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Michigan cancer programs follow care guidelines for common cancers, study finds
A majority of Michigan oncology practices participating in a statewide consortium followed treatment guidelines for common cancers, but had gaps in managing symptoms and end-of-life care, according to a new study.
The study comes out of the Michigan Oncology Quality Consortium, a statewide collaboration designed to collect data from medical oncology practices about how physicians care for cancer patients. The consortium members looked at whether practices adhere to standard cancer care guidelines when it comes to administering chemotherapy or other treatments, managing symptoms or side effects of treatment and caring for patients at the end of their life.
"Cancer treatments are improving, but not all patients will benefit if care is not uniformly delivered. Understanding whether practices adhere to cancer treatment guidelines is the first step in improving the quality of cancer care," says lead study author Douglas Blayney, M.D., adjunct professor of medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. Blayney is also the Ann and John Doerr Medical Director of the Stanford University Cancer Institute.
Results of the study appear in the April issue of Health Affairs.
The Michigan Oncology Quality Consortium is a collaboration among medical oncology practices, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.
The consortium grew out of a national project, the Quality Oncology Practice Initiative, which facilitates self-assessment, quality measurements and continuous improvement in cancer care to outpatient practices that demonstrate high adherence. The U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center was one of the first practices in Michigan to participate in the initiative under Blayney's direction, and it is one of the first in Southeast Michigan to be QOPI-certified.
To encourage more statewide practices to participate in quality initiatives, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan agreed to provide reimbursement for practices in the consortium to submit data over a five-week period twice a year on the quality measures.
At the first measurement, study authors found that practices adhered to quality care processes more than 90 percent of the time in caring for breast cancer patients, 85 percent of the time with colorectal cancer patients and 71 percent of the time with lung cancer patients. Adherence to guidelines around symptom and side effect management and end-of-life care was lower and did not improve over time. Twenty oncology practices throughout the state participated in this part of the project.
"Merely collecting the data and using it to demonstrate to physicians their adherence, or lack of adherence, to quality processes was not sufficient to measurably improve quality," Blayney says. "Realizing this, we were able to develop more structured and proactive interventions that we hope will lead to improvements."
The study authors determined that data management was inconsistent around one measure and could account for some of the low adherence. The program worked with practices to improve how they document their processes. Based on the initial results, the consortium recently initiated a project to improve provision of palliative care delivery.
More information: "Michigan Oncology Practices Showed Varying Adherence Rates to Practice Guidelines, But Quality Interventions Improved Care", Health Affairs, Vol. 31, No. 4, April 2012.


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Vital Statistics: |
Place of Origin: England |
Group: Sporting dog |
Height: males 15-17 in., females 14-15 in. |
Weight: males 28-34 lbs., females 26-32 lbs. |
Life span: 12-15 yrs. |
Trainability: moderate |
Good with children: yes |
Good with other pets: with the family cat |
What is the origin of the English Cocker Spaniel?
Spaniel type dogs are an old breed, known at least 500 years ago. In the mid 1800s division of Spaniels was based on weight. Spaniels under 25 lbs. were classified Cockers. Larger Spaniels were classified as Springers. These days differences between the Cocker Spaniel and the Springer Spaniel are much greater than weight. The Cocker Spaniel's name comes from the woodcock, a bird the dog would flush out.
What does the English Cocker Spaniel look like?
The English Cocker is a sturdy, medium sized dog. Males are 15-17 inches tall, females 14-15 inches tall. Weight for males is 28-34 lbs., females, 26-32 lbs. Ears are pendant, long with wavy hair. Eues are dark. The tail is docked where this practice is still legal. The coat is short on the head and back,medium long on the body. The ears, chest and legs are feathered. The coat comes in many colors and combination with solids allowed white only on the chest. Brush the coat regularly. Check the ears often.
What is the temperament of the English Cocker Spaniel?
Although sometimes stubborn the English Cocker is intelligent and responds easily to training with a gentle hand. They usually bond with one family member and are very loyal. They are very good with children and the family cats. With enough socialization, reserved individuals can become more outgoing. These lively dogs need daily leashed walks. With enough exercise they can live comfortably in apartments.
What is the English Cocker Spaniel used for?
They have been used for flushing out and retrieving game. They are good hunters and trackers. The English Cocker also competes in agility and obedience trials. They are good watchdogs as well as good family companions.
Possible Health Issues
Patellar luxation, progressive retinal atrophy, cataracts, kidney disease, hypothyroidism, hip dysplasia, cardiomyopathy, deafness.
- American Cocker Spaniel
- Barbet
- Boulet Griffon
- Boykin Spaniel
- Bull Terrier
- Clumber Spaniel
- Curly-coated Retriever
- Dalmatian
- English Setter
- English Springer Spaniel
- Flat-coated Retriever
- German Shorthaired Pointer
- Golden Retriever
- Gordon Setter
- Harrier
- Irish Setter
- Irish Water Spaniel
- Kishu Inu
- Kooiker Hound (Kooikerhondje)
- Labrador Retriever
- Lagotto Romagnolo
- Landseer
- Mountain Cur
- Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever
- Otterhound
- Picardy Spaniel
- Poodle
- Pudelpointer
- Redbone Coonhound
- Redtick Coonhound
- Rhodesian Ridgeback
- Spinone Italiano
- Stabyhoun
- Sussex Spaniel
- Telomian
- Treeing Tennessee Brindle
- Vizsla
- Weimaraner
- Welsh Springer Spaniel
- Wirehaired Pointing Griffon
- Wirehaired Styrian Mountain Hound
- Wirehaired Vizsla
- Airedale Terrier
- Beagle
- Bedlington Terrier
- Bluetick Coonhound
- Border Collie
- Border Terrier
- Bull Terrier
- Bulldog
- Bullmastiff
- Ca de Bou
- Cavalier King Charles Spaniel
- Clumber Spaniel
- Collie
- Curly-coated Retriever
- Dandie Dinmont Terrier
- English Foxhound
- English Setter
- English Springer Spaniel
- English Toy Terrier
- Flat-coated Retriever
- Golden Retriever
- Greyhound
- Harrier
- Jack Russell Terrier
- Lakeland Terrier
- Lancashire Heeler
- Llewellyn Setter
- Manchester Terrier
- Mastiff
- Norfolk Terrier and Norwich Terrier
- Old English Sheepdog
- Old English Terrier
- Otterhound
- Parson Russell Terrier
- Shetland Sheepdog
- Smooth and Wire-haired Fox Terrier
- Sussex Spaniel
- Welsh Terrier
- Whippet
- Wire Fox Terrier
- Yorkshire Terrier

subset: commoncrawl


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Watch 'Family Feud' Contestant Butcher One Very Simple Word
Ready for a game show blooper? Of course you are.
On a recent episode of Family Feud, the question "What in the ocean reminds you of YOUR boss?" came up.
Shark, whale -- those seem obvious, right? And maybe they were already taken, which is why this woman's answer was -- how do we put this? -- hilarious.
Her "swordfish" response was "swo" bad that host Steve Harvey had to step in and give her a pronunciation lesson.
Guess there's a reason this woman is on Family Feud and not Jeopardy!, right?


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Andrew Jackson: Domestic Affairs
Rotation in Office and The Spoils System:
Jackson entered the White House with an uncertain policy agenda beyond a vague craving for "reform" (or revenge) and a determination to settle relationships between the states and the Indian tribes within their borders. On these two matters he moved quickly and decisively.
During the campaign, Jackson had charged the Adams bureaucracy with fraud and with working against his election. As President, he initiated sweeping removals among highranking government officials—Washington bureau chiefs, land and customs officers, and federal marshals and attorneys. Jackson claimed to be purging the corruption, laxity, and arrogance that came with long tenure, and restoring the opportunity for government service to the citizenry at large through "rotation in office." But haste and gullibility did much to confuse his purpose.
Under the guise of reform, many offices were doled out as rewards for political services. Newspaper editors who had championed Jackson's cause, some of them very unsavory characters, came in for special favor. His most appalling appointee was an old army comrade and political sycophant named Samuel Swartwout. Against all advice, Jackson made him collector of the New York City customhouse, where the government collected nearly half its annual revenue. In 1838, Swartwout absconded with more than $1 million, a staggering sum for that day. Jackson denied that political criteria motivated his appointments, claiming honesty and efficiency as his only goals. Yet he accepted an officeholder's support for Adams as evidence of unfitness, and in choosing replacements he relied exclusively on recommendations from his own partisans. A Jackson senator from New York, William L. Marcy, defended Jackson's removals by proclaiming frankly in 1832 that in politics as in war, "to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy." Jackson was never so candid—or so cynical. Creating the "spoils system" of partisan manipulation of the patronage was not his conscious intention. Still, it was his doing.
