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KALDEWEI presents current survey "paradigm change in the bathroom as an answer to changes of society"
Ahlen, February 2011. In our fast-moving world, the demands on every single person continually increase. To remain able to perform, people need to be able to compensate for growing heteronomy and hectic everyday life by regeneration phases. Individual design options for the bathroom as a room for intimate relaxation becomes more and more important. At the instruction of premium bathroom furnisher KALDEWEI, the Cologne rheingold institute for qualitative market and media analysis has examined the paradigm change of the former wet cell. For the study "paradigm change in the bathroom as an answer to changes of society", a representative selection of test respondents explain their changed perception of the bathroom and their impressions of two fictional high-tech scenarios developed by KALDEWEI trend research.
Back to a Private and Individual Room
The changed requirements of bathroom function and design are proven by four surveys on the psychology of bathing already initiated by KALDEWEI. They focused on different aspects. A clear change was obvious to the proven definition of the former term "premium": Design and quality are just as important now as in the past. However, the external demonstrations of status expected back then are no longer as important. The bathroom is considered an individual room reflecting our real selves away from everyday life. More and more often, functional aspects such as the washing machine and, where possible, also the toilet, are banished from a wellness bathroom. There is a trend away from the "one size fits all" standard thinking towards strong customisation of furnishings and materials. The bathroom has become more important as a private retreat than the bedroom.
Future Perspectives: Man at the Centre of Nature and Technology
Two seemingly contrary approaches characterise the requirements for the bathroom of the future: The wish for more technology on the one hand is countered by an experience of originality on the other. This is not about returning to the washtub, but about using natural materials such as wood or natural stone and organic shapes. Additionally, large windows, sitting and lying areas are to provide comfort and the impression of wide spaces – people prefer wide, open bathroom designs that offer a view of nature. The bathroom as a mirror of one's personality is no longer banished into a corner. In contrast, it forms the central bathroom element, like a natural water basin. This new generosity is complemented by spacious floor-level showers. A bathroom designed like this is also suitable for use together with a partner. It thus contributes positively to relationships.
"The wish for organic forms and high-quality natural materials obvious in the respondents questioned is already being implemented consistently in our products," explains Marcus Möllers, KALDEWEI corporate communications. "We thereby create a combination of individuality and luxury for a space away from everyday problems; it is a wide space where we can find ourselves." Thus, the repeatedly award-winning portfolio of the premium bathroom furnisher offers not only free-standing bath and whirl tubs made of natural steel enamel, but also bathtubs lowered into the floor, as well as exclusive and relaxing lighting concepts.
Bathroom of the Future: An Experience Full of Atmosphere
The idea of two bathroom scenarios that were consciously designed in a futuristic fashion was implemented into the traditional survey approach. The reactions of the respondents asked correspond to the insights gained in the course of the survey: People are looking for elements that increase comfort, such as atmospheric video projection surfaces or new bathroom concepts. Complex shower systems that turn getting clean into an adventure also found approval. The same applies to the option of setting one's individual favourite water temperature. However, modern technology has to increase comfort unobtrusively. Those questioned did not approve of specifically technological future scenarios where the users are seemingly at the mercy of smart technology that "patronises" them, e.g. by automatically recognising and analysing moods. While the application of meditation music is generally well-liked, external communication such as chatting or phone calls in the bathroom are not desired.
Massive Increase in Importance
The requirements of our future bathrooms are essentially characterised by the desire to enter into a successful symbiosis of technology and nature. Our hectic lives must be balanced: we need a place reflecting our real selves away from everyday life, a place where our inner selves can recover. This role is more and more strongly assigned to the most individual and intimate room of our homes: the bathroom. Thus, as the present survey results indicate, it is increasingly at the centre of our personal wishes and requirements as the actual room reflecting our selves.
The requirements of the future bathroom are essentially characterised by the wish for a successful symbiosis of technology and nature. In particular, this applies to the use of natural materials such as wood or natural stone and organic shapes, which create a sensual component in our ambience. The bathroom should look out over nature if possible. Thus, the survey's results place new challenges to the whole bathroom architecture: In addition to a natural look, large windows, sitting and lying comfort are as important as an impression of wide space. Most respondents find spacious, open bathrooms looking out over nature fascinating.
Source: © KALDEWEI | press_BD_So_bin_ich_eigentlich_Raum.jpg


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Dr. Mark Webb and Sebastian Bentkowski join Stephen to discuss their varying paths into Buddhism, comparing theory / practice and all the MU! in between.
