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Wednesday marks the one year anniversary of the 2012 attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead, and sent the Obama administration scrambling for a cover story that the Big Three broadcast networks initially bought and were slow to unravel.
A similar pattern has emerged in 2013. As new information about the administration's actions before and after the attacks have been revealed through congressional testimony, whistleblowers, and eyewitnesses, the Big Three have responded by censoring, breezing past or spinning politically damaging bombshells.
The following are just some of the findings of this report:
■ Testifying before Congress on January 23 Hillary Clinton dodged questions about her State Department's bungling of Benghazi. Network anchors toasted the outgoing Secretary of State anyway. ABC's Diane Sawyer called it "a valedictory that showed her indignation," while NBC's Brian Williams took the occasion to congratulate the potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate "as the most admired woman in the world in the Gallup poll, for the 11th year in a row."
■ On February 7 former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified that Barack Obama was disengaged on the night of the Benghazi attack. Total Big Three Network stories on this stunning admission? Only two. (CBS 1 story, NBC 1 story, ABC 0)
■ On April 29 Fox News aired bombshell testimony from an eyewitness that claimed U.S. special forces could have responded in time to the Benghazi attack. Total Big Three Network stories? 0.
■ On the April 29 edition of FNC's Special Report with Bret Baier, chief Washington correspondent James Rosen reported that Benghazi whistleblowers were being intimidated by the Obama administration. Total Big Three Network stories? 0.
■ The networks finally seemed to get interested in Benghazi when whistleblower Gregory Hicks, the #2 U.S. diplomat in Libya at the time of the attack, appeared before Congress in early May. In testimony the networks began previewing on May 5, Hicks made it clear that it was nonsense for the Obama administration to blame a YouTube video for the carefully coordinated attack by heavily armed al-Qaeda terrorists. That same week, the networks disclosed e-mails proving the administration had scrubbed the false "talking points" in the days after the attack. But by May 18, the networks had essentially dropped the story — again.
■ On July 18 Republican Congressman Frank Wolf went to the House floor to claim survivors of the Benghazi attack, State Department and CIA employees were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements. Total Big Three Network stories? 0.
The degree to which the Big Three networks have censored, briefly noted or spun the ongoing revelations about how the Obama administration blundered its handling of the Benghazi attack reveals how far they will go to insulate this White House from its own self-inflicted scandals. It must be asked, if new reports of a disengaged president during a terrorist attack, whistleblowers exposing a cover-up, and witnesses being intimidated have not been enough to drive the Big Three networks into wall-to-wall coverage, what will?
Wednesday marks the one year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead and sent the Obama administration scrambling for a cover story that the Big Three broadcast networks initially bought and were slow to unravel. A similar pattern has emerged in 2013. As new information about the administration's actions before and after the attacks have been revealed through congressional testimony, whistleblowers, and eyewitnesses, the Big Three have responded by censoring, breezing past or spinning politically damaging bombshells.
From praising Hillary Clinton's January testimony on Benghazi as a "fiery" "valedictory" to ignoring accusations of witness intimidation, the networks have, for the most part, operated as an arm of the White House PR machine. The only events that drew truly critical coverage were Gregory Hicks' compelling testimony of the events of that tragic day and the release of e-mails that proved the administration had engaged in scrubbing CIA talking points. However these stories came in the midst of the intense but relatively brief period in May that the networks were forced to cover the myriad of scandals (IRS, AP, NSA) breaking all at once.
But when it was revealed, in July, that Benghazi survivors, State Department and CIA employees were being forced to sign non-disclosure agreements the Big Three networks responded with a yawn, offering not one single story.
The following is a chronological list of key developments in the Benghazi scandal and how they were covered or not covered on ABC's World News, Good Morning America, CBS's Evening News, This Morning, and NBC's Nightly News and Today show.
On January 23 Hillary Clinton came before Congress to testify about her State Department's bungling of Benghazi, and when pressed about how the administration misled about the causes of the raid coldly pronounced: "The fact is we have four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans. What difference, at this point, does it make?" The reaction of network anchors and reporters wasn't to condemn the chilling dodge, but to herald it as a moment of righteous indignation.
On the January 23 edition of ABC's World News, anchor Diane Sawyer announced: "And now we turn to the fiery appearance for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton...The indignation, and then, the tears in her eyes...It was a valedictory that showed her indignation and emotion as she ends this tenure on the public stage." Her colleague Martha Raddatz added: "What a way to end her four-year tenure as Secretary of State...a month a go, she was flat on her back with a nasty concussion," but "today, this woman who has traveled the world as America's top diplomat, came to the Hill ready for a fight." Raddatz touted that Clinton was "in rare public form, at times angry, aggressively on the defense. At another point, choking up over her four lost colleagues."
NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams began his newscast that night announcing that Clinton "leaves her post as the most admired woman in the world in the Gallup poll, for the 11th year in a row." NBC's Andrea Mitchell offered a rave review: "Parrying hostile questions all day, Clinton was also the political pro. Massaging big egos, sidestepping attacks when she could. When she couldn't, giving as good as she got."
Over on CBS Margaret Brennan, on the January 23 This Morning, was impressed at how Clinton "fiercely defended the office that she will soon be leaving" and "took ownership of the State Department's handling of the attack."
Total Big Three Network stories/briefs: 23 (NBC 4 stories/5 briefs, CBS 5 stories/3 briefs, ABC 4 stories/2 briefs)
On February 7 former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified that Barack Obama seemed disengaged on the night of the Benghazi attack. CBS's Nancy Cordes, on the February 8 This Morning, reported: "Panetta revealed that he briefed the President at the start of the attack, but the two men did not speak again that night...Republicans say it's a sign that the President was disengaged the night of the attack....he said as well that he did not speak to Secretary Clinton the night of the attack either."
NBC's Kelly O'Donnell, on the February 8 Today show, reported "Republicans pounced on testimony that after first informing the President about the attack, neither" Panetta or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey "heard directly from him as the siege unfolded."
ABC never mentioned Panetta's disturbing revelation about the Commander-in-Chief.
Total Big Three Network stories/briefs: 2 (CBS 1 story, NBC 1 story, ABC 0)
On April 23 The Washington Times reported that "House Republicans have concluded that the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies bear no blame for failing to halt the terrorist assault" in Benghazi but that "President Obama and the State Department set up the military for failure." The report ultimately found, according to the Times' Stephen Dinan, that "Mr. Obama's team lied about the attacks afterward, first blaming mob violence spawned by an anti-Muslim video, and then wrongly saying it had misled the public because it was trying to protect an FBI investigation."