Indian Removal
Indian nations had been largely erased or removed from the northeastern United States by the time Jackson became President. But in the southwest, the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Creeks still occupied large portions of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. For many years, Jackson had protested the practice of treating with Indian tribes as if they were foreign nations. Jackson did not hate Indians as a race. He was friendly with many individual Indians and had taken home an Indian orphan from the Creek campaign to raise in his household as a companion to his adopted son. But Jackson did believe that Indian civilization was lower than that of whites, and that for their own survival, tribes who were pressed by white settlement must assimilate as individuals or remove to the west out of harm's way. Confident that he could judge the Indians' true welfare better than they, Jackson, when employed as an Indian negotiator in his army years, had often used threats and bribery to procure cessions of land. Formalities notwithstanding, he regarded tribes resident within the states not as independent sovereign entities but as wards of the government and tenants-at-will.
The inherent conflict between tribal and state authority came to a head just as Jackson assumed office. The Cherokee nation had acquired many of the attributes of white civilization, including a written language, a newspaper, and a constitution of government. Under its treaties with the federal government, the tribe claimed sovereign authority over its territory in Georgia and adjoining states. Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi countered by asserting state jurisdiction over their Indian domains.
Jackson backed the states. He maintained that the federal government had no right to defend the Cherokees against Georgia's encroachments. If the Indians wished to maintain their tribal government and landownership, they must remove beyond the existing states. To facilitate the removal, Jackson induced Congress in 1830 to pass a bill empowering him to lay off new Indian homelands west of the Mississippi, exchange them for current tribal holdings, purchase the Indians' capital improvements, and pay the costs of their westward transportation. This Indian Removal Act was the only major piece of legislation passed at Jackson's behest in his eight years as President.
Indian removal was so important to Jackson that he returned to Tennessee to conduct the first negotiations in person. He gave the Indians a simple alternative: submit to state authority or emigrate beyond the Mississippi. Offered generous aid on one hand and the threat of subjugation on the other, the Chickasaws and Choctaws submitted readily, the Creeks under duress. Only the Cherokees resisted to the bitter end. Tentatively in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1831 and more forcefully in Worcester v. Georgia the next year, the Supreme Court upheld the tribes' independence from state authority. But these legal victories pointed out no practical course of resistance for the tribe to take. Tacitly encouraged by Jackson, Georgia ignored the rulings. Jackson cultivated a minority faction within the tribe, and signed a removal treaty with them in 1835. Though the vast majority of Cherokees rejected the treaty, those who refused to remove under its terms were finally rounded up and transplanted westward by military force in 1838, under Jackson's successor Martin Van Buren. The Cherokees' sufferings in this forced exodus became notorious as the "Trail of Tears."
Meanwhile, dozens of removal treaties closed out pockets of Indian settlement in other states and territories east of the Mississippi. A short military campaign on the upper Mississippi quelled resistance by Black Hawk's band of Sacs and Foxes in 1832, and in 1835 a long and bloody war to subdue the Seminoles in Florida began. Most of the tribes went without force.
Given the coercion that produced them, most of the removal treaties were fair and even generous. Their execution was miserable. Generally the treaties promised fair payment for the Indians' land and goods, safe transportation to the West and sustenance upon arrival, and protection for the property of those who chose to remain behind under state jurisdiction. These safeguards collapsed under pressure from corrupt contractors, unscrupulous traders, and white trespassers backed by state authority. Jackson's desire to economize and avoid trouble with the state governments further undercut federal efforts to protect the tribes. For this record he bore ultimate responsibility. Jackson did not countenance the abuses, but he did ignore them. Though usually a stickler for the precise letter of formal obligations, he made promises to the Indians that the government did not and perhaps could not fulfill.
The American System and the Maysville Road Veto
When Jackson took office, the leading controversies in Congress concerned the "American System" of economic development policies propounded by Henry Clay and furthered by the previous Adams administration. As a senator in 1824, Jackson had backed the System's twin pillars of a protective tariff to foster domestic industry and federal subsidies for transportation projects (known as "internal improvements"). These policies were especially popular in the country's mid-section, from Pennsylvania west through Ohio to Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. They were widely hated in much of the South, where they were regarded as devices to siphon wealth from cotton planters to northern manufacturers.
Many Americans judged the American System by its impact on their local interests. Jackson had supported it on national grounds, as a means to build the country's strength and secure its economic independence. Poor transportation in particular had hamstrung the American military effort in the War of 1812. But the unseemly scramble in Congress for favors and subsidies and the rising sectional acrimony over the tariff during the Adams presidency turned Jackson against the System. As a nationalist, he deplored sectional wrangling that threatened disunion, and he came to see protective tariffs and transportation subsidies as vehicles for corruption and for the advancement of special privilege.
Jackson announced his new policy by vetoing a bill to aid the Maysville Road in Kentucky in 1830. A string of similar vetoes followed, essentially halting federal internal improvement spending. Reversing himself on the tariff, Jackson renounced protection in 1831 and endorsed a reduction in rates. Invoking Jeffersonian precedent, he urged a return to simple, frugal, minimal government.
At the same time, Jackson reproved the increasingly strident Southern sectional opposition to the tariff headed by his own vice president, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. Radical South Carolinians blamed the tariff for all their economic woes and misfortunes. They denounced it as an unconstitutional exercise of congressional power, a measure to illegitimately channel wealth from South to North under the guise of an import tax. Drawing on the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions against the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, Calhoun fashioned an argument that an individual state, acting through a formal convention, could interpose its authority to declare null and void any federal law that it deemed to violate the Constitution. Jackson thought this nullification doctrine treasonous and absurd. At a political dinner in 1830 he stamped his disapproval on it by staring at Calhoun and toasting, "Our federal Union: It must be preserved."
The Eaton Affair
Jackson was already becoming estranged from Calhoun over a simmering Washington scandal. Jackson's secretary of war, John Henry Eaton, was an old army comrade, Jackson's his campaign biographer, and a Tennessee neighbor. He was the President's one personal confidante in a cabinet made up of near-strangers. Just before the inauguration, Eaton had married Margaret O'Neale Timberlake, the vivacious daughter of a Washington hotelier. Scandalous stories circulated about "Peggy" O'Neale, whose first husband, a purser in the Navy, had died abroad under mysterious circumstances not long before her marriage to Eaton. Rumor said that he committed suicide over her dalliance with Eaton. Cabinet wives, including Calhoun's wife Floride, regarded Peggy with abhorrence and conspicuously shunned her.
In the snubbing of Mrs. Eaton, Jackson saw the kind of vicious persecution that he believed had hounded his own Rachel to her death. He also believed he spied a plot to drive out Eaton from his cabinet, isolate him among strangers, and control his administration. The master of the plot, Jackson came to decide, was Calhoun. He was also shown evidence that during the controversy over his Florida incursion back in 1818, Calhoun had criticized him in Monroe's cabinet while publicly posturing as his defender. Jackson now accused Calhoun of treachery, initiating an angry correspondence that ended with the severing of social relations between the two.
The Eaton scandal cleaved Jackson's own household. His niece, White House hostess Emily Tennessee Donelson, refused to associate with Mrs. Eaton, and Emily's husband, Jackson's nephew and private secretary Andrew Jackson Donelson, backed her up. The one cabinet officer who stood apart from the snubbing was a man with no wife to contend with—Secretary of State Martin Van Buren of New York, a widower. Jackson was drawn to Van Buren both by his courtliness to Peggy Eaton and his policy views. Van Buren wished to return to the minimalist, strict constructionist governing philosophy of the old Jeffersonian party. In practical political terms, he sought to rebuild the coalition of "planters and plain republicans"—put concretely, an alliance of the South with New York and Pennsylvania—that had sustained Jefferson. Van Buren opposed the American System, but on broad philosophical rather than narrow sectional grounds.