Tag Archive > zen
Episode 041: How the West Was Mu
Eastern thought has been a curiosity for Western culture ever since Marco Polo made his epic journey to Asia in the 1200s. The legacy of this curiosity lives on, and so Bad Philosophy has decided to undertake the momentous task of reconciling Eastern and Western philosophy in a single episode (because we're just awesome like that). Joining me for his first episode ever is mechanical engineering graduate student Sean Mullen, alongside an uncharacteristically in-person Kevin Saunders. NUF (Numero Uno Fanboy) Jed Cummins worked the camera (sort of) and despite many technical difficulties we actually managed some good conversation. So grab a fortune cookie, sit down on your tatami, and have a listen…

subset: commoncrawl


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Outdoor air pollution, in the most extreme cases, can be immediately identified even without any special training. It casts a haze over cities, collects on streets and buildings, and provides dramatic fodder for the news. But while high drama is often a prerequisite for news about air quality to be reported, the real story is the health impacts that occur even when the air isn't thick enough to see. **What is air pollution and who's affected by it?** Some common outdoor air pollutants are largely invisible gases, such as ground-level ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and volatile organic compounds. Other pollutants, such as particulate matter, are made up of solid particles and liquid droplets mixing in the air. Several pollutants can combine to make more familiar and obvious forms of air pollution, like smog. The sources of air pollution are varied, ranging from motor vehicle exhaust to wildfires to petrochemical plants. And the presence of pollutants in the air changes over space and time. Unhealthy air has the potential to affect anyone, but people who live and work closest to major sources of air pollution experience the most severe health impacts. Outdoor air pollution and its effects on the human body cause over 4 million deaths a year worldwide [1], with fine particulate matter alone leading to more than 3.2 million premature deaths [2]. In October 2013, the World Health Organization [announced](http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/iarcnews/pdf/pr221_E.pdf) they are considering particulate matter, a major component of both outdoor and [indoor air](https://publiclab.org/wiki/indoor-air-quality) pollution, as a Group 1 carcinogen along with tobacco smoke and asbestos. This page is a place to collect and organize resources on investigating air pollution. Visit the [air quality tag page](https://publiclab.org/tag/air-quality) to see the latest community posts about air quality on Public Lab, and get updates on this topic by subscribing: Subscribe to air quality Sources: [1] [WHO resources on ambient air pollution](https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2). [2] [Brauer et al. 2012](https://doi.org/10.1021/es2025752). _Lead image from @eustatic's [work](/notes/Schroyer/11-23-2013/measure-coarse-and-fine-air-particulates-with-a-dustduino#c7711)_ On this page you can: See community stories and projects on air quality Join the conversation Ask a question, answer a question, or follow future questions on air quality Post an issue brief that describes your local concern related to air quality Research air quality Find resources to get started with community air monitoring Decide what pollutants to monitor Learn about common air pollutants and monitoring methods Do or add an activity Learn about regulations, policies, and advocacy related to air quality Find further reading and resources on air quality See what's still unknown and next step challenges in air quality monitoring ## Community stories and projects [![contribute_sm.png](/i/42019)](/i/42019?s=o) Image: [@mollydanielsson](https://publiclab.org/profile/mollydanielsson) _How have different communities approached their local air quality concerns?_ ### Air quality projects Public Lab community projects tagged with `air-quality-projects` will appear here [wikis:air-quality-projects] ### Particle sensor projects Public Lab has initiated a [Particle Sensing Project](/wiki/particle-sensing) focused primarily on [silica](/wiki/silica). This project overlaps with and includes the DustDuino and is coordinated on the [Air-Quality Google Group](/lists). A variety of particle sensors have been posted on the site: [wikis:particle-sensor] Do you have a project or story to share? Start a project page or write a blog post and add the tag air-quality-projects, or post links here! ### More community projects and stories + **[Remembering Tonawanda](https://publiclab.org/notes/kgradow1/07-01-2020/remembering-tonawanda)**: Public Lab blog post by @kgradow1 and @jjcreedon on the incredible organizing and community science for cleaner air in Tonawanda, New York. + **South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA)**: on [this page](https://publiclab.org/notes/A_SCH/11-08-2020/mobilizing-action-through-community-science-draft#South+Durban,+South+Africa), you'll find videos of Desmond D'sa describing how [SDCEA](https://sdcea.co.za/)'s community organizing around bucket air monitors gave rise to new air quality legislation in South Africa. + **[Community Observation Networks for Air (CONA)](https://cona-nz.blogspot.com/)**: out of New Zealand, @guolivar is building and using lower-cost air sensors to monitor local air quality and engage communities in air quality research. + **[Modeling Environmental Health Impacts of I-10 to Engage Residents and Decision Makers](https://thrivingearthexchange.org/project/claiborne-new-orleans-la/)**: out of New Orleans, Louisiana, this project with the Thriving Earth Exchange included air monitoring with low-cost sensors to connect environmental data and health impacts near the high-traffic I-10 corridor. + **[Breathe Project](https://breatheproject.org/)**: brings together people who work on and are impacted by air pollution to research and map air quality in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and beyond. + **[Imperial IVAN](https://ivan-imperial.org/)**: out of Imperial Valley, California, this community-based monitoring network and its successful organizing were the model for [state legislation](https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/capp) aiming to reduce air pollution in the most impacted communities. ### Latest community stories + Community groups in St. James Parish, Louisiana, are making gains in preventing a proposed Formosa plastics plant from operating and doubling toxic air emissions in the area. + "[Appeal Challenges Louisiana's Air Permits for Formosa Plastics' Massive Petrochemical Complex in Cancer Alley](https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/appeal-challenges-formosa-plastics-air-permits-in-louisiana-2020-02-14/)" + "[Judge delays crucial permit for Formosa plastics plant; requires deeper analysis of racial impacts](https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_8b2e3284-29d8-11eb-9442-6f8b45c7fcb1.html)" ## Join the conversation [![join_conversation_sm.png](/i/42020)](/i/42020?s=o) Image: [@mollydanielsson](https://publiclab.org/profile/mollydanielsson) ### Questions from the community + See if other community members are asking questions like yours + Ask a question so other community members can offer support + Sign up below to be notified when someone asks an air quality question [questions:air-quality] ### Post an Issue Brief Share a local concern or issue about air quality and get support from the Public Lab community by writing and posting an Issue Brief. Visit "[Write an Issue Brief](https://publiclab.org/wiki/issue-brief)" to find information on what an issue brief is, see examples, and learn how to write one. ## Research air quality [![Research_note_sm.png](/i/42021)](/i/42021?s=o) Image: [@mollydanielsson](https://publiclab.org/profile/mollydanielsson) Planning and carrying out a community air quality study can seem daunting. Be reassured that many other community groups have planned and done air quality studies, and that the Public Lab community is here to support you. At any time, you can [ask questions](https://publiclab.org/wiki/air-quality#Questions+from+the+community), start an [issue brief ](https://publiclab.org/wiki/air-quality#Post+an+Issue+Brief)with any amount of information you have, or start [documenting your project](https://publiclab.org/wiki/projects), and gather input from other Public Lab members. ### Getting ready Here are some resources that might help you get started with a community air monitoring project. **Posts about gathering with community** [nodes:grid:community-meeting] **See how other communities have investigated their local air** Many community groups have studied local air quality in their neighborhoods and shared their extensive knowledge and experiences in publicly-available written guides. @kgradow1 has compiled a handy **[short list of community air guides here](https://publiclab.org/notes/kgradow1/09-09-2020/a-short-list-of-community-air-guides)**, and explained the advantages and limitations of each guide. Much of the more general guidance on this page was collected from these community air guides. A particularly comprehensive how-to guide is the _[Guidebook for Developing a Community Air Monitoring Network: Steps, Lessons, and Recommendations from the Imperial County Community Air Monitoring Project](https://trackingcalifornia.org/cms/file/imperial-air-project/guidebook)._ It covers community engagement, choosing tools and software, determining monitoring sites, and analyzing data. ### Deciding what to monitor Some of the main factors that will affect how you monitor air quality: The pollutant of interest and where you'll monitor it Your air monitoring goals: what you want to do with your data Below are some resources that can help you answer these questions #### What pollutants might be in the air near you? Considering common sources of air pollutants can help you determine which pollutants might be in your community. **_General sources_**: the buttons below list some examples of human activities, industries, and natural sources. Click the buttons to see common air pollutants these sources use or produce. Oil and gas operations, power plants Oil and gas production, refining, storage; oil- and coal-fired power plants Volatile organic compounds (VOCs); "BTEX" VOCs benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, especially associated with natural gas; formaldehyde associated with natural gas compressor stations Methane Sulfur compounds Nitrogen oxides (NOx) Particulate matter (PM) Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) Manufacturing facilities Chemical manufacturing, commercial manufacturing, petrochemical plants Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), especially ethylene oxide, benzene, formaldehyde Nitrogen oxides (NOx) Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) Construction and mining Dust / particulate matter Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) Urban environments Exhaust from gas-powered motor vehicles; municipal waste sites Particulate matter Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), especially ethylene, propylene, and acetylene Nitrogen oxides Sulfur dioxide Carbon monoxide Methane Agricultural activity Ammonia Hydrogen sulfide Nitrogen oxides Natural events: Wildfires, volcanoes Wildfires: fine particulate matter (PM2.5) Volcanic activity: sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, making volcanic smog ("vog") **_Sources near you_**: the activities listed below can help you learn about searching public databases to find out what industries and emissions sources are near you. [notes:grid:activity:air-database] After you narrow down your pollutants of interest, you can read more about them and the range of methods to