Both NBC and ABC skipped the findings of this report. CBS offered two full reports on the April 23 CBS Evening News and April 24 CBS This Morning. On the April 23 Evening News CBS's Nancy Cordes relayed the seriousness of the findings: "The congressional report cites a State Department cable from April 2012; five months before the Benghazi attacks. The cable acknowledges the U.S. ambassador's request for additional security, but instead according to the report, 'Articulated a plan to scale back security assets for the U.S. mission in Libya, including the Benghazi Mission.' Republicans who viewed the cable say it bears Secretary Clinton's signature which they claim contradicts this assertion she made in a hearing this January."
Total Big Three Network stories/briefs: 2 (CBS 2 stories, ABC 0, NBC 0)
Fox News offered bombshell testimony, first aired on the April 29 Fox Special Report with Bret Baier, from a witness of the Benghazi attack, Fox News correspondent Adam Housley, in his April 30 Fox News.com article reported the following:
"A military special ops member who watched as the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi unfolded last September told Fox News the U.S. had highly trained forces just a few hours away, and said he and others feel the government betrayed the four men who died in the attack.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, and appearing in a Fox News Channel interview with his face and voice disguised, the special operator contradicted claims by the Obama administration and a State Department review that said there wasn't enough time for U.S. military forces to have intervened in the Sept. 11 attack in which U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, an embassy employee and two former Navy SEALs working as private security contractors were killed. 'I know for a fact that C-110, the EUCOM CIF, was doing a training exercise in...not in the region of North Africa, but in Europe...And they had the ability to act and to respond.'"
Housley went on to report:
"The source says many people connected to the Benghazi bombing feel threatened and are afraid to talk. 'The problem is, you got guys in my position, you got guys in special operations community who are still active and still involved,' the source said. 'And they would be decapitated if they came forward with information that would affect high level commanders,' he said."
Total Big Three Network stories/briefs: 0
Also on the April 29 edition of Fox Special Report with Bret Baier, chief Washington correspondent James Rosen reported the following:
"Fox News has learned that at least three career State Department employees and at least one more at the Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process of doing so in order that they can provide sensitive information to Congress about Benghazi. The four consider themselves whistleblowers and want their counsel to receive the security clearances that would enable them to review classified documents, but the lawyer representing one of the employees at State told us the department is not providing a process for that and even worse is actively threatening her client and the others."
In his April 30 press conference President Barack Obama was forced to respond to the allegation whistleblowers were being intimidated and he claimed: "I'm not familiar with this notion that anybody has been blocked from testifying."
Total Big Three Network stories/briefs: 0
In early May the networks couldn't ignore the compelling testimony of State Department officials, including the number-two diplomat at the U.S. embassy Gregory Hicks, that undermined Obama administration claims about the Benghazi attack. CBS's David Martin, on the May 5 Evening News, reported: "In an interview with the House Oversight Committee...Hicks directly contradicts administration claims that at first, the attack was thought to be nothing more than a demonstration growing out of a similar protest that day in Cairo. 'I thought it was a terrorist attack from the get-go. I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning.'"
NBC's Brian Williams, on the May 8 Nightly News, relayed Hicks delivered an "emotional testimony" and "chilling account of what really happened in Libya," in his congressional hearing that day. ABC's Diane Sawyer, on the May 9 World News, teased her viewers: "dramatic story told today by people at the center during that attack in Benghazi last year, people who said they were pleading for help." Interestingly, for all the talk of Hicks' "emotional" and "dramatic" story none of the networks brought Hicks on to retell it in a live exclusive interview at the time. (Hicks was finally interviewed on the September 8 edition of ABC's This Week, where he told anchor George Stephanopoulos he's been "punished" for speaking out.)
Altogether the networks devoted a total of only five days of coverage to Hicks, beginning on May 5 and ending on the morning of May 9, the day after Hicks's congressional testimony.
Total Big Three Network stories/briefs: 20 (CBS 8 stories/1 brief, NBC 4 stories/3 briefs, ABC 1 story/3 briefs)
On the May 10 ABC World News Jonathan Karl reported the following: "The White House said that information about the [Benghazi] attack was based on talking points drafted entirely by the CIA. And that neither Hillary Clinton's State Department nor the White House made anything more than stylistic changes. But today, ABC News has exclusively obtained 12 versions of the talking points, showing they went through extensive edits. The early drafts point to evidence that an al Qaeda affiliated group took part in the attack and that the CIA has warned about al Qaeda threats in Benghazi."
Karl went on to report that "Secretary Clinton's spokesperson objected, saying in an e-mail obtained by ABC the information quote, 'could be used by members of Congress to beat up on the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so, why would we want to feed that?' After those objections were raised, all references to al Qaeda and the CIA warnings were deleted from the CIA talking points."
While all three networks did cover the e-mails, it wasn't long before they started spinning. On the May 13 CBS This Morning host Charlie Rose asked: "Is this a burgeoning cover up or is it at the same time simply political thing to try to get at Hillary Clinton campaign that might happen in 2016?" To which CBS News Political Director John Dickerson responded that while it "looks like a cover up...let's not go too far with that language. It looks right now like a sort of normal ass covering that happens in a bureaucratic back and forth....that kind of day to day bureaucratic protecting of turf is different than a highly-orchestrated-by-Hillary Clinton approach."
When the White House later released more e-mails, after Republican pressure, Dickerson came back on the May 18 This Morning to claim the newly released emails "were helpful to the White House" as they "helped knock back the story that Republicans had been pushing that the administration came up with a kind of false story. And if you look at the emails, the White House's hand in creating those talking points to inform the press, the White House was not as involved as some Republicans had suggested."
On May the 14 Today show both NBC's Chuck Todd and Matt Lauer signaled they were ready to move on from the e-mail controversy. Reporting on Obama's May 13 press conference, Todd relayed: "Obama defiantly rebutted Republican charges that his administration initially downplayed that the attack had ties to terrorism, calling the controversy a political circus." Todd then played a clip of the President charging: "The whole issue of this, of talking points frankly throughout this process has been a sideshow."