As Jackson separated from Calhoun, he became more intimate with Van Buren. By 1831, the Eaton imbroglio threatened to paralyze the administration. Eaton and Van Buren created a way out: they resigned, giving Jackson an occasion to demand the resignations of the other secretaries and appoint a whole new cabinet. To reward Van Buren, Jackson named him as minister to Great Britain, the highest post in the American diplomatic service. The nomination came before the Senate, where Vice-President Calhoun, on an arranged tie vote, cast the deciding vote against it. Van Buren, who had already assumed his station abroad, came home as a political martyr, Jackson's choice for vice-president in 1832, and his heir apparent to the presidency.
The Nullification Crisis and the Compromise of 1833
As Van Buren rose and Calhoun fell, the tariff controversy mounted to a crisis. Congress passed a new tariff in 1832 that reduced some rates but continued the protectionist principle. Some Southerners claimed this as a sign of progress, but South Carolinians saw it as reason to abandon hope in Washington. In November, a state convention declared the tariff unconstitutional and hence null and void. South Carolina's legislature followed up with measures to block the collection of federal custom revenues at the state's ports and to defend the state with arms against federal incursion.
Jackson responded on two fronts. He urged Congress to reduce the tariff further, but he also asked for strengthened authority to enforce the revenue laws. Privately, and perhaps for calculated political effect, he talked about marching an army into South Carolina and hanging Calhoun. In December, he issued a ringing official proclamation against nullification. Drafted largely by Secretary of State Edward Livingston, the document questioned Carolinians' obsession with the tariff, reminded them of their patriotic heritage, eviscerated the constitutional theory behind nullification, and warned against taking this fatal step: "Be not deceived by names. Disunion by armed force is treason. Are you really ready to incur its guilt?"While Jackson thundered, Congress scrambled for a solution that would avoid civil war. Henry Clay, leader of the congressional opposition to Jackson and stalwart of the American System, joined in odd alliance with John C. Calhoun, who had resigned his lame-duck vice-presidency for a seat in the Senate. They fashioned a bill to reduce the tariff in a series of stages over nine years. Early in 1833, Congress passed this Compromise Tariff and also a "force bill" to enforce the revenue laws. Though the Clay-Calhoun forces sought to deny Jackson credit for the settlement, he was fully satisfied with the result. South Carolina, claiming victory, rescinded its nullification of the tariff but nullified the force bill in a final gesture of principled defiance. The Compromise of 1833 brought an end to tariff agitation until the 1840s. First with internal improvements, then with the tariff, the American System had been essentially stymied.
The Bank Veto
The congressional Clay-Calhoun alliance foreshadowed a convergence of all Jackson's enemies into a new opposition party. The issue that sealed this coalition, solidified Jackson's own following, and dominated his second term as President was the Second Bank of the United States.
The Bank of the United States was a quasi-public corporation chartered by Congress to manage the federal government's finances and provide a sound national currency. Headquartered in Philadelphia with branches throughout the states, it was the country's only truly national financial institution. The federal government owned one-fifth of the stock and the President of the United States appointed one-fifth of the directors. Like other banks chartered by state legislatures, the Bank lent for profit and issued paper currency backed by specie reserves. Its notes were federal legal tender. By law, it was also the federal government's own banker, arranging its loans and storing, transferring, and disbursing its funds. The Bank's national reach and official status gave it enormous leverage over the state banks and over the country's supply of money and credit.
The original Bank of the United States was chartered in 1791 at the urging of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton. Opposition to it was one of the founding tenets of the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican party. That party allowed the Bank to expire when its twenty-year charter ran out in 1811. But the government's financial misadventures in the War of 1812 forced a reconsideration. In 1816, Congress chartered the Second Bank, again for twenty years.
Imprudent lending and corrupt management brought the Second Bank into deep disrepute during the speculative boom-and-bust cycle that culminated in the Panic of 1819. Calls arose for revocation of the charter. But the astute stewardship of new Bank president Nicholas Biddle did much to repair its reputation in the 1820s. By 1828, when Jackson was first elected, the Bank had ceased to be controversial. Indeed, most informed observers deemed it indispensable.
Startling his own supporters, Jackson attacked the Bank in his very first message to Congress in 1829. Biddle attempted to conciliate him, but Jackson's opposition to renewing the charter seemed immovable. He was convinced that the Bank was not only unconstitutional—as Jefferson and his followers had long maintained—but that its concentrated financial power represented a dire threat to popular liberty.
Under the advice of Senators Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, Biddle sought a congressional recharter in 1832. They calculated that Jackson would not dare issue a veto on the eve of the election; if he did, they would make an issue of it in the campaign. The recharter bill duly passed Congress and on July 10, Jackson vetoed it.
The veto message was one of the defining documents of Jackson's presidency. Clearly intended for the public eye, parts of it read more like a political manifesto than a communication to Congress. Jackson recited his constitutional objections and introduced some dubious economic arguments, chiefly aimed at foreign ownership of Bank stock. But the crux of the message was its attack on the special privilege enjoyed by private stockholders in a government-chartered corporation. Jackson laid out an essentially laissez-faire vision of government as a neutral arbiter, phrased in a resonant populism:"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers--who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing."
Though some original Jackson men were flabbergasted and outraged at his turn against the Bank, the veto held up in Congress. It became the prime issue in the ensuing presidential campaign, with both sides distributing copies of Jackson's message. Jackson read his re-election as a mandate to pursue his attack on the Bank further.
Removal of the Deposits
As soon as the nullification crisis was resolved, Jackson took his next step. The Bank's open involvement in the presidential campaign convinced him more than ever of its inherent corruption. To draw its fangs until its charter ran out in 1836, he determined to withdraw the federal government's own deposits from the Bank and place them in selected state-chartered banks.
This was a maneuver requiring some delicacy. Under the charter, the secretary of the treasury, not the President, had authority to remove the deposits. He had also to explain his reasons to Congress, where the House of Representatives had just voted by a two-to-one margin that the deposits should stay where they were. Jackson canvassed his cabinet on removal. Most of them opposed it, but he got the support and arguments he needed from Attorney General Roger Taney. Jackson drew up a paper explaining his decision, read it to the cabinet, and ordered Treasury Secretary William John Duane to execute the removal. To Jackson's astonishment, Duane refused. He also refused to resign, so Jackson fired him and put Taney in his place. Taney ordered the removal, which was largely complete by the time Congress convened in December 1833.
Even many congressional foes of the Bank could not countenance Jackson's proceedings against it. He had defied Congress's intent, rode roughshod over the treasury secretary's statutory control over the public purse, and removed the public funds from the lawfully authorized, responsible hands of the Bank of the United States to an untried, unregulated, and perhaps wholly irresponsible collection of state banks. To many, Jackson seemed to regard himself as above the law.
Fortunately for Jackson, Bank president Nicholas Biddle over-reacted and played into his hands. Regarding the removal of deposits as a declaration of open war, Biddle determined to force a recharter by creating a financial panic. Loss of the deposits required some curtailment of the Bank's loans, but Biddle carried the contraction further than was necessary in a deliberate effort to squeeze businessmen into demanding a recharter. This manipulation of credit for political ends served only to discredit the Bank and to vindicate Jackson's strictures against it.
Congress did not even consider recharter, but it did lash out at Jackson. Clay men and Southern anti-tariffites could not agree on the American System; they could not all agree on rechartering the Bank; but they could unite in their outrage at Jackson's high-handed proceedings against it. In the 1833-1834 session, Jackson's congressional foes converged to form a new party. They took the name of Whigs, borrowed from Revolutionary-era American and British opponents of royal prerogative.
Whigs held a majority in the Senate. They rejected Jackson's nominees for government directors of the Bank of the United States, rejected Taney as secretary of the treasury, and in March 1834, adopted a resolution of censure against Jackson himself for assuming "authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both." Jackson protested the censure, arguing that the Senate had adopted the moral equivalent of an impeachment conviction without formal charges, without a trial, and without the necessary two-thirds vote. Led by Thomas Hart Benton, Jackson's defenders mounted a crusade to expunge the censure from the Senate journal. They succeeded in 1837, at the end of Jackson's presidency, after Democrats finally won majority control of the Senate.
Hard Money
The Bank, defeated, retired from the fray after the 1834 session. When its charter expired it accepted a new one from Pennsylvania and continued to operate as a state institution. Meanwhile, the state banks, cut loose from central restraint and gorged with federal funds, went on a lending spree that helped fuel a speculative boom in western lands. Everything came crashing down in the Panic of 1837, which broke just as Jackson retired from office. The ensuing depression plagued Martin Van Buren's presidency and lingered on into the 1840s.