investigate the pollution below in the "[Air pollutants and monitoring methods](https://publiclab.org/wiki/air-quality#Air+pollutants+and+monitoring+methods)" section. ##### How can air pollutants impact your health? You might choose a specific pollutant to monitor because you know it's in your local air and you're experiencing health impacts. **[ToxFAQs](https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/index.asp)** by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) in the US contains a large alphabetical list of compounds, how you might be exposed to each, and their potential health impacts. **[Toxic City: Health Impacts of Chemicals Emitted in the South Durban Area](https://publiclab.org/notes/kgradow1/11-06-2020/toxic-city-health-impacts-of-chemicals-emitted-in-the-south-durban-area)**: this guide by the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) refers to specific companies in the South Durban area of South Africa, but the industry types, emissions, and health impacts can be applicable to anywhere. If there aren't specific pollutants you're looking for and you're more interested in detecting what's in the air, you can do broad spectrum sampling. #### What are your study goals? Determining what you **ultimately want to do with air quality data** will help guide the approach you take and what kind of data will best answer your questions. Some example goals: + Create community awareness of an air quality issue + Identify pollution hotspots for more monitoring + Share information on an air quality issue with media + Submit data to a regulatory agency In general, using data for regulatory or legal purposes will require certain methods to collect the data and meeting set data quality standards. **Posts about planning an environmental study** + [Start an environmental monitoring study](https://publiclab.org/wiki/start-enviro-monitor-study) + [Strategizing around an air quality issue](https://publiclab.org/wiki/frac-sand-action-oriented-resources#Strategizing): this particular page is about frac sand but could be applied to other air quality issues ### Air pollutants and monitoring methods Based on your initial observations and research on what sources of air pollution are near you, you have an idea of which air pollutants you want to investigate. **What methods are available to study them?** You might be able to use [existing public databases](https://publiclab.org/notes/bhamster/11-30-2020/comparing-air-quality-databases-a-fun-activity) to meet your study goals, or you might decide to collect your own air monitoring data. Below are resources for gathering your own data on air quality. #### Overview of common approaches ODOR LOGGING Many air pollutants have a distinctive smell Government agencies often have odor complaint hotlines Recent posts on odor logging Image from Odor Log 1.0 VISUAL MONITORING Visible emissions of airborne particulate matter Training and certification available Image from Smoke School SENSORS Detect pollutants continuously, outputs in real-time Various ways to detect different pollutants: metal oxide sensors, electrochemical, light-scattering/optical Some sensors can detect both gases and particulate matter, others have more specificity Trade-offs with real-time monitoring and data collected Recent posts on air sensors Image from @warren SAMPLING For gases, capturing an air sample in a container for further analysis by an air testing lab Colorimetric samplers use reactive surfaces that indicate pollutant exposure by changing color Various other methods for dust sampling and particulate matter sampling, including filter-based methods Recent posts on air sampling Image from @kgradow1 For another way to view different air monitoring approaches, check out the box entitled, **"What other kinds of community air monitoring are there?"** on pg. 12 of the _[Guidebook for Developing a Community Air Monitoring Network](https://trackingcalifornia.org/cms/file/imperial-air-project/guidebook)_. It outlines different approaches that vary in mobility and timeframes, including fenceline monitoring, grab sampling, personal monitoring, and mobile monitoring. #### Gases **[Air polluting gases and monitoring methods](https://publiclab.org/wiki/air-polluting-gases-and-monitoring-methods)**: on this wiki page we describe some main approaches to monitor gas-phase air pollutants, and then list **common outdoor gaseous pollutants** (e.g., volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides, ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen sulfide) and **examples of tools** to detect and measure them. Visit and edit the page to help grow this resource! One of the tools listed for sampling gas-phase air pollutants that has a storied history in community campaigns is the **[Bucket Monitor](https://publiclab.org/wiki/bucket-monitor)**. On the linked wiki page, you'll find information on how people have been using the bucket monitor to advocate for change, plus updated resources on building and using a bucket monitor. You can also find a kit to build your own bucket monitor in the Public Lab store. #### Particulate matter (PM) **[Introduction to Particulate Matter](https://publiclab.org/wiki/pm)**: find **community questions** and **research notes** about particulate matter, plus a deep dive into different kinds and sizes of PM. **[Collecting data on particulate matter](https://publiclab.org/wiki/pm-monitoring)**: kicks off with key resources on strategizing your **monitoring efforts to match with your community goals**, then describes different monitoring methods including regulatory methods and Smoke School for communities. **[Choosing a method for Particulate Matter Monitoring](https://publiclab.org/wiki/choosing-a-method-for-particulate-matter-monitoring)**: goes deeper into different PM monitoring approaches (visual, filter-based, optical, passive) to help you choose the method right for you. For each approach, it describes **advantages and disadvantages**, **when