In an interview with Donald Rumsfeld, Lauer repeated the "side-show" line to the former Defense Secretary: "Yesterday, the President said there is no there-there, that it's a side-show and that it defies logic to say there was a cover-up. Do you still think there was?" Lauer then seemed to dismiss the matter as pure partisan politics as he pressed Rumsfeld: "Do you think that the administration has answered enough questions on it? Do you think it's possible that some Republicans are trying to use this to discredit Hillary Clinton in case she decides to run for president in 2016?"
But as with the Hicks testimony, the networks immediately dropped the e-mail controversy, with the last story coming on the May 18 CBS This Morning.
Total Big Three Network stories/briefs: 30 (NBC 12 stories, CBS 10 stories, ABC 7 stories/1 brief)
By early June, the media climate surrounding the Benghazi scandal was so friendly Barack Obama felt secure in selecting Susan Rice to be his new national security advisor, despite Rice being at the center of controversy in the early days after the attack. Her nomination only brought a handful of mentions (NBC 5, CBS 3, ABC 1) to her role in the Benghazi cover-up.
On the June 5 NBC Nightly News Chuck Todd mentioned: "Rice was at the center of the Benghazi firestorm, as Republicans tried to make her the fall-woman for the President" but Todd never clarified that the "firestorm" was the result of Rice making false statements about Benghazi. On the June 6 Today show, Todd's colleague Andrea Mitchell went as far to assert: "Rice was the President's first line of defense after the September 11th Benghazi attacks. But back then those CIA talking points cost her the nomination to be Secretary of State," then added "but the recent release of all the talking points e-mails vindicated Rice," even though those e-mails actually showed how involved the White House and State Department were in scrubbing the original CIA talking points.
On the June 5 edition of ABC's World News Diane Sawyer briefly mentioned: "Rice was at the center of that firestorm from Republicans after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi." CBS's Major Garrett, on the June 5 Evening News, also just briefly mentioned her role in Benghazi, but at least ran a sound bite of Rice's false statements on the attack in the following excerpt:
GARRETT: Susan Rice was battered for her televised description of the deadly September 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.
SUSAN RICE: We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.
GARRETT: Republicans were furious she did not call it a terrorist attack and their opposition led Mr. Obama to nominate John Kerry over Rice as secretary of state.
Total Big Three Network stories/briefs: 0
On July 18, as reported by The Weekly Standard, Republican Congressman Frank Wolf went to the House floor to claim survivors of the Benghazi attack, State Department and CIA employees were being forced to sign non-disclosure agreements. The charge was brought up again on the August 1 edition of CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper, by CNN correspondent Drew Griffin:
"CNN has learned the CIA is involved in what one source calls an unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agencies Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out. Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency's missions in Libya have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency's working. The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress. It's being described as pure intimidation with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employees who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.
In exclusive communications obtained by CNN, writes, 'you don't jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well.' Another says, 'You have no idea the pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation.'"
Griffin went on to report:
"Among the many secrets still yet to be told about the Benghazi mission is just how many Americans were there? The night Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed. CNN has now learned that number was 35 with as many seven wounded, some seriously. While it's still not known how many of them were CIA. A source tells CNN 21 Americans were working in the building known as the annex believed to be run by the agency."
Appearing on the August 1 edition of FNC's On the Record with Greta Van Susteren Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy made the accusation that witnesses names were even being changed, as see in the following exchange:
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: I mean, we can't find these survivors. I'd love to interview the survivors. But the administration is doing everything it can to hide them. They're dispersing them around the country. And of course, you know, the CNN report shows that even CIA operatives who were there are getting intimidated from above!
REP. TREY GOWDY: Including changing names, creating aliases. So you stop and think, What things most are calculated to get at the truth? Talk to people with firsthand knowledge. What creates the appearance or perhaps the reality of a cover-up? Not letting us talk to people who have the most amount of information, dispersing them throughout the country and changing their names!
Total Big Three Network stories/briefs: 0
On the August 20 edition of FNC's Fox Special Report with Bret Baier, James Rosen reported the following: "In the nearly 12 months since a premeditated attack at two U.S. installations in Benghazi killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, not a single terrorist has yet been brought to justice. But at the State Department, an investigation by the Accountability Review Board or ARB resulted in four employees being placed on administrative leave. Now, Secretary of State, John Kerry, has ordered all four reassigned to different jobs."
Total Big Three Network stories/briefs: 1 (CBS 1 brief, ABC 0, NBC 0)
On August 23 FNC's Adam Housley, on FoxNews.com reported: "Two weeks after the Obama administration announced charges against suspects in the Benghazi attack, a large portion of the U.S. team that hunted the suspects and trained Libyans to help capture or kill them is leaving Libya permanently. Special operators in the region tell Fox News that while Benghazi targets have been identified for months, officials in Washington could 'never pull the trigger.' In fact, one source insists that much of the information on Benghazi suspects had been passed along to the White House after being vetted by the Department of Defense and the State Department -- and at least one recommendation for direct action on a Benghazi suspect was given to President Obama as recently as August 7."
Housley went on to report: "Months after video, photo and voice documentation on the Benghazi suspects was first presented to high-level military leaders, the State Department and ultimately the White House, prison breaks in the country have eroded security. U.S. special forces have now been relegated to a 'villa,' a stopover for the operators before they're shipped out of the country entirely. 'We put American special operations in harm's way to develop a picture of these suspects and to seek justice and instead of acting, we stalled. We just let it slip and pass us by and now it's going to be much more difficult,' one source said, citing 1,200 prisoners escaping two weeks ago. It's already blowing up. Daily assassinations, bi-weekly prison escapes, we waited way too long.'
Housley then added: "The latest development raises questions about when the attackers will be brought to justice in the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans last September. The special operators are starting to get frustrated at the lack of action, and Fox News has been told by multiple sources that one special forces leader 'literally yelled' at former Libyan Chief of Mission William Roebuck and told him, 'so you're willing to let these guys get away with murder?' The outburst was 'met with crickets,' the sources said."
Total Big Three Network stories/briefs: 0
On September 3 the Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard reported: "Just minutes after 35 jihadists crashed through the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, nearly one year ago, the facility got word to the State Department, FBI and Pentagon that terrorists were attacking, according to a forthcoming book that provides the fullest review of the assault to date."