Jackson's unsatisfactory experiment with the state banks helped drive his economic thinking toward more radical extremes. He renounced all banknote currency and demanded a return to the "hard money" of gold and silver. To that end, and to curb rampant speculation, he ordered the issuance of a "Specie Circular" in 1836 requiring payment in coin for western public lands. By the end of his presidency he was attacking all chartered corporations, including manufacturing concerns, turnpike and canal companies, and especially banks, as instruments of aristocratic privilege and engines of oppression. His Farewell Address in 1837, drafted largely by Taney, warned of an insidious "money power" that threatened to subvert American liberty.
Slavery and Abolition
During Jackson's presidency, the momentous question of slavery intruded forcefully into politics. Northern evangelical opponents of slavery known as abolitionists organized and began to bombard the nation and Congress with pleas and petitions to rid the republic of this great wrong. Defenders of slavery responded with denunciations and with violence. They demanded in the interest of public safety that criticism of slavery be not only answered, but silenced. Some, especially the South Carolina nullifiers, linked abolitionism to the tariff as part of a systematic campaign of Northern sectional oppression against the South.
There is nothing to show that Jackson ever pondered slavery as a fundamental moral question. Such thinking was not in his character: he was a man of action, not of philosophy. He grew up with the institution of slavery and accepted it uncritically. Like his neighbors, he bought and sold slaves and used them to work his plantation and wait on his needs. Jackson reacted to the abolitionist controversy in purely political terms. He perceived it as a threat to sectional harmony and to his own national Democratic party, and on that ground he condemned the agitation of both sides.
During Jackson's administration, Congress began adopting annual "gag rules" to keep discussion of abolition petitions off the House and Senate floor. In 1835, abolitionists sent thousands of antislavery tracts through the mails directly to southern clergy, officials, and prominent citizens. Many of these were never delivered, intercepted by southern postmasters or by angry mobs. Jackson and Postmaster General Amos Kendall approved their action. Jackson recommended federal suppression of "incendiary publications" and damned the abolitionists' "wicked attempts" to incite a slave rebellion. His Farewell Address in 1837 warned of the dangers of sectional fanaticism, both northern and southern.


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Ancient Yoga Center
A World Away...in the heart of the Texas Hill Country
Join us and connect with like-minded colleagues while you relax and rejuvenate in the tranquil ashram atmosphere and experience the Ancient Yoga Center for yourself.
Enjoy our delicious vegetarian meals, stroll and explore in the beautiful outdoors.
The picturesque environment is ideal for retreats, trainings and workshops.
The Ancient Yoga Center is situated on the picturesque 230 acre property of Radha Madhav Dham, just 30 minutes south of down-town Austin, Texas. The rolling land, beautified by the meandering stream creates the perfect environment for exploring, walking along our many paths, self reflection and meditation.


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22 June 2011
A bill to settle a terrible debt
22 June 2011
The Hindu
A bill to settle a terrible debt
Siddharth Varadarajan
In a vibrant and mature democracy, there would be no need to have special laws to prosecute the powerful or protect the weak. If a crime takes place, the law would simply take its course. In a country like ours, however, life is not so simple. Terrible crimes can be committed involving the murder of hundreds and even thousands of people, or the loot of billions of rupees. But the law in India does not take its course. More often than not, it stands still.
If the Lokpal bill represents an effort to get the law to change its course on the crime of corruption, the new draft bill on the prevention of communal and targeted violence is a modest contribution towards ensuring that India's citizens enjoy the protection of the state regardless of their religion, language or caste.
The draft law framed by the National Advisory Council and released earlier this month for comment and feedback is a huge improvement over the bill originally drawn up by the United Progressive Alliance government in 2005. The earlier version paid lip service to the need for a law to tackle communal violence but made matters worse by giving the authorities greater coercive powers instead of finding ways to eliminate the institutional bias against the minorities, Dalits and adivasis, which lies at the heart of all targeted violence in India.
The November 1984 massacre of Sikhs provides a good illustration of how the institutionalised "riot system" works. Let us start with the victim. She is unable to get the local police to protect the lives of her family members or property. She is unable to file a proper complaint in a police station. Senior police officers, bureaucrats and Ministers, who by now are getting reports from all across the city, State and country, do not act immediately to ensure the targeted minorities are protected. Incendiary language against the victims is freely used. Women who are raped or sexually assaulted get no sympathy or assistance. When the riot victims form makeshift relief camps, the authorities harass them and try to make them leave. The victims have to struggle for years before the authorities finally provide some compensation for the death, injury and destruction they have suffered. As for the perpetrators of the violence, they get away since the police and the government do not gather evidence, conduct no investigation and appoint biased prosecutors, thereby sabotaging the chances of conviction and punishment.
With some modifications here and there, this is the same sickening script which played out in Gujarat in 2002, when Muslims were the targeted group. On a smaller scale, all victims of organised, targeted violence — be they Tamils in Karnataka or Hindi speakers in Maharashtra or Dalits in Haryana and other parts of the country — know from experience and instinct that they cannot automatically count on the local police coming to their help should they be attacked.
If one were to abstract the single most important stylised fact from the Indian "riot system", it is this: violence occurs and is not immediately controlled because policemen and local administrators refuse to do their duty. It is also evident that they do so because the victims belong to a minority group, precisely the kind of situation the Constituent Assembly had in mind when it wrote Article 15(1) of the Constitution: "The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them".
How are policemen and officials able to get away with violating the Constitution in this manner? Because they know that neither the law nor their superiors will act against them. What we need, thus, is not so much a new law defining new crimes (although that would be useful too) but a law to ensure that the police and bureaucrats and their political masters follow the existing law of the land. In other words, we need a law that punishes them for discriminating against citizens who happen to be minorities. This is what the draft Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill, 2011 does. [PDF]
The CTV bill sets out to protect religious and linguistic minorities in any State in India, as well as the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, from targeted violence, including organised violence. Apart from including the usual Indian Penal Code offences, the NAC draft modernises the definition of sexual assault to cover crimes other than rape and elaborates on the crime of hate propaganda already covered by Section 153A of the IPC. Most importantly, it broadens the definition of dereliction of duty — which is already a crime — and, for the first time in India, adds offences by public servants or other superiors for breach of command responsibility. "Where it is shown that continuous widespread or systematic unlawful activity has occurred," the draft says, "it can be reasonably presumed that the superior in command of the public servant whose duty it was to prevent the commission of communal and targeted violence, failed to exercise supervision … and shall be guilty of the offence of breach of command responsibility." With 10 years imprisonment prescribed for this offence, superiors will hopefully be deterred from allowing a Delhi 1984 or Gujarat 2002 to happen on their watch.
Another important feature is the dilution of the standard requirement that officials can only be prosecuted with the prior sanction of the government. The CTV bill says no sanction will be required to prosecute officials charged with offences which broadly fall under the category of dereliction of duty. For other offences, sanction to prosecute must be given or denied within 30 days, failing which it is deemed to have been given. Although the bill says the reasons for denial of sanction must be recorded in writing, it should also explicitly say that this denial is open to judicial review.
Another lacuna the bill fills is on compensation for those affected by communal and targeted violence. Today, the relief that victims get is decided by the government on an ad hoc and sometimes discriminatory basis. Section 90 and 102 of the CTV bill rectify this by prescribing an equal entitlement to relief, reparation, restitution and compensation for all persons who suffer physical, mental, psychological or monetary harm as a result of the violence, regardless of whether they belong to a minority group or not. While a review of existing state practice suggests victims who belong to a religious or linguistic 'majority' group in a given state do not require special legal crutches to get the police or administration to register and act on their complaints, the CTV bill correctly recognises that they are entitled to the same enhanced and prompt relief as minority victims. The language of these Sections could, however, be strengthened to bring this aspect out more strongly.
The CTV bill also envisages the creation of a National Authority for Communal Harmony, Justice and Reparation. The authority's role will be to serve as a catalyst for implementation of the new law. Its functions will include receiving and investigating complaints of violence and dereliction of duty, and monitoring the build up of an atmosphere likely to lead to violence. It cannot compel a State government to take action — in deference to the federal nature of law enforcement — but can approach the courts for directions to be given. There will also be State-level authorities, staffed, like the National Authority, by a process the ruling party cannot rig. The monitoring of relief and rehabilitation of victims will be a major part of their responsibilities.