it might be useful**, and **example tools**. One of the more accessible tools for monitoring PM that also helps you [understand how some sensors work](https://publiclab.org/notes/stevie/05-20-2019/exploring-with-the-simple-air-sensor) is the **[Simple Air Sensor](https://publiclab.org/wiki/simple-air-sensor)**. Developed by Public Lab, it's an open-source, optical sensor-based tool that signals changing PM levels in your air with a colored LED light. #### Tools for mapping and viewing data + **[Real-time Geospatial Data Viewer (RETIGO)](https://www.epa.gov/hesc/real-time-geospatial-data-viewer-retigo)** + A tool by the US EPA to map and view your own sensor data + [Question: Has anyone used EPA's RETIGO to upload air quality data?](https://publiclab.org/questions/liz/01-14-2019/has-anyone-used-epa-s-retigo-to-upload-air-quality-data) #### Air quality subtopics A collection of wiki pages on monitoring methods and approaches covering particulate matter and gases [wikis:parent:air-quality] #### Activities Activities on Public Lab that have been tagged with `air-quality` will appear here [activities:air-quality] ## Regulations, policy, and advocacy ### US Environmental Protection Agency standards and regulations #### National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) _**What are the standards?**_ Section 109 of the **Clean Air Act** directs the EPA to establish **National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS)** requisite to _protect public health_ with an adequate margin of safety (primary standard) and _for the protection of public welfare_ (secondary standard). The standards are for six common pollutants, referred to as [criteria air pollutants](https://www.epa.gov/criteria-air-pollutants): ground-level ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and lead. Section 109(d)(1) of the Clean Air Act requires EPA to complete a thorough review of the NAAQS at 5-year intervals and enact new standards when appropriate. The standard levels are listed in the summary table below and can also be [found here](https://www.epa.gov/criteria-air-pollutants/naaqs-table). [![EPANAAQS.gif](https://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/005/670/medium/EPANAAQS.gif)](https://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/005/670/original/EPANAAQS.gif) _**How are the air quality standards enforced?**_ States and tribes use air monitoring data and models on the criteria pollutants to evaluate whether they meet the NAAQs. They send their evaluation information to the EPA, which then [designates an area as attainment or nonattainment](https://www.epa.gov/criteria-air-pollutants/naaqs-designations-process) for the pollutant standard. Nonattainment areas must [create and carry out a plan for attaining standards](https://www.epa.gov/criteria-air-pollutants/naaqs-implementation-process) by reducing emissions. Complete details of the standards, measurement principles, and data interpretation, can be found in [Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations Part 50](http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?tpl=/ecfrbrowse/Title40/40cfr50_main_02.tpl). _**EPA Test Methods**_ EPA approved instruments are designated as either a Federal Reference Method (FRM) or Federal Equivalent Methods (FEM). The complete list of approved instruments for evaluating NAAQS is provided on the EPA [Ambient Monitoring Technology Information Center (AMTIC) website](http://www.epa.gov/ttn/amtic/criteria.html). #### Hazardous air pollutants / air toxics In addition to the six criteria air pollutants, the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate 187 [hazardous air pollutants](https://www.epa.gov/haps) (also known as air toxics). These [pollutants](https://www.epa.gov/haps/initial-list-hazardous-air-pollutants-modifications) can cause serious health effects, such as cancer, even at low levels. ### State and local regulations **[Community Air Protection Program](https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/capp)** - California AB 617: addressing inequities in air quality and monitoring, California is implementing the Community Air Protection Program to "...reduce exposure in communities most impacted by air pollution." + The impacts of this 2017 bill are yet to be seen--let's update here as they become apparent + Potential pros: puts more air quality monitoring at the local level; aims to connect air quality to health outcomes and remediation efforts + Questions and potential challenges: will limited funding and capacity make communities compete with one another for resources? How exactly will polluting facilities be held accountable? **Example Air Pollution Regulations in Wisconsin** | VIOLATIONS | RELEVANT PROVISION | |-|-| | Air pollution which is defined as the presence of smoke, dust, gases, fumes in the air. The presence of these substances must also lead to injury on humans, animals or plants as well as interfere with the enjoyment of life or one's property. | NR 400.02 | | Fugitive dust. This refers to the presence in the air of dust from sources such as open fields and piles. There will be a violation on air quality when during handling, transporting and storing of materials, the people undertaking these activities do not take precaution and some of these materials end up being released into the air. | NR 415.04| | Causing, allowing or permitting solid or liquid hazardous substances into the air. This includes dust, soot, pollen, smoke and liquid droplets. One can spot that violation by simply observing the ambient air. | NR. 415.05| | Industrial sand mines that do not take precautions to ensure dust does not escape into the air. | NR 415.075| ### International regulations + [European Union Ambient Air Quality Directive](https://ec.europa.eu/environment/air/quality/index.htm) ### Other resources for air quality standards + The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) and its **National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)** also