In the book called "Under Fire, the Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi," Bedard notes that "it is revealed that an unidentified security official in the Benghazi compound protecting Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens messaged the U.S. embassy in Tripoli: 'Benghazi under fire, terrorist attack.'...Twenty-five minutes after it began, the operation center at State received an electronic cable announcing the attack, according to authors Fred Burton, a former State Diplomatic Security agent and Samuel Katz, an author and expert on international special operations and counterterrorism. Their findings in 'Under Fire,' based on exclusive interviews of those in the battle, refute days of claims by the administration that the attack was sparked by Muslim anger at a U.S.-made anti-Muslim film."
Burton appeared on the September 3 edition of CBS This Morning to discuss the book with hosts Charlie Rose, Gayle King and correspondent John Miller. During the interview Burton made the point that "the moment that the first round was fired, the agents that were there knew absolutely that this was a terrorist attack." So far CBS is the only network to mention the book's findings.
Total Big Three Network stories/briefs: 1 (CBS 1, ABC 0, NBC 0)
The degree to which the Big Three networks have censored, briefly noted or spun the ongoing revelations about how the Obama administration blundered its handling of the Benghazi attack reveals how far they will go to insulate this White House from its own self-inflicted scandals. It must be asked, if new reports of a disengaged president during a terrorist attack, whistleblowers exposing a cover-up, and witnesses being intimidated have not been enough to drive the Big Three networks into wall-to-wall coverage, what will?
-- Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.


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Tag: rpmi medium formulation
Curcumin hinders PBDE-47-induced neutrophil extracellular traps release via Nrf2-associated ROS inhibition
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE-47), a sort of lipophilic persistent natural pollution (POPs) brominated flame retardant, has been extensively utilized in varied shopper merchandise. Nevertheless, the toxicity of PBDE-47 on human immune system has not been properly elucidated. Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) contribute to the innate immune responses, and the discharge of NETs is acknowledged as…
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subset: commoncrawl


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AbbVie to keep pharma CMO biz after spinoff from Abbott
After the split AbbVie will own the proprietary pharmaceutical products business and its associated contract manufacturing operations. The CMO (contract manufacturing organisation) will receive an early boost when it forms supply deals with Abbott.
"AbbVie will enter into one or more manufacturing and supply agreements with Abbott prior to the distribution pursuant to which AbbVie or Abbott, as the case may be, will manufacture, label, and package products for the other party", the firm wrote in a regulatory filing.
Deals will last up to five years and both firms will act in their own self-interest when agreeing terms, or, as Abbott words it, "payments will be determined on an arm's length basis". In the past inventory transfers between AbbVie and Abbott were recorded at cost.
Renegotiating these transfers at commercial rates should boost AbbVie contract manufacturing sales. The value of the deals is unclear – sections for CMO sales to Abbott in the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing are blank – but could be material given the relatively small size of the unit.
Sizing the Abbott CMO business is traditionally difficult as it groups its sales with the animal health unit in financial reports. However, the AbbVie spinoff filing allows for an estimation of pharma CMO sales.
AbbVie revenues are calculated by adding the CMO business to sales of propitiatory pharmaceutical products. This suggests the CMO generated sales of $101m (€81m) in the first quarter of 2012 and $422m in the last financial year.
To put this in context the commercial manufacturing unit at Patheon generated sales of $123m in the first quarter of 2012 and $573m in the last financial year. These figures exclude development services sales at Patheon.
Lingering links
Manufacturing agreements are just one way AbbVie and Abbott will, at least in the near-term, stay linked. A two-year information technology agreement is planned to guide the separation of systems and give the companies chance to install their own infrastructure.
"AbbVie will install and implement information technology infrastructure to support its critical business functions, including accounting and reporting, manufacturing process control, customer service, inventory control and distribution", the company wrote.
Management at AbbVie will also be familiar to anyone who follows Abbott. Richard Gonzalez, EVP of the pharmaceutical products group at Abbott, will lead AbbVie and other executives will also move to key roles at the spinoff.


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- Double sided Print. The image is printed on both sides
- Not Dishwasher safe. Hand wash your cup to ensure a long lasting quality print.
- Not Microwave safe. This tall travel cup is made of stainless steel. Do NOT put it in the microwave
- One size available. This tall travel cup holds 20 oz of liquid
- Metal Straw and plastic lid Included


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From Scott Beautier at the Economic Way of Thinking who writes that he learned a lot about economics from working at McDonalds. He shares an example
That's why I find stories like this one about the Mc10:35 fascinating. At most McDonald's around 10:30 grills must be switched from breakfast to lunch. Shortly before the change-over, last runs of breakfast foods are cooked and held in warming ovens. Then, the grills are cleaned and heated up for burger runs. The challenge for the manager is to figure out how much breakfast to cook--cook too little and you have people with a "right" to breakfast at 10:20 but no eggs to sell; cook too much and your store owner is irate about product waste. It's one of the most challenging moments in any McDonald's restaurant's day (and the worst for quality food and service, by the way!).
By combining eggs, ham, and burger into one massive sandwich out here in San Francisco, some clever managers have created a Mc10:35 that has helped smooth the transition from breakfast to lunch. The sandwich can only be offered around this time (because of the different grill temps for eggs and burger), and it feeds the hungover while at the same time helping to reduce product waste for managers.
It's no surprise to me that McDonald's--a franchise that must always be tending towards efficiency--has found a partial solution to the transition problem. And, furthermore, it's no surprise at all to me that the discovery has come from some of the people in the trenches.
I worked for 8 years at Walgreens during the late 80's and early 90's, 4 of those years years as an assistant manager at various stores in the Omaha, Ne. area. Walgreens used to - and probably still does - have a rewards program for employee suggestions. Employees, using a standardized form, could suggest that stores do this or that to improve profitability. If the corporation adopted the suggestion as general policy, the employee would get some type of reward (the passage of time has eroded my memory to the point that I can't remember the exact reward).
The "suits" at Walgreens, as we used to call the district managers and other higher-ups, realized that discoveries and ideas come from local, decentralized knowledge. Encourage your employees to share their ideas with you, and you'll end up with a better company.
Update: I forgot to mention that this is via King Banaian on Facebook.


