now many of you know that I think college rankings are more of a problem than a solution and that I think they are for the most part trying to force very different colleges and universities through a single evaluation filter. Why North Carolina A&T should be compared to Princeton is a mystery to me, but I know that we are going to be ranked by various print and online outlets whether we like it or not, so we should at least be prepared for this change. So let's think about how we can turn this lemon into lemonade.
"And given all that, where do I think we should aspire to be ranked? I truly believe that if we continue on our present path, a ranking in the top 100 universities and colleges in the U.S. is a realistic goal. When you think about it, RIT wasn't even called RIT until 1949. We didn't offer bachelor degrees until 1954; we didn't produce our first master's degree until 1960; we didn't occupy the current campus until 1968; and we didn't grant our first Ph.D. degree until 1993. There are more than 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S., and we could be ranked in the top 100??? I guess that really would be lemonade.
"What will it take to get there? We need to continue on our path to extend our geographic reach in our recruitment of the most talented students, staff, and faculty. We must continue to grow our reputation as a place where innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship flourish, we must continue our efforts to diversify our student, faculty, and staff populations and exploit NTID's presence on our campus, we must continue to get RIT's name out there across the country and around the world, we must continue to be seen as a place where students and parents get a real return on their investment, and we must continue to develop as a place where the best and brightest come to find their futures.
"Let me give you a few examples of both the progress we have made and the challenges in front of us:
Probably the one university with which we share the most undergraduate applicants is RPI. Twenty years ago, only a small fraction of RIT enrolled students would have even been offered admission to RPI. And twenty years ago, our chances of enrolling a student in competition with RPI were only about 1 out of 3. Last year, we won almost half of these competitions, and RPI was ranked 41st in the last U.S. News national university rankings.
"And we continue to attract an increasing number of truly exceptional students. One of this year's freshmen is only 13 years old, and has already completed two associate degrees at community colleges. And one of last year's freshman students, Adam Munich – well there's a story to be told about Adam:
"Adam Munich has truly been a pain in the butt. In his first year at RIT, he got into trouble for cracking our IT security systems just to show us how easy they were to break into, and he took on several self-directed engineering projects in our various labs and shops by mostly breaking our rules and borrowing material and equipment wherever he could find them, sometimes without asking. One of his projects was an advanced Tesla coil, which he wanted to demonstrate at Imagine RIT, but, since it operated at 18kV, we told him he could not turn it on for safety reasons. I guess we showed him!
"Well, actually, he showed us. His Tesla coil won the Engibous Prize at the Texas Instruments Analog Design Contest and Summit international design competition grand prize, including a $10,000 cash award! The awards panel at TI was astonished at both the sophistication of his design and the innovation he showed in actually producing a working model. And they were even more astonished to learn that he was a freshman!
"Adam has quite honestly attributed a fair amount of his success to his quiet circumvention of our various rules and regulations. I think in the wake of this experience we need to be willing to ask ourselves whether we are getting in the way of talented students like Adam or recognizing their potential and finding ways to support them. As a result, I have asked Adam to work with us to help create a kind of student "skunk works" or "hackerspace" that would support student-directed projects more effectively, and one of my goals for this year is to create such a space while ensuring a reasonable level of accountability and safety.
"Frankly, as our students get better and better, these are the kinds of challenges we will confront in meeting their needs.
"As for national visibility, there are roles for all of us to play in this area. Last year, for example, our men's lacrosse team went all the way to the Division III national title game. It is difficult to communicate the kind of pride that kind of achievement engenders in RIT alumni and friends. And this year, our men's hockey team will play Michigan and our women's hockey team will play Vermont during Brick City Homecoming weekend. These are both State flagship universities and national hockey powers, and they are coming to RIT.
"We will not meet our goal unless we have a faculty renowned for their scholarship, creative activity, and pedagogical innovations. One example is NTID Prof. Todd Pagano, who was named U.S. Professor of the year by the Carnegie Foundation, one of only three to be accorded this honor. And our various academic departments and programs are increasingly appearing in various national rankings both online and in print.
"Our organized student team activities, such as our wonderfully successful Formula SAE and Mini-Baja teams, can also communicate the excitement of the RIT experience. And last year a team of RIT students won the national cyber defense competition.
"These are just examples of how we are increasingly sending a national and international message about the emerging greatness of RIT. To reach our goal, we will need more of the same on a regular basis.
"And in the area of pedagogical leadership, we are being challenged as never before. Earlier this year, Georgia Tech announced an experimental MOOC-based on-line computer science Master's degree for a total tuition cost of $8,000. Will this be the new model for higher education? And if so, how will we respond? Our new Innovative Learning Institute is organizing a variety of new on-line programs, but what the market will respond to in a positive way is still unknown, and we must remain both creative and flexible if we are to compete. And if we do not compete, we may be left at the starting gate.
"And while we take great pride in the 95% placement rate among our graduates, we must continue to control costs and maintain access to an RIT education for students of modest means. Although our students are getting better year-by-year, many are still the first in their families to attend college and many more require significant financial aid to attend. The days in which we could raise tuition and fees annually at 2-3 times the rate of inflation and expect to receive significant added revenues are over.
"One area in which there is an opportunity to control costs is in our health care benefit program. I have no intention of reducing our health care benefit package, but we are working with our alliance partner, the Rochester General Health System, to see if they can offer a tiered health care plan that would be equal in quality and lower in cost than our current offerings. If that is possible, the plan will be added as an option to our current offerings and any savings in the new plan would be shared with RIT employees. In addition, we are working with RGHS to open a walk-in clinic on our campus to serve students, faculty, and staff, and to serve as a training opportunity for our allied health care programs.
"Finally, I truly believe that RIT is poised to become a national leader in the education of a truly diverse student body. Recent support programs developed by our Multicultural Center for Academic Success for graduates of urban high schools, most of whom are African American or Latino, are already beginning to reduce the retention rate gap typically seen for such students compared to students from suburban backgrounds. And our Future Stewards Program for Native American students is becoming a national model, with retention and graduation rates for these students actually exceeding our campus average. Taken together with the remarkable success of NTID in moving deaf and hard-of-hearing students to meaningful careers, we have a chance to become a best-practice institution in an area absolutely essential to the future economic success of our nation.
"All this and much more lies in front of us, and I am confident that the same collective efforts that have brought us to this point will continue to carry us forward in the years ahead. I cannot promise you that the hard work is over, but I can promise you that it will be worth it. Very few individuals have the opportunity to participate in the kind of transformation that RIT is undergoing, and that transformation, if we continue to make the kind of progress we have been making, will be your legacy. Thanks so much for your support, your hard work, and your dedication to our students. I am so proud to have the honor of serving as your president."