On the negative side of the ledger, the NAC draft makes an unnecessary reference to the power of the Centre and to Article 355 of the Constitution. The aim, presumably, is to remind the Centre of its duties in the event of a State government failing to act against incidents of organised communal or targeted violence. But the Centre already has the statutory right to intervene in such situations; if it doesn't, the reasons are political rather than legal. The draft also unnecessarily complicates the definition of communal and targeted violence by saying the acts concerned must not only be targeted against a person by virtue of his or her membership of any group but must also "destroy the secular fabric of the nation." Like the reference to Art. 355, this additional requirement can safely be deleted without diluting what is otherwise a sound law.
The BJP and others who have attacked the bill by raising the bogey of "minority appeasement" have got it completely wrong again. This is a law which does away with the appeasement of corrupt, dishonest and rotten policemen and which ends the discrimination to which India's religious and linguistic minorities are routinely subjected during incidents of targeted violence. The BJP never tires of talking about what happened to the Sikhs in 1984 when the Congress was in power. Now that a law has finally been framed to make that kind of mass violence more difficult, it must not muddy the water by asking why it covers "only" the minorities. In any case, the Bill's definition covers Hindus as Hindus in States where they are in a minority (such as Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Nagaland), as linguistic minorities in virtually every State, and as SCs and STs. More importantly, persons from majority communities who suffer in the course of communal and targeted incidents will be entitled to the same relief as minority victims. If someone feels there is any ambiguity about this, the bill's language can easily be strengthened to clarify this.
At the end of the day, however, we need to be clear about one thing: India needs a law to protect its most vulnerable citizens from mass violence, its minorities. This is a duty no civilised society can wash its hands of.
6 comments:
I agree with you that the standard law of the land should have worked in safeguarding the safety of its citizens. But our corrupt bureaucrats and netas will tweak this to their advantage. They will still get away with this. This "getting away" has emboldened them to ignore law.
Also, one very important point to be noted is that the mode of discrimination and exploitation has changed. Now, we have less communal riots or mass violence but minorities of every ilk and disadvantaged sections of the society face discrmination on daily basis.
It seems our societal structure is such that we'll always need one section at the bottom...And no law can cure this problem. As a society we need to reflect on our social,education and economic evolution.
Laws should not change society but it should be other way around.
New Delhi - 2:23 am
I agree with you that the standard law of the land should have worked in safeguarding the safety of its citizens. But our corrupt bureaucrats and netas will tweak this to their advantage. They will still get away with this. This "getting away" has emboldened them to ignore law.
Also, one very important point to be noted is that the mode of discrimination and exploitation has changed. Now, we have less communal riots or mass violence but minorities of every ilk and disadvantaged sections of the society face discrmination on daily basis.
It seems our societal structure is such that we'll always need one section at the bottom...And no law can cure this problem. As a society we need to reflect on our social,education and economic evolution.
Laws should not change society but it should be other way around.
Doha - 2:24 am
- primeargument said...
I have read many of your writings in past for authoritative analysis on current affairs. I have followed television debates on this new proposed Prevention of Communal & Targeted Violence Act and have heard arguments from both sides.
But I have not heard anyone making a balanced analysis that mentions both the flaws and the benefits of the new bill. Unfortunately I did not get enough of that argument in your article either. You have whole heartedly supported it except for reference to article 355 and some other minor things which you have criticized.
Anyone who reads the draft bill is greeted with the statement that states "It extends to the whole of India. Provided that the Central Government may, with the consent of the State of J&K, extend the Act to that State". There in front of us is the reality of our country; where we have given so much autonomy to a minority community simply for being a majority in a particular state and yet the secessionist and divisive elements prevail in J&K. The moderates demand more autonomy and the extremists demand secession. Positive discrimination alone did not ensure harmony.
This forms my prime argument about the inherent flaw in this bill. The flaw is that of division of population in front of law and the definition of the victim "group". Any amount of special rights to a group will not bring justice for the individual. Simply because this is an intractable problem, there is no right division. There is no right definition of a "group". In fact if this bill read in exclusion of the definition that this act uses for "group" and the word group is used in a more general term then this act would be an excellent act. In fact the definition of "communal and targeted violence" in this act is coloured by the definition of "group". The victims of the "group" as defined in the law seem to be the real victims and the other victims are second class citizens.
I would say when you have to divide, divide down to the individual not to any particular group. So when you have to protect anyone by law, protect the rights of an individual irrespective of what group or subgroup he or she may belong to, as per a certain definition of a group. So I don't quite agree with the definition of group (minority) as per this bill and special protection for that group. I fear that further divisions of our society are being created in this anti-riots bill. How do you define minority? Do you define them only in terms of the religious and linguistic minority in a particular state by population? What if there is a Christian family living in a Muslim dominated ghetto in Nagaland? Also why does the bill treat all SC as one group, there are majority and minority religions in the SC/ST categories too. Where is protection for these groups under the provisions of this law?
This bill has simplified its definition of minority group by using the population in the entire state as a whole. This may be simple to define in a law but does it address all acts of group violence?
You have rightly mentioned that the greatest culprits have been the public servants who have been derelict in their duty and have taken sides in a communal violence. The law rightly has severe punishment for such dereliction of duty and makes it mandatory for them to take immediate actions. Creating provisions which discriminate against an individual victim because as per the law he or she belongs to a majority group is not fair. We as a nation have to evolve and grow over this group and sub-group mentality.
If we have to divide, divide down to the individual and protect every individual's right by treating him or her equal in the eyes of the law. That is the foremost fundamental right guaranteed by the constitution. - 4:33 am
If the NAC which controls the present Central Government, are so confident that this law will help minorities, how come they reject the anti-conversion bill. I personally, think this law is squarely aimed to protect the politically vested Church and various Evangelist organizations who fund the missionaries for their conversion activities. And the NAC is having the Kandhamal riots issue in Orissa, in the back of their mind but selling to the nation the Sikh riots of 1984 and the Godhra riots of 2002. No wonder our pseudo-secular media too is playing the same tune that the Government wants to play. Simple question - why does DigVijay Singh have to convert to Christianity, as per information available in Wikipedia till a few weeks ago, suddenly change his religious status back to Hinduism. In India, no law is made to bring to task the corrupt politicians till the supreme court does so.
- 10:37 pm
Practically every crime committed by violent thugs in communally charged situations, whatever their religion be, are already covered in various other laws including the Indian Penal code. What about implementing them?
Now the Sonia dynasty wants to fish for a minority vote or two by passing yet another ineffective law that will not serve the purpose..
Do we need special laws for CTA violence, domestic violence, violence against kids, elders, females, dalits, did I miss anyone else? Can we then do away with IPC?
Many of these special laws are shamefully immoral, undemocratic, draconian and shift burden of proof to the accused, jail people for years without investigation, let alone trial, trample on human rights and end up being exploited by unscrupulous people in collusion with corrupt policemen and greedy lawyers. The so called Anti-Dowry law is a classic example. Ironically it has become the biggest threat to many women who it was supposed to protect as the first recommendation of any divorce lawyer is to ask the wife to file a case under this act, send several relatives (mainly women) to prison and then blackmail.
Any surprise that lawyers were the biggest group protesting against 'dilution' of norms for arresting people without investigation?
Yet another law will become a crude weapon in the hands of these thugs to milk innocent victims dry. Sonia and her family will get a few votes, yellow propaganda puppets of the dynasty can score a few brownie points against the BJP and life goes on... - 4:50 pm
I agree with Aditya Singh above.We must get over this goup subgroup mentality.I'm an Hindu living in a Muslim ghetto.I might be targetted anytime.This majority kills minority is something that US,UK believes is part of democracy,so they must be protected.But US,UK do not have so much diversity so as to study the effects.In India Muslims inspite of being called a minority is such a potent votebank that some political parties even protect the bad elements to gain political mileage.
- 12:22 pm


text:
If you are in the process of looking for a new home, you need to find the right one to meet your needs. Sometimes, you want to learn more about specific properties before you decide if it is right for you. As a result, a lot of prospective buyers will include contingencies in their home offers that may allow them to back out without losing their earnest money. What are a few examples of loan contingencies, and how can you use them to protect yourself during the process?
Examples Of Common Loan Contingencies
Even if you have agreed on a purchase price for the house, the closing date is probably not going to be for one or two months. This will provide you with time to complete your due diligence and make sure no issues come up. For example, there may be a contingency that allows the closing date to be extended if there are any issues with the financing process through the lender.