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[Reposted from AfroLeo] "PAIPO is dead! Long live PAIPO!" Thus exclaims Afro Leo's friend and PAIPO-watcher Caroline Ncube, who has just sent us the latest news on this very sensitive, potentially valuable proposal:
Afro-IP carried an impassioned discussion on the Draft PAIPO Statute last year and a petition on PAIPO was hosted on change.org. In a recent paper in the Journal of Intellectual Property and Practice (JIPLP – abstracthere) I outlined the gist of the debate over the Pan-Africa Intellectual Property Organization (PAIPO) and shared some thoughts on how to improve the statute. The keenly-watched Brazzaville 5th African Union Conference of Ministers of Science and Technology (AMCOST V ) has come and gone. PAIPO was discussed on 15 November 2012. The documentation and presentations prepared for the meeting are available here. It is not exactly clear what the Council of Ministers decided about PAIPO. The only publicly available official document on the results of the meeting is a press release that does not mention PAIPO.
Some accounts state that they have shelved the statute and the organisation (see W New). Others indicate that they decided to proceed with PAIPO (D Ndhlovu 'Pan African IP body survives a high level attack', here). The AU'S STRC, which is the custodian of the drafting process, does not provide any details on its website, beyond describing the project and hosting the text of the statute. I have not received a reply to my email requesting details of the outcome of the November meeting.
So what did the Ministers decide? I believe it there is accuracy in both accounts of the outcome. It is probable that the Council of Ministers decided to proceed with PAIPO in principle (in keeping with their earlier 2007 decision) but postponed adopting the text until it has been further consulted upon and reworked. In that case, the (current) PAIPO Statute is dead. Long live PAIPO as we are likely to see another attempt at creating it in the future. If this does eventuate, it is hoped that the input provided by various academics, practitioners and other commentators will be taken on board.
If anyone has documentation pertaining to the decisions made at AMCOST V, please send it to Afro-IP.


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Today's global economy is full of dangers, one of the most precarious being the Silicon Valley tech sector; in particular, the impending stampede of "unicorns". This term has come to describe the primary threat facing the tech sector, with the possibility of a cataclysmic repetition of the 1999 dot-com bubble.
It is said that a man standing on the edge of cliff does not reason. Today's global economy is full of cliffs, one of the steepest being the Silicon Valley tech sector, and the men peering over it can be heard chattering nervously about . . . an impending stampede of unicorns. Those uninitiated in the Orwellian parlance of Silicon Valley and its venture capitalist circles could easily mistake such talk for the absurd ravings of a lunatic. But this term has come to describe the primary danger threatening to devastate the tech sector in a cataclysmic repetition of the 1999 dot-com bubble.
Mythical creatures and fictitious capital
The term "unicorn" describes a private-venture-capital–funded startup with an extremely high valuation: over $1 billion—something that only a few years ago was considered to be as rare as crossing paths with one of these mythical creatures. But over the past few years, the number of unicorns has grown exponentially, as venture capitalists, hedge funds, and investment institutions have fallen over each other to throw billions at tech startups in hopes of quickly multiplying their wealth with the least possible effort.
From fewer than ten in 2010, there are now 229 unicorns worldwide, with half based in California alone. Riding the wave of smart technology and the proliferation of app-based services, they include companies like Uber (the largest unicorn—valued at $68 billion), AirBnB, Instacart, Snapchat, Pinterest, Dropbox, etc. The total valuation of these companies stands at a staggering $1.3 trillion.
The breathtaking growth of these companies along with the promise of high returns for investors has been too much to resist for capitalist investors who already have more cash on hand than they could possibly spend in a lifetime. However, since early 2015, several prominent investors and journalists have begun to sound the bubble alarm, after years of avoiding the "b-word" as a taboo.
In a severe distortion of the market mechanism of supply and demand, the rising price of shares (a result of sky-high valuations), rather than curbing demand, has only intensified the frenzy of investors, afraid of missing out on the spoils. This inversion of the demand curve is both a hallmark of speculative bubbles, and, given the profit-driven nature of the market and lack of any rational controls for the overall allocation of investment, a periodically inevitable chaotic dynamic of the system.
"This time it's different!"
The turbulence in the global markets at the start of 2016 sent a chill down the spines of investors everywhere, not least in California, where a series of high-profile startups had their valuations slashed, bringing back memories of 1999. When the tech bubble burst in 2000 it wiped out $6.2 trillion in household wealth—roughly the same amount of value as was lost in US real estate during the last crisis between 2007 and 2009. Whereas the tech sector was minimally affected by the 2008 crisis, cutting only one percent of its workforce at the time, a number of factors suggest that the tech industry—and its herd of unicorns—won't fare so well during the next crisis.
For one, the sheer growth of the industry, which has been steady over the past five years, means there are far more jobs at stake now compared to 1999, when the internet was still in its infancy. Five years have now passed since internet-related expenditure and consumption surpassed that of the global agriculture or energy industries. This modern-day gold rush has driven up tech sector employment from 2.2 million at the time of the dot-com bust, to 6.7 million today. It now accounts for a whopping 11.6% of the private sector workforce. Even this figure doesn't take into account the millions of other non-tech workers whose jobs are at stake—the ones who actually provide the on-demand services, make the home deliveries, maintain the facilities, and otherwise perform the labor that allows these companies to operate beyond the virtual world.
The orgy of speculation has spread to real estate as well. Residents of the San Francisco Bay Area can attest to the relentless rent surge over the past decade, driven in large part by the arrival of thousands of highly paid tech employees on one hand, and a boom in high-priced commercial development on the other. Since the 1960s, San Francisco has zoned half of the city's land for residential use, but is now in the process of increasing its office space by 15% in order to make room for growing tech companies.
But the next avalanche will not be a mere repetition of 2000 nor 2008. Business Insider's Dave McClure (himself a unicorn investor) points out that this time, Fortune 500 companies are joining the stampede by hedging their stock, investing in unicorns or acquiring them outright, thereby preparing a "special twist" to the old familiar drama of the last bubble: "The REAL twist won't be tech founders or investors losing all their money on over-valued unicorns (though indeed, that will happen too) …the REAL twist is thousands of public companies hemorrhaging billions in losses and value over the next ten years, like gigantic, collapsing Manhattan skyscrapers in slow motion… except that it might not be that slow."
McClure holds out hope that despite the bubble, the up-and-coming startups will "disrupt" the market of the "senile" and "uninnovative" Fortune 500 companies, enriching the lucky investors who picked the right horse. Whether the process involves the loss of 2.2 million jobs as in 2000, or 8.7 million jobs as in 2008, doesn't enter his calculations.