offer a wealth of guidance. In particular, the [NIOSH Manual of Analytical Methods](http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2003-154/) is a collection of procedures for sampling and analysis of contaminants including workplace air. + The **Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)**, based in Atlanta, Georgia, is a federal public health agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Their [Toxicological Profiles](http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/index.asp#P) are particularly useful for when a pollutant can be identified by compound or element. + Correlating environmental monitoring with health monitoring: the article, "[New Voices, New Approaches: Drowning in Data](https://issues.org/ottinger/#.X9JdJukpqrk.link)," by Gwen Ottinger and Rachel Zurer outlines some of the limitations with relying on air quality standards alone. **Community posts and pages on air quality regulations** [nodes:air-quality-regulations] ### Advocacy [![New_project.png](/i/42022)](/i/42022?s=o) Image: [@mollydanielsson](https://publiclab.org/profile/mollydanielsson) _How can we use air monitoring data, either gathered from public databases or collected ourselves, to advocate for healthier air? To fill in information gaps left by regulatory agencies?_ In the [Community stories and projects](https://publiclab.org/wiki/air-quality#Community+stories+and+projects) section above, you'll find examples of how community groups have advocated for changes to air quality policy. **In general, how can people take action with community-sourced air quality data?** + Not all communities can or need to collect air quality data comparable to regulatory monitor data. + [Citizen Science Programs at Environmental Agencies: Best Practices](https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2020-11/documents/citizen_science_programs_at_environmental_agencies_best_practices.pdf) - this guide from the Environmental Law Institute suggests **practices to ensure that community-sourced data can be used effectively for a range of purposes**. For example: >"Data used for policy or enforcement decisions must be highly accurate, whereas data that is used for screening or exposure may be moderately reliable since these assessments will be investigated further by the agency." + [This table](https://publiclab.org/wiki/pm-monitoring#Proposed+precision+categories+for+citizen+monitoring) from the EPA's [Air Sensor Guidebook](https://www.epa.gov/air-sensor-toolbox/how-use-air-sensors-air-sensor-guidebook) matches different kinds of monitoring goals with some suggested goals for how precise and complete the air monitoring data should aim to be. + [Citizen Science Programs at Environmental Agencies: Case Studies](https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2020-11/documents/citizen_science_programs_at_environmental_agencies_case_studies.pdf) - this partner guide to the "Best Practices" guide above from the Environmental Law Institute offers case studies of successful community science and government partnerships. Air quality case studies start on pg. 5. **Community posts about general advocacy pathways** [nodes:advocacy-pathways] ## Further reading and resources + [Statistics for Action air quality resources](https://sfa.terc.edu/using/options/air.html): includes links to an air quality guide, plus activities to help people understand and apply environmental data. + "[How has the US fracking boom affected air pollution in shale areas?](https://theconversation.com/how-has-the-us-fracking-boom-affected-air-pollution-in-shale-areas-66190)": article by Gunnar Schade explaining how air pollution is rising in places where fracked oil and gas wells abound. + [Polluter's Paradise](https://www.propublica.org/series/polluters-paradise): an award-winning series of stories from Louisiana on the petrochemical industry and its environmental impacts in the region. + [EPA Air Pollution Monitoring for Communities grants](https://www.epa.gov/air-research/air-pollution-monitoring-communities-grants): funded partnerships between research institutions and community groups to study air sensor technology. + [Environmental Sensor Data Repository](https://esdr.cmucreatelab.org/) from the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University: open source data from a large network of environmental sensors reporting on pollutants including particulate matter, total volatile organic compounds, and carbon monoxide. ### Real Time Data EPA and its State and Tribal partners publish near real-time air quality data (typically hourly updates) as well air quality _forecasts_ on the [AirNow web site](http://airnow.gov/). The AirNow site also contains, links to [Air Quality Webcams](https://www.airnow.gov/resources/web-cams/), which are yet another way to evaluate air pollution. Examples of clear and hazy days from [Boston HazeCam](https://hazecam.net/camsite.aspx?site=boston): [![boston.jpg](https://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/005/671/medium/boston.jpg)](https://i.publiclab.org/system/images/photos/000/005/671/original/boston.jpg) ### Historical Data Historical air quality test results are freely available through [EPA AirData](http://www.epa.gov/airdata/) ### Wikis All wiki pages related to air quality [wikis:air-quality] ## Next step challenges + Step-by-step guides on how to use existing databases to find out what air emissions and polluting facilities are nearby in a community. + Clear steps on how to use and find patterns in raw air quality data, including publicly-accessible existing data or data measured by community scientists. + Improving accuracy in lower-cost sensors for VOCs and air toxics. + Testing the accuracy of currently available low-cost VOC sensors. + Encouraging government agencies to act on low-cost sensor data: e.g., defined pathways for community scientists to influence decision-making that isn't limited to collecting research-grade data. ...