You might also decide to include a contingency clause in case something develops with the home inspection. If something is wrong with the home inspection, you may provide yourself with an opportunity to pull out of the deal without losing your earnest money.
How A Loan Contingency Clause Protects The Buyer
It is important for buyers to work with real estate agents who understand how loan contingencies work because this is an important protective measure. A contingency clause can protect the buyer because it provides the buyer with a way to back out of the contract without losing his or her earnest money.
Typically, if the buyer backs out of the contract, he or she will lose his or her earnest money; however, if the buyer backs out for a reason that is protected by the contingency clause, then his or her earnest money might be protected.
Some Buyers Waive Their Loan Contingency
If the housing market is particularly competitive, and you know you are going to purchase the house no matter what, then you might want to waive your loan contingency as a way to strengthen your offer. On the other hand, keep in mind that waving your loan contingency means sacrificing this important layer of protection.


text:
And now, even in times like these, it's time for sports.
SIMON: Russia and Belarus banned from another world sports event. Will there be a baseball season, and when? And Coach K's final home game.
We're joined now by NPR's Tom Goldman. Good morning, Tom.
TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.
SIMON: And some breaking news today - Brittney Griner, the great American women's basketball Olympic gold medalist and WNBA star - reports coming out of Russia say that she's being held on an alleged drug charge. What can you tell us?
GOLDMAN: Yeah, Brittney Griner is one of the WNBA players who plays in Russia during the WNBA offseason to make more money. And reports say a drug-sniffing dog detected vape cartridges containing hash oil in her luggage at the airport near Moscow. Now, this reportedly happened last month, before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but certainly not a good time right now with hostilities between Russia and the West very high due to the war and with Russian athletes being banned throughout the sports world.
SIMON: Yeah.
GOLDMAN: Griner's WNBA team, the Phoenix Mercury, released a statement saying, in part, we are aware of and are closely monitoring the situation. We remain in constant contact with her family, the WNBA and NBA. At this time, our main concern is her safety, physical and mental health and her safe return home.
SIMON: The International Paralympic Committee has changed its original position. It's will now prohibit athletes from Russia and Belarus from participating in the Winter Games, which are happening right now in Beijing. Why did they change course?
GOLDMAN: Pressure from National Paralympic Committees and mainly from athletes. Their original decision to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes was hugely criticized. It got to the point where there were threats of boycott at the Paralympics and rising tensions in the athletes village. So the International Paralympic Committee, the IPC, reversed course. The committee didn't want violence and didn't want the controversy to overwhelm the Games and, you know, turn the focus away from the great athletes and their great stories.
And, Scott, how about this for a great story?
SIMON: Yeah.
GOLDMAN: Ukraine is on top of the medal standings after Day 1 of competition...
SIMON: Yeah.
GOLDMAN: ...With three gold and a total of seven medals. The Ukrainian team leader called it a miracle that they even got to China. One of the gold medalists in the men's vision-impaired biathlon race dedicated his medal to, quote, "the guys protecting our cities."
SIMON: Very heartwarming. Athletes are also speaking out in baseball's labor negotiations.
GOLDMAN: They are. You know, it's interesting. Last time regular season games were canceled due to a work stoppage, the damaging players' strike in 1994, '95, there wasn't social media. There is now, and players are using it fully to try to connect with fans and explain and apologize for the current mess, which actually was initiated by team owners locking out players last December. And then this week, the ongoing labor impasse led MLB commissioner to cancel the start of the season.
Players are standing resolute about changing a financial system they say keeps them undervalued and underpaid as baseball revenues grow. They're waging a good PR battle right now, Scott, but owners really have the upper hand financially if this thing drags on.
SIMON: Yeah. Mike Krzyzewski, coach at Duke since 1985 national championships, 12 Final Four appearances, three consecutive gold medals for the U.S. Olympics - his last home game tonight. A great coach, and he never struck a player or threw a chair across the court. What can you say?
GOLDMAN: What a boring guy, huh?
SIMON: Yeah.
GOLDMAN: Just won more games than any DI coach ever, treated his players with respect. A lot will be said tonight, for sure, as he coaches his last home game at Duke's hallowed Cameron Indoor Stadium. There'll be pre- and post-game ceremonies. Nearly a hundred former Duke players accepted invitations to be there. Whopping ticket prices. It's going to be quite the show, Scott.
SIMON: We have to acknowledge the loss of a couple of extraordinary athletes this week, too.
GOLDMAN: We do. Shane Warne, the great Australian cricket bowler - that's like the pitcher in baseball - he was rock-star famous. He died of a suspected heart attack at the relatively young age of 52. And then a tragic death in women's collegiate soccer. Stanford goalkeeper Katie Meyer, a vibrant and popular young woman, died by suicide. And she was only 22.
SIMON: Heartbreaking losses for all of us, not just the sports world. NPR's Tom Goldman, thanks very much.
GOLDMAN: Good to talk to you.
SIMON: And if you or someone you know is considering suicide, please, do contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. That number is 1-800-273-8255. Or text HOME to 741741.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


text:
Request for Comments: 7982
Category: Standards Track
T. Reddy
D. Wing
V. Singh
September 2016
Measurement of Round-Trip Time and Fractional Loss
Using Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)
A host with multiple interfaces needs to choose the best interface for communication. Oftentimes, this decision is based on a static configuration and does not consider the path characteristics, which may affect the user experience.
This document describes a mechanism for an endpoint to measure the path characteristics fractional loss and RTT using Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN) messages.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7982.
Copyright Notice
Copyright © 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3. Measuring RTT and Fractional Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.1. TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER Attribute . . . . . . . . . 4 3.2. Usage in Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.3. Usage in Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.4. Example Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1. Introduction
This document extends STUN [RFC5389] to make it possible to correlate STUN responses to specific requests when retransmits occur. This assists the client in determining path characteristics like round- trip time (RTT) and fractional packet loss.
The TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute introduced in Section 3.1 can be used in Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE) [RFC5245] connectivity checks (STUN Binding request and response). It can also be used with Traversal Using Relays around NAT (TURN) [RFC5766] by adding this attribute to Allocate requests and responses to measure loss and RTT between the client and the respective TURN server.
ICE is a mechanism commonly used in Voice over IP (VoIP) applications to traverse NATs, and it uses a static prioritization formula to order the candidate pairs and perform connectivity checks, in which the most preferred address pairs are tested first, and when a sufficiently good pair is discovered, that pair is used for communications and then further connectivity tests are stopped.
When multiple paths are available for communication, the endpoint sends ICE connectivity checks across each path (candidate pair). Choosing the path with the lowest round-trip time is a reasonable approach, but retransmits can cause an otherwise good path to appear flawed. However, STUN's retransmission algorithm [RFC5389] cannot determine the round-trip time (RTT) if a STUN request packet is retransmitted because each request and retransmission packet is identical. Further, several STUN requests may be sent before the connectivity between candidate pairs are ascertained (see Section 16 of [RFC5245]). To resolve the issue of identical request and response packets in a STUN transaction, this document changes the retransmission behavior for idempotent packets. Using the mechanism described herein, a client can determine RTT as well as get a hint regarding which path direction caused packet loss. This is achieved by defining a new STUN attribute and requires compliant STUN (TURN and ICE) endpoints to count request packets.
The mechanisms described in this document can be used by the controlling agent to influence the ICE candidate pair selection. How ICE will actually use this information to improve the active candidate pair selection is outside the scope of this document.
2. Notational Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
This specification uses terminology defined in ICE [RFC5245] and STUN [RFC5389].
3. Measuring RTT and Fractional Loss
This document defines a new comprehension-optional STUN attribute TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER with a STUN Type 0x8025. This type is in the comprehension-optional range, which means that STUN agents can safely ignore the attribute. If ICE is in use, it will fall back to normal procedures.
If a client wishes to measure RTT, it inserts the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute in a STUN request. In this attribute, the client sends the number of times the STUN request is transmitted with the same transaction ID. The server would echo back the transmission count in the response so that the client can distinguish between STUN responses coming from retransmitted requests. Hence, the endpoint can use the STUN requests and responses to determine the round-trip time (RTT). The server may also convey the number of responses it has sent for the STUN request to the client. Further, this information enables the client to get a hint regarding in which direction the packet loss occurred. In some cases, it is impossible to distinguish between packet reordering and packet loss. However, if this information is collected as network metrics from several clients over a longer time period, it will be easier to detect a pattern that can provide useful information.