The "everything bubble"
Noting that any number of sparks could set the field ablaze, Bloomberg's Noah Smith is among those warning the capitalist class that they should be worried: "The danger isn't that we're in a unicorn bubble. The danger isn't even that we're in a tech bubble. The danger is that we're in an Everything Bubble—that valuations across the board are simply too high . . . So what happens when China's housing and stock bubbles finally crash, as both are probably in the process of doing? What happens when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates?"
Whereas capitalist investors holding a stake in a particular industry, such as tech unicorns, are at pains to understand the process unfolding in Silicon Valley, Marxists approach the question in the context of the overall crisis of global capitalism in order to understand its implications for the class struggle. Compared to the relatively minor recessions of the early 1990s and 2000s, the global crisis that was unleashed in 2008 marked a new epoch in the organic crisis of capitalism. The inability of the ruling class to resolve any of the internal contradictions of the system or its political repercussions has prepared the way for an even more severe conflagration in the next period.
The capitalists and their governments around the world have done everything in their power to stimulate growth since 2008, to no avail. Despite their policies of austerity, quantitative easing, buying securities, and keeping interests at or near zero, the volume of world trade fell 0.8% during the second quarter of 2016, after stagnating for the first quarter. The New York Times reported that "The total value of American imports and exports fell by more than $200 billion last year. Through the first nine months of 2016, trade fell by an additional $470 billion . . . It is the first time since World War II that trade with other nations has declined during a period of economic growth."
Which is the real "creative class"?
Shrouded in the self-delusion of "changing the world" with its cutting-edge innovation and "revolutionary" technology, Silicon Valley exists in a bubble in more ways than one. The celebrity entrepreneurs who today ride triumphantly on their unicorns are held up as the "creative class," but as veteran investor Bill Gurley, a partner at the multibillion-dollar Benchmark Capital investment firm observed, "half of the entrepreneurs today, or maybe more—60% or 70%—weren't around in '99, so they have no muscle memory whatsoever."
In other words, not having lived through the last tech bubble themselves, the recent generation of entrepreneurs who are currently enjoying the novelty of the nouveau riche lifestyle will be blindsided when their stampede goes over the cliff.
Most of the venture capital firms and large-scale investors, however, were around in 2000 and learned to set up deals that would ensure that they will be first to get their returns if a company goes under. But as Nick Bilton wrote in Vanity Fair: "This doesn't protect the hundreds of thousands of people who now rely on a paycheck from the errand-running start-ups or taxi disrupters. Nor does it help the mom-and-pop businesses that have bought into the hype of Zynga, Yelp, or Twitter, and invested their savings, which continue to plummet."
The seeds of ingenuity coming out of Silicon Valley will mature fully only when the irrational chaos of the market is replaced by conscious planning by the working class on an international scale. The fields of web-based smart technology and social networks, based on the linking up of millions of people around the globe, are in reality a glimpse of socialist technology and will play a central role in the democratic coordination of humanity's resources in the future. When the working class moves to sweep away the anachronistic private ownership rights of what is the most social technology in history, the creativity and potential of all of humanity will be unleashed.
Top image by Yosuke Muroya on Flickr, CC-by-2.0


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Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania: Saturday around 7:00 am, Punxsutawney Phil (PA, USA) emerged from his burrow, did not see his shadow and predicted an early end to winter. A few minutes later and a few hundred miles north, Wiarton Willie (ON, Canada) surfaced, didn't see his (or is it her) shadow and also predicted an early spring.
Once again, like last year, immediately after the groundhogs issued their prognostications, the Houston and Calgary based 'Committee for Climate Certainty' rebutted the groundhogs' findings, claiming the science was uncertain. The Committee released several years of hacked emails between Wiarton Willie and Punxsutawney Phil – "What are we going to do about those climate doubter's concerns? We are likely to have a repeat of last year." Willie is purported to have written Phil in an email. "Let's stick to the date, fudge the timing, and hope no one notices," Phil is reported to have responded.
The trouble for the groundhogs began back on April 1, 2011 when the highly influential and credentialed Union of Concerned Scientists argued that climate change had already caused spring to arrive eight days earlier in the northern hemisphere and Groundhog Day should be moved up to Jan. 25 from Feb. 2. "We hope that the change of date will bring needed attention to the consequences of climate change," Dr. Phil DeGraeve, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University said in the April release. Phil (the groundhog) and Willie were unavailable for comment at that time and avoided media questions all summer.
To avoid the media, as well as recognizing how important climate predictions are for urban officials, both rodents now live in cities and only use their rural burrows for special occasions.
Representatives for both Wiarton Willie and Punxsutawney Phil, upon learning of this weekend's challenge from the Committee for Climate Certainty, immediately issued statements similar to last year's, arguing that climate predictions have always been an inexact science, but Groundhog Day is still an important harbinger of spring. "For more than 150 years groundhogs have provided a critical service to cold, spring-obsessed people in Northern US and Canada. They hope to continue to provide this important service and will respect the opinion of the Union of Scientists if the date of Groundhog Day is moved forward."
Prior to scurrying back into his burrow, Phil was overheard, 'First those busybody deniers, my Steelers lose again, and now this ongoing circus. What's a groundhog to do in the absence of evidence-based policy making?'
Amid all the confusion, Wiarton Willie (supposedly the smarter one, and rumored to be female) took a few reporters' questions. When asked if Willie thought Balzac Billy (AB, Canada), western Canada's most famous groundhog, would be able to provide corroborating evidence to the weekend's prediction, Willie answered, "Climate predictions out of Alberta are still suspect. This continues to be a bad time for all groundhogs."
Dimitri Zenghelis, an important economist who participated in the important Stern Climate Change Report added to the weekend's comments; "Climate change is the world's biggest market failure ever. It's unfair to people and it's unfair to rodents."
Mr. Zenghelis also pointed out that just last month in Davos, Mr. Stern admitted to 'getting it wrong' when projecting climate impacts (i.e., the gloomy Stern Report was too optimistic and climate change is even more serious than indicated in the 2006 report).
Phil was apparently overheard muttering, "I'm expected to get it right every time on the first try. These Davos meetings have been going on since 1971, and climate negotiators have already had 18 'conference of the parties' to reach an agreement and they're not even close." Punxsutawney Phil has been reluctant to break tradition and move Groundhog Day forward 8 days – possibly, as it could interfere with his annual attendance at the World Economic Forum's Conference in Davos.