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sarasage | "I want to update this post to say that since I posted this question, Esri has developed an all-in-one app called, ArcGIS Field Map. It seems to be..." | Read more » | about 3 years ago | |||
sarasage | "@cfastie, Thank you so much for this helpful response. " | Read more » | about 3 years ago | |||
cfastie | "Hi Sara, Just about any handheld GPS device (e.g., Garmin) or any GPS app for a phone (I use GeoTracker) will record a track. The GPS coordinates ..." | Read more » | about 3 years ago | |||
sarasage | "@seankmcginnis Yes, you are correct that our ideal future state would be a single device. To answer your questions, we are using iOS devices and w..." | Read more » | about 3 years ago | |||
seankmcginnis | "Thank you @sarasage - that helps. The AQ data is being captured in your data logger disconnected from the GPS coordinates being captured in GPSKit...." | Read more » | about 3 years ago | |||
Ag8n | "Yes,I see what you mean. Got a weird approach for the problem. First, please become a little familiar with rtlsdr dongles by going to rtl-sdr.com...." | Read more » | about 3 years ago | |||
sarasage | "@seankmcginnis @Ag8n I spent some time combing through the instrument manuals just now to answer your questions. Besides setting the instruments in..." | Read more » | about 3 years ago | |||
Ag8n | "Just going down that road a little bit further. What distance do you need to cover and at what data rate? There are wireless bands on 900mhz IS..." | Read more » | about 3 years ago | |||
seankmcginnis | "@sarasage To make sure I am understanding your current configuration - You have handheld air quality monitors that log the results on the data logg..." | Read more » | about 3 years ago | |||
shikshabook22 | "http://shikshabook.com/courses.aspx " | Read more » | over 3 years ago | |||
mashalawais | "Hi Thanks for sharing. Yes, the EPA website has a great list of resources, I hope to use that as a reference and try to make something that is acce..." | Read more » | over 3 years ago | |||
bhamster | "Hi @mashalawais These are great questions for a community resource guide to tackle. I'm only beginning to learn about resources that can help ident..." | Read more » | over 3 years ago | |||
zengirl2 | "My team is specifically working on this issue concerning Indonesia, but other teams are also working on other countries. So, I could potentially ma..." | Read more » | almost 5 years ago | |||
stevie | "Hi!! --Specifically Indonesia, or people who are interested in wildfire issues in other places as well? " | Read more » | almost 5 years ago | |||
liz | "Wow @vinushi1995 - great documentation! This will really help people! In case the URL ever changes, i'm uploading a local copy of the PDF instructi..." | Read more » | almost 5 years ago | |||
liz | "@liz awards a barnstar to vinushi1995 for their awesome contribution! " | Read more » | almost 5 years ago |


text:
Sorry for the recent lack of Sysadmin Sunday posts. I don't always have good Sysadmin content thought up. Sometimes I do, but I don't have time to actually set up an environment to demonstrate it. Sometimes I don't even have time to get around to writing much of anything.
So, we're back this week with a tutorial on setting up Subversion, a revision control system that, in my opinion, is much better and user-friendly than other revision control systems (such as CVS). You'll see me (and many others) casually use "SVN" when referencing Subversion. You can use subversion to synchronize directories (folders) across different workstations, to collaborate changes on large documentation or programming projects, or to simply have a revision control and change rollback system for your files. It works with binary and text, but can take up a lot of hard drive space on the server for large or frequently-changing data sets.
Initially installing Subversion varies on the platform and package management system available. I am installing subversion on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon Server Edition. Here, it's as simple as:
$ sudo apt-get install subversion
On FreeBSD 6.3, I got it installed using pkg_add as well, with no problems.
$ sudo pkg_add -r subversion
Subversion packages are available for many platforms, but if you wish to build it from source, the documentation is quite good.
HiR Reading Room
Of particular note is the O'Reilly and Associates book: Version Control with Subversion. It is free and open source, so it's also available to read in its entirety on the web. I personally liked it enough that I bought the paperback book, as I dealt with subversion on a daily basis at my last full-time job. If you'll be doing a lot with Subversion, this is a great book to have around as a reference guide.
Please note that I'm not dealing with any encryption whatsoever, so you should probably make sure that your svn server isn't accessible from the Internet. Being behind a private firewall or cheap router will work for testing this at home. Read the book for information on securing SVN with ssh or using better authentication options. There's even a web-based SVN Server, which allows your users to browse the repository with a browser while using all of the flexibility and authentication modules at Apache web server's disposal. All of that and plenty more is covered in this book.
Starting svnserve
First, make a directory to keep the repositories in. A repository is simply a directory on the SVN server where data is stored. I chose /var/svn/repositories.
$ sudo mkdir -p /var/svn/repositories
Then, we need to start our svnserve daemon. As I mentioned before, there are several ways to run SVN. Just starting a vanilla svnserve daemon is the easiest way but not always the best way. For the purposes of this demonstration, I will keep it simple.
Place "svnserve -d -r /var/svn/repositories" (or whatever repository root you chose) in the startup scripts, usually in /etc/rc.local. Either reboot, or run "[sudo] svnserve -d -r /var/svn/repositories" from the command line to start it. This restricts svn to exporting only the contents of /var/svn/repositories.