3.1. TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER Attribute
The TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute in a STUN request takes a 32-bit value. This document updates one of the STUN message structuring rules explained in Section 6 of [RFC5389] wherein retransmission of the same request reuses the same transaction ID and is bit-wise identical to the previous request. For idempotent packets, the Req and Resp fields in the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute will be incremented by 1 by the client or server for every transmission with the same transaction ID. Any retransmitted STUN request MUST be bit-wise identical to the previous request except for the values in the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute.
The IANA-assigned STUN type for the new attribute is 0x8025.
The format of the value in the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute in the request is:
0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Reserved (Padding) | Req | Resp | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 1: TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER Attribute in Request
The fields are described below:
Req: Number of times the request is transmitted with the same transaction ID to the server. Resp: Number of times a response with the same transaction ID is sent from the server. MUST be set to zero in requests and ignored by the receiver.
The padding is necessary to hit the 32-bit boundary needed for STUN attributes. The padding bits are ignored, but to allow for future reuse of these bits, they MUST be set to zero.
3.2. Usage in Requests
When sending a STUN request, the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER Attribute allows a client to indicate to the server that it wants to measure RTT and get a hint about the direction of any packet loss.
The client MUST populate the Req value in the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER. This value MUST reflect the number of requests that have been transmitted to the server. Therefore, the initial value for the first request sent is 1. The first retransmit will set the value to 2 and so on.
The Resp field in the attribute MUST be set to zero in the request.
3.3. Usage in Responses
When a server receives a STUN request that includes a TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute, it processes the request as per the STUN protocol [RFC5389] plus the specific rules mentioned here. The server checks the following:
- If the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute is not recognized, ignore the attribute because its type indicates that it is comprehension-optional. This should be the existing behavior as explained in Section 7.3 of [RFC5389].
- The server that supports the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute MUST echo back the Req field in the response using a TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute.
- If the server is stateless or does not want to remember the transaction ID, then it populates value 0 for the Resp field in the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute sent in the response. If the server is stateful, then it populates the Resp field with the number of responses it has sent for the STUN request.
A client that receives a STUN response with a TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER can check the values in the Req field to accurately calculate the RTT if retransmits are occurring.
If the server sending the STUN response is stateless, the value of the Resp field will always be 0. If the server keeps state of the numbers of STUN requests with that same transaction ID, the value will reflect how many packets the server has seen and responded to. This gives the client a hint about in which direction loss occurred. See Section 3.4 for more details.
3.4. Example Operation
An example operation, when a server is stateful, is described in Figure 2. In the first case, all the requests and responses are received correctly.
In the case of upstream loss, the first request is lost, but the second one is received correctly. The client, upon receiving the response, notes that while two requests were sent, only one was received by the server. The server also realizes that the value in the Req field does not match the number of received requests, therefore one request was lost. This may also occur at startup in the presence of firewalls or NATs that block unsolicited incoming traffic.
In the case of downstream loss, the responses get lost, the client expecting multiple responses notes that, while the server responded to three requests, only one response was received.
In the case of loss in both directions, requests and responses get lost in tandem, the server notes that one request packet was not received, while the client expecting three responses received only one, and then it notes that one request and response packet were lost.
| Normal | Upstream loss | Downstream loss | Both upstream &| | | | | downstream loss| | Client Server | Client Server | Client Server | Client Server | |+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+| | 1 1,1 | 1 x | 1 1,1 | 1 x | | 1,1 | | x | | | | 2 2,1 | 2 2,2 | 2 2,1 | | | 2,1 | x | x | | | | 3 3,3 | 3 3,2 | | | | 3,3 | 3,2 |
Figure 2: Retransmit Operation between Client and Server
Another example is when the client sends two requests but the second request arrives at the server before the first request because of out-of-order delivery. In this case, the stateful server populates value 1 for the Resp field in the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute sent in response to the second request and value 2 for the Resp field in the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute sent in response to the first request.
The intention with this mechanism is not to carry out comprehensive and accurate measurements regarding in what direction loss is occurring. In some cases, it might not be able to distinguish the difference between downstream loss and packet reordering.
4. IANA Considerations
This document defines the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER STUN attribute, described in Section 3. IANA has allocated the comprehension-optional codepoint 0x8025 for this attribute.
5. Security Considerations
Security considerations discussed in [RFC5389] are to be taken into account. STUN requires that the 96-bit transaction ID be uniformly and randomly chosen from the interval 0 .. 2**96-1, and be cryptographically strong. This is good enough security against an off-path attacker. An on-path attacker can either inject a fake response or modify the values in the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute to mislead the client and server. This attack can be mitigated using STUN authentication. As the
TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER is expected to be used between peers using ICE, and ICE uses a STUN short-term credential mechanism, the risk of an on-path attack influencing the messages is minimal. If the TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER is used with an Allocate request, one of the following mechanisms can be used to prevent attackers from trying to impersonate a TURN server and sending a bogus TRANSACTION_TRANSMIT_COUNTER attribute in the Allocate response: 1) the STUN long-term credential mechanism, 2) the STUN Extension for Third-Party Authorization [RFC7635], or 3) a TLS or DTLS connection between the TURN client and the TURN server. However, an attacker could corrupt, remove, or delay an ICE request or response, in order to discourage that path from being used.
If not encrypted, the information sent in any STUN packet can potentially be observed passively and used for reconnaissance and later attacks.
6. References
6.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>. [RFC5245] Rosenberg, J., "Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE): A Protocol for Network Address Translator (NAT) Traversal for Offer/Answer Protocols", RFC 5245, DOI 10.17487/RFC5245, April 2010, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5245>. [RFC5389] Rosenberg, J., Mahy, R., Matthews, P., and D. Wing, "Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)", RFC 5389, DOI 10.17487/RFC5389, October 2008, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5389>. [RFC5766] Mahy, R., Matthews, P., and J. Rosenberg, "Traversal Using Relays around NAT (TURN): Relay Extensions to Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)", RFC 5766, DOI 10.17487/RFC5766, April 2010, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5766>.
6.2. Informative References
[RFC7635] Reddy, T., Patil, P., Ravindranath, R., and J. Uberti, "Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN) Extension for Third-Party Authorization", RFC 7635, DOI 10.17487/RFC7635, August 2015, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7635>.
Thanks to Brandon Williams, Simon Perreault, Aijun Wang, Martin Thomson, Oleg Moskalenko, Ram Mohan Ravindranath, Spencer Dawkins, Suresh Krishnan, Ben Campbell, Mirja Kuehlewind, Lionel Morand, Kathleen Moriarty, and Alissa Cooper for their valuable input and comments.
Authors' Addresses
Paal-Erik Martinsen Cisco Systems, Inc. Philip Pedersens vei 22 Lysaker, Akershus 1325 Norway
firstname.lastname@example.com Tirumaleswar Reddy Cisco Systems, Inc. Cessna Business Park, Varthur Hobli Sarjapur Marathalli Outer Ring Road Bangalore, Karnataka 560103 India
email@example.com Dan Wing Email: firstname.lastname@example.com Varun Singh CALLSTATS I/O Oy Runeberginkatu 4c A 4 Helsinki 00100 Finland Email: firstname.lastname@example.com URI: https://www.callstats.io/about


text:
How music helps resolve our deepest inner conflicts
Leonid Perlovsky, Harvard University
How music helps resolve our deepest inner conflicts
Billions of people enjoy music; many feel that they can't live without it.
It's a question that has puzzled scientists and philosophers for centuries. 2,400 years ago Aristotle wondered, "Why does music, being just sounds, remind us of the states of our soul?"
In the 19th century Darwin tried to decipher if our ability to create music evolved by natural selection. Of all human faculties, only music seemed beyond understanding; flummoxed, he came to the conclusion that "music is the greatest mystery."
More than 200 years ago, Kant declared music useless. And near the end of the 20th century, celebrated psychologist Steven Pinker – also unable to comprehend its purpose – called music "auditory cheesecake."
A few years ago, the respected journal Nature published a series of essays about music. Their conclusion? That it's impossible to explain what music is and why it affects us so strongly – and that it's not even clear if music can serve "an obvious adaptive function."
But my recent research suggests otherwise: music is an evolutionary adaptation, one that helps us navigate a world rife with contradictions.
The crippling effect of cognitive dissonance
Music's effect on our brains is closely related to what's been dubbed "the greatest discovery in social psychology" of the 20th century: cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the idea that people experience unpleasant feelings when they either possess contradictory knowledge, or are confronted with new information that opposes existing beliefs.