Editor's Note: Groundhog Day is a tradition celebrated since the late 1800s in Pennsylvania, and later Southern Ontario, where crowds of up to 40,000 wait on the morning of Feb 2 to see if the groundhog, when emerging from his burrow, sees his shadow or not. There are now at least 30 groundhogs providing this service to communities across the US and Canada. The largest and longest running celebration is in Punxsutawney, PA. Weather folklore has it that if he sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. If not, there will be an early spring that year.
The annual tradition became more widely known through the 1993 movie "Groundhog Day" that showed if given enough time even someone like Bill Murray could meet a woman like Andie MacDowell. People who watched the movie still sing the Sonny and Cher song 'I Got You Babe' every now and then.
Photo: Groundhog Day from Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania; Flickr.com; Anthony Quintano


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09 July (THE AUSTRALIAN) - WHEN the history of the global warming scare comes to be written, a chapter should be devoted to the way the message had to be altered to keep the show on the road. Global warming became climate change so as to be able to take the blame for cold spells and wet seasons as well as hot days. Then, to keep its options open, the movement began to talk about "extreme weather".
by Matt Ridley
Part of the problem was that some time towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century it became clear that the Earth's average temperature just was not consistently rising any more, however many "adjustments" were made to the thermometer records, let alone rising anything like as rapidly as all the models demanded.
So those who made their living from alarm, and by then there were lots, switched tactics and began to jump on any unusual weather event, whether it was a storm, a drought, a blizzard or a flood, and blame it on man-made carbon dioxide emissions. This proved a rewarding tactic, because people – egged on by journalists – have an inexhaustible appetite for believing in the vindictiveness of the weather gods. The fossil fuel industry was inserted in the place of Zeus as the scapegoat of choice. (Scientists are the priests.)
The fact that people have short memories about weather events is what enables this game to be played. The long Australian drought of 2001-7, the Brisbane floods of 2009-10 and the angry summer of 2012-13 stand out in people's minds. People are reluctant to put them down to chance. Even here in mild England, people are always saying "I have never known it so cold/hot/mild/windy/wet/dry/changeable as it is this year". One Christmas I noticed the seasons had been pretty average all year, neither too dry nor too wet nor too cold nor too warm. "I have never known it so average," I said to somebody. I got a baffled look. Nobody ever calls the weather normal.
So it is deeply refreshing to read the new book called Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies About Climate Change by the internationally respected geologist Bob Carter and illustrated by the cartoonist John Spooner, which puts climate change exactly where it should be – in perspective. After demolishing many other arguments for carbon taxes and climate alarm, Carter runs through recent weather events, showing that there is nothing exceptional, let alone unprecedented, about recent droughts, floods, heat waves, cyclones or changes to the Great Barrier Reef.
How come then that last week the World Meteorological Organisation produced a breathless report claiming that "the decadal rate of increase (of world temperature) between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented"? It took professor Ed Hawkins of Reading University a short time to point out that this was no longer true if you compared 1993-2002 and 2003-2012 – ie, if you took the most up-to-date records. In that case, the latest decade showed a smaller increase over the preceding decade than either of the preceding decades did. In other words, the temperature standstill of the past 16 years has begun to show up in the decade-by-decade data.
And this is even before you take into account the exaggeration that seemed to contaminate the surface temperature records in the latter part of the 20th century – because of urbanisation, selective closure of weather stations and unexplained "adjustments". Two Greek scientists recently calculated that for 67 per cent of 181 globally distributed weather stations they examined, adjustments had raised the temperature trend, so they almost halved their estimate of the actual warming that happened in the later 20th century.
Anyway, by "unprecedented", the WMO meant since 1850, which is a micro-second of history to a paleo-climatologist like Carter. He takes a long-term perspective, pointing out that the world has been warming since 17,000 years ago, cooling since 8000 years ago, cooling since 2000 years ago, warming since 1850 and is little changed since 1997. Consequently, "the answer to the question 'is global warming occurring' depends fundamentally on the length of the piece of climate string that you wish to consider". He goes on: "Is today's temperature unusually warm? No – and no ifs or buts."
Carter is a courageous man, because within academia those who do not accept that climate change is dangerous are often bullied.
Indeed, Carter, who retired from James Cook University before he got interested in the global warming debate but remains an emeritus fellow, recently found himself deprived of even an email address by colleagues resentful of his failure to toe the line. As the old joke goes: what's the opposite of diversity? University.
Matt Ridley is a scientist and author. Taxing Air: Facts & Fallacies About Climate Change is by Bob Carter and John Spooner.
Tags: Bob Carter, climate, extreme weather, Fallacies, Global Warming, global warming scare, paleo-climatologist, World Meteorological Organisation


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The problem is simple to understand. Molecules of carbon and other greenhouse gases absorb heat. The more greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere, the warmer the atmosphere becomes, exacerbating global climate change. Solving the problem is not so simple, especially with regards to aviation – the source of two-percent of the annual greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. While biofuels have proven to be an effective, renewable, low-carbon alternative to gasoline and diesel, jet fuels pose unique challenges. These challenges have now been met with a new technique developed by researchers at the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), a partnership led by the University of California (UC) Berkeley that includes Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the BP energy company.
"We've combined chemical catalysis with life-cycle greenhouse gas modeling to create a new process for producing bio-based aviation fuel as well as automotive lubricant base oils," says Alexis Bell, a chemical engineer with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley. "The recyclable catalysts we developed are capable of converting sugarcane biomass into a new class of aviation fuel and lubricants with superior cold-flow properties, density and viscosity that could achieve net life-cycle greenhouse gas savings of up to 80-percent." These challenges have now been met with a new technique developed by researchers at the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), a partnership led by the University of California (UC) Berkeley that includes Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the BP energy company.
Bell is one of three corresponding authors of a paper describing this research in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper is titled "Novel pathways for fuels and lubricants from biomass optimized using life-cycle greenhouse gas assessment." Corinne Scown, a research scientist with Berkeley Lab's Energy Analysis and Environmental Impacts Division, and Dean Toste, a chemist with joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, are the other two corresponding authors. Additional authors are are Madhesan Balakrishnan, Eric Sacia, Sanil Sreekumar, Gorkem Gunbas and Amit Gokhale.
The concentrations of carbon and other greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere are now at their highest levels in the past three million years, primarily as a result of the burning of petroleum and other fossil fuels. Biofuels synthesized from the sugars in plant biomass help mitigate climate change. However, jet fuels have stringent requirements that must be met.
"Jet fuels must be oxygen-free, have the right boiling point distribution and lubricity, and a very low pour point, meaning the fuel can't become gelatinous in the cold temperatures of the stratosphere," Bell says. "Biofuel solutions, such as farnesane, mixed directly with petroleum jet fuel have been tested, but offer only modest greenhouse gas reduction benefits. Ours is the first process to generate true drop-in aviation biofuels."
Scown cites the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the importance of drop-in aviation biofuels.
"In a 2014 report, the IPCC pointed out that drop-in biofuels are the only viable alternative to conventional jet fuels," she says. "If we want to reduce our dependence on petroleum, air travel is going to require renewable liquid fuels because batteries and fuel cells simply aren't practical."
The process developed at EBI can be used to selectively upgrade alkyl methyl ketones derived from sugarcane biomass into trimer condensates with better than 95-percent yields. These condensates are then hydro-deoxygenated into a new class of cycloalkane compounds that contain a cyclohexane ring and a quaternary carbon atom. These cycloalkane compounds can be tailored for the production of either jet fuel, or automotive lubricant base oils. Lubricant base oils can produce even more greenhouse gas emissions on a per-mass basis than petroleum-derived fuels if even a fraction of the lubricant is repurposed as fuel. The ability of the EBI process to yield jet fuel or lubricants should be a significant advantage for biorefineries.
"Sugarcane biorefineries today produce ethanol, sugar and electricity," says PNAS paper co-author Gokhale, a chemical engineer, who is managing the research project from BP's side. "Expanding the product slate to include aviation fuels and lubricant base oils could allow for operators to manage their market risks better, which is exactly how petrochemical refinery complexes operate today. Rather than optimize for one product, they try to optimize the overall product slate."
Adds Scown, "Another important advantage offered by our process is that it enables refineries to convert a portion of the bagasse, the fibrous residue that remains after juice is extracted from sugarcane stalk, into fuels and other products. The rest of the waste biomass can be combusted to produce process heat and electricity to operate the refinery." This new EBI process for making jet fuel and lubricants could also be used to make diesel and additives for gasoline as Gokhale explains.
"With some minimal modifications to both the catalysts and the reaction schemes we can produce drop-in diesel as well," he says. "We're planning further studies on this."
Although the goal of this study was to develop a strategy for the flexible production of jet fuels and lubricant base oils in a Brazilian sugarcane refinery, the strategy behind the process could also be applied to biomass from other non-food plants and agricultural waste that are fermented by genetically engineered microbes.
"Although there are some additional technical challenges associated with using sugars derived entirely from biomass feedstocks like Miscanthus and switchgrass, there is no fundamental reason why we could not produce similar outputs, albeit in different proportions," Scown says. "We expect that further research will make this option increasingly attractive."
In their PNAS paper the authors acknowledge that the commercial implementation of their proposed process would include financial implications that extend beyond greenhouse gas emission reductions but hold that there still important incentives to encourage investments.
"We've shown in this study that biorefineries can use inexpensive catalysts to produce a suite of hydrocarbon fuels and lubricants," Scown says. "By strategically piecing together biological and thermochemical processes, biorefineries can also operate without any fossil-derived inputs."


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We all have a spiritual enemy. For those who don't know or believe that, their ability to identify the enemy's work in their lives and resist it will be nonexistent.
We are in a battle that has eternal significance. On the surface it may seem like a personal struggle with some mental or physical area of weakness. That's what Satan would love for you to think.
You are waging spiritual warfare when you give radical praise to God in the midst of your need and lack. When you are thankful to God for all He has done and is doing, you are defeating the enemy.
Keeping one's faith gets rough in this life. You'll get wounded. You'll get dazed. The enemy doesn't fight fair, and he's very aware of your weak points. Don't think for a moment that he won't sucker punch you right where it hurts.
We struggle against powers greater than we can imagine, who attack us from the spiritual realm. We need to be ready for the daily battle.
God never intended for us to be our sole defense. If we find that our resources are inadequate in life's battles, it's because we're not fully depending on God.
We often forget that there are hazards all around us that threaten our existence. Preventing attacks is much wiser (and less painful) than treating a wounded life.
We are in a tug of war everyday. The war is with our heart. We have Satan and his demons on one end of the rope and the Lord and His angels on the other.
Sometimes we may feel like our hearts simply can't get close to God no matter how sincerely we pray or read the Bible. What is wrong with our hearts? Ask the heart specialist.
It now occurs to me as I write this that it seems sort of strange that I would get a revelation on my way to prayer. I thought I was supposed to get revelations while I was in prayer, but hey, He's God and He can do what He wants, right?
Sometimes life just kicks you in the gut. Sometimes you deserve it, sometimes you don't, but regardless, it still hurts.
We, as Christians, are in a continual battle against our adversary, the devil. He is not an enemy of flesh and blood but rather a spirit being.
Everyday you have to check your armor to be sure nothing is missing. It is the only way to stand against any of the enemies' tricks. God is our source of strength and we are to go out to do warfare in the power of His might using all the resources he has given us.


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What's going on here? To an extent, this shouldn't be that surprising. We all know there are people who regularly mangle language. But, as Mark Liberman at Language Log points out, at least some of these data are no doubt ascribable to the "paper airplane effect":
At one point we thought we had discovered that a certain fraction of the population is surprisingly deaf to certain fairly easy speech-perception distinctions; the effect, noted in a population of high-school-student subjects, was replicable; but observing one group of subjects more closely, we observed that a similar fraction spent the experiment surreptitiously launching paper airplanes and spitballs at one another.It's worth remembering that, while many participants in an experiment take it seriously and are happy to help out the researcher, some are just there for the money they get paid. Since we're required to pay people whether they pay attention to the experiment or not, they really don't have any incentive to try hard. Does it surprise anyone that high-school drop-outs are particularly likely to be bad at/uninterested in taking tests?
It's probably relevant that the researchers involved in this study are linguists. There are some linguists who run fabulous experiments, but as a general rule, linguists don't have much training in doing experiments or much familiarity with what data looks like. So it's not surprising that the researchers in question -- and the people to whom they presented the data -- weren't aware of the paper airplane effect.
(I should say that psychology is by no means immune to this problem. Whenever a new method is adopted, it takes a while before there's a critical mass of people who really understand it, and in the meantime a lot of papers with spurious conclusions get written. I'm thinking of fMRI here.)