One way we alleviate dissonance is through suppressing or rejecting this contradictory knowledge.
Aesop's fable "The Fox and the Grapes" illustrates this common human response. In the tale, the fox is distressed over the fact that he can't reach a bunch of grapes. Even more unpleasant is the dissonance he experiences: the grapes are so tempting and so close – yet unattainable.
As a result, the fox attempts to alleviate the dissonance by rationalizing, "Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes."
During the 20th century hundreds of experiments confirmed this common psychological response. When faced with dissonant thoughts, children, teens and adults all responded the same way: if I can't have it, then I don't need it.
A manifestation of cognitive dissonance is the rejection of new knowledge. Even some great scientific discoveries have had to wait decades for recognition and acceptance, because they contradicted existing beliefs that people didn't want to surrender. For example, Einstein didn't receive a Nobel Prize for his Theory of Relativity – now considered one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind – because it contradicted our core beliefs about space and time.
Music helps us grapple with dissonance
So if people are willing to deceive themselves or ignore new information, how has human culture evolved? After all, the foundation of culture is the accumulation of new knowledge – much of which contradicts existing knowledge.
Consider language: when language emerged in our species, every new word was a nugget of new information that contradicted an existing idea or belief. A powerful mechanism of the mind must have evolved to enable our ancestors to overcome these unpleasant dissonances that split their world, and allowed them to keep contradictory knowledge – to absorb new words rather than immediately discarding them.
Could it be that this ability was enabled by music?
While language splits the world into detailed, distinct pieces, music unifies the world into a whole. Our psyche requires both.
Several experiments have proven music's ability to help us overcome cognitive dissonances and retain contradictory knowledge.
For example, in one experiment, an experimenter gave a group of four-year-old boys five popular Pokemon toys. Playing with each boy individually, she had them rank, one by one, their preferences for the five toys. Then the experimenter told each subject that she needed to leave for few minutes, and asked him not to play with his second-ranked toy. When she returned, she re-initiated play and found that the formerly second-ranked toy was entirely ignored. When confronted with conflicting information ("I like this toy, but I shouldn't play with it"), each boy apparently rejected his initial preference for it.
But when the experimenter turned on music when leaving, the toy retained its original value. The contradictory knowledge didn't lead the boys to simply discard the toy.
In another experiment, we gave a group of fifteen-year-old students a typical multiple choice exam, and asked them to record the difficulty of each question, along with how much time it took them to answer each one.
It turned out that more difficult questions were answered faster (and grades suffered), because students didn't want to prolong unpleasant dissonance of choosing between difficult options. However when Mozart's music played in the background, they spent more time on the difficult questions. Their scores improved.
Life's big choices become more informed
Beyond multiple choice tests, we're constantly confronted with choices in our day-to-day lives – from the mundane (what to buy for lunch), to the major (whether or not to accept a job offer). We often use both intuition and pragmatism when evaluating complex situations, but we also incorporate emotion.
And then there are choices related to two universal themes of our existence – love and death – which are inherently steeped in contradictions.
With love, we'd like to fully trust it. But we know that to fully trust is dangerous – that we can be betrayed and disappointed. With death, one of the most difficult contradictions of all is our longing to believe in spiritual eternity and our knowledge that our time on Earth is finite.
Is it any coincidence, then, that there are so many songs about love and betrayal? Or that we are drawn to sorrowful songs in times of mourning?
The idea is that music – which can convey an array of nuanced emotions – helps us reconcile our own conflicted emotions when making choices. And the more diverse, differentiated emotions we possess, the more well-founded our decisions become. Whether it's choosing to play with a toy or deciding to propose to a boyfriend or girlfriend, our research shows that music can enhance our cognitive abilities.
Thus, because we constantly grapple with cognitive dissonances, we created music, in part, to help us tolerate – and overcome – them.
This is the universal purpose of music.
Leonid Perlovsky, Visiting Scholar, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


text:
Sample Price: $375
Discount: 90% off (RRP $3,500)
Bust: 98cm
Waist: 77cm
Hip: 104 (5cm stretch)
Please note: Ex-floor samples may have stretched from try on and may vary slightly from the measurments listed
Floor sample
Dry cleaning required
Light mending required
Hailey | Goddess By Nature
Sample gowns include new and existing floor samples, some of which are tried on but never worn to a wedding samples and as such may require repair, alterations and/or dry cleaning which is not included in the gown price.
Sample gowns vary in available sizing which will be disclosed to you by The Ivory Room Bridal. Due to the nature of these samples, measurements of the gown may differ from the initial size grading due to stretch from wear.
By making payment you understand and agree to the condition of the Sample Gown at the point of purchase and that all sales are final.
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text:
ENEREX Serrapeptase (120,000 SU - 180 caps)
ENEREX Serrapeptase (120,000 SU - 180 caps)
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ENEREx - Serrapeptase - 180 Vegetable Capsule(s) - NPN: 80045806 -- Serrapeptase is a natural enzyme that effectively reduces pain, inflammation, as well as mucous build-up. Whether symptoms stem from injury, surgery, or disease such as arthritis or sinusitis, its action disrupts pain pathways and restores your bodys persistent inflammatory response to reduce swelling and improve circulation. This productive and efficient miracle enzyme can easily bring comfort and relief for better health.Everyone experiences pain. But whether from an injury or disease as we age, pain can be debilitating and limit our freedom. Serrapeptase works in different ways by inhibiting a chemical our body produces during injury or chronic inflammation to block pain, restoring our normal tolerance to pain, reducing the resulting inflammation, and breaking down mucous that occurs in sinusitis. This enzyme has many applications when pain is experienced.Enerex Serrapeptase uses a high activity enzyme for greater effectiveness and our special Delayed Release capsule protects the enzyme from destruction by stomach acid to ensure you get the relief you require.
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text:
PCI Compliance Support & Consulting
Get in compliance with our PCI expertise.
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text:
Ninexis Out Of Time Full Size Ruffle Hem Dress with Drawstring Waistband in Light Sage
Ninexis Out Of Time Full Size Ruffle Hem Dress with Drawstring Waistband in Light Sage
Crafted from 100% cotton, this dress is designed to provide you with a soft, breathable, and luxurious experience. The drawstring waist feature allows you to effortlessly adjust the fit to your liking, ensuring both comfort and a flattering silhouette. Whether you prefer a more relaxed or fitted look, this dress has got you covered. The drawstring adds a touch of casual charm, while also accentuating your waistline for a feminine and elegant appearance. The ruffle hem detailing adds a playful and romantic flair to the dress. With its delicate and flowy design, it creates a graceful movement as you walk, making you feel like you're floating on air. The ruffles also lend a subtle touch of femininity, elevating the overall aesthetic of the dress. This dress is perfect for a wide range of occasions. Dress it up with some heels and accessories for a formal event or a night out on the town. Alternatively, pair it with sandals or sneakers for a more casual and laid-back look, perfect for brunches, picnics, or strolling along the beach. The soft cotton fabric is not only incredibly comfortable but also easy to care for. It's machine washable, allowing for convenient and hassle-free maintenance, so you can spend more time enjoying the dress and less time worrying about its upkeep.
- Pattern type: Solid
- Style: Casual
- Features: Tie, Pockets
- Neckline: Notched
- Length: Mini
- Sleeve length: Half sleeves
- Sleeve type: Flounce sleeves
- Hem shaped: A-line
- Sheer: No
- Body: Not lined
- Material composition: 100% cotton
- Stretch: No stretch
- Care instructions: Machine wash cold. Tumble dry low.
- Imported
- Model information:
Tiffany-height 5'9", bust 46", waist 37", hip 48", size 1X, jeans size 14W
Anastasia-height 5'9", bust 34", waist 25", hip 35", size S, jeans size 3
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S: bust 50 in, length 33 in, shoulder (with sleeve) 12 in
M: bust 52 in, length 34 in, shoulder (with sleeve) 13 in
L: bust 54 in, length 35 in, shoulder (with sleeve) 13 in
XL: bust 56 in, length 36 in, shoulder (with sleeve) 14 in
1XL: bust 58 in, length 37 in, shoulder (with sleeve) 15 in
2XL: bust 60 in, length 38 in, shoulder (with sleeve) 15 in
3XL: bust 62 in, length 39 in, shoulder (with sleeve) 16 in
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