Your first repository
Let's set up our first repository. On the SVN Server, run the following. You may choose whatever you wish for the repository name, but it has to be under the repository root you defined when you started svnserve.
$ sudo svnadmin create /var/svn/repositories/hir-test/
You should create a username and a password by editing the "svnserve" and "passwd" files in the "conf" directory under the repository you just created. Keep in mind that passwords are all in plaintext for this example. It's not really the best way to do things, but it is the simplest.
$ vi /var/svn/repositories/hir-test/conf/svnserve.conf
un-comment the following lines:
anon-access = read
auth-access = write
password-db = passwd
$ vi /var/svn/repositories/hir-test/conf/passwd
Add a line like the following to the end of the file to define your username and password:
axon = setecastronomy
Now, go to a client computer (or simply access it locally but through the svn:// url scheme) and use SVN to check out the repository:
[axon@floaty-fbsd ~]$ svn checkout svn://firstname.lastname@example.com/hir-test/
[axon@floaty-fbsd ~]$ cd hir-test
[axon@floaty-fbsd ~/hir-test]$ ls -la
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 3 axon axon 512 Mar 29 21:37 .
drwxr-xr-x 20 axon axon 2560 Mar 29 21:38 ..
drwxr-xr-x 6 axon axon 512 Mar 29 21:37 .svn
Copy a file into the repository, or make a new file. Your choice. Then use "svn stat" to see the status of the files in the directory.
[axon@floaty-fbsd ~/hir-test]$ cp ~/internet-resume.doc .
[axon@floaty-fbsd ~/hir-test]$ svn stat
? internet-resume.doc
SVN doesn't recognize the file, hence the "?" before the file name. We must first add the file with "svn add"
[axon@floaty-fbsd ~/hir-test]$ svn add internet-resume.doc
A (bin) internet-resume.doc
[axon@floaty-fbsd ~/hir-test]$ svn stat
A internet-resume.doc
At this point, SVN is aware of the file, but it still hasn't uploaded it to the svn server. If we go to another machine and check out the repository, it will still be empty. (sorry, I used the DNS name in this example but it's the same server as 192.168.0.108)
axon@hosting:~$ svn checkout svn://firstname.lastname@example.com/hir-test
Checked out revision 0.
axon@hosting:~$ cd hir-test/
axon@hosting:~/hir-test$ ls -la
total 12Back on the client machine where we added the file, though, use "svn commit" to update the central repository on the SVN server. You should always commit with a message saying what changes were made. use --message for that. It should then prompt for your password.
drwxr-xr-x 3 axon axon 4096 2008-03-29 16:52 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 axon axon 4096 2008-03-29 16:52 ..
drwxr-xr-x 6 axon axon 4096 2008-03-29 16:52 .svn
[axon@floaty-fbsd ~/hir-test]$ svn commit --message "added my resume"
Authentication realm:
Password for 'axon': setecastronomy (not shown on screen)
Adding (bin) internet-resume.doc
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 1.
Now, whenever you check out the repository elsewhere, the files will be in sync. Use svn update to refresh your local repository to the latest version:
axon@hosting:~/hir-test$ svn update
A internet-resume.doc
Updated to revision 1.
axon@hosting:~/hir-test$ ls
When you delete, copy or move files within a local copy of the repository, it's best (practically mandatory) to use svn delete (svn rm), svn copy (svn cp), and svn move (svn mv) for these tasks, respectively.
So far, the commands we've covered the following for client machines. This should be enough to get you up and running.
svn checkout svn://[user@]host/repo-name - Checks out a local copy of the repository
svn update - Refreshes the local repository
svn add - Adds version control to new files in the local copy of the repository
svn commit --message "test message" - Updates the central repository
svn delete
svn copy filename1 filename2 - make a copy of a file within the repo.
There is also a windows shell extension available, called TortoiseSVN. This puts a TortoiseSVN menu in the list when you right-click while browsing files on Windows. From here, you can check out, update, add, commit and manipulate repositories right from within Windows.


text:
Life is tough. But Nuns are tougher. If you need helpful advice just Ask Sister Mary Martha.
Monday, August 29, 2011
The Order of the Eastern No-No
Here's my question....At what time in history did Catholics decide to condemn Masonry or The Order of the Eastern Star? Are they the same? HELP!
I bought some religious items from an Estate Sale. The estate lot had a membership to the Fresno Chapter of The order of The Eastern Star. The membership holder was a Nun. I have her holy cards, letters she has written with her signature, friends memorial cards( including a few priests) and other devotional items.
I wasn't really surprised by her membership, however others looked at it has the devil walked into the room! How can a Nun be in the Eastern Star? Can Catholics be a Mason? I'm not armed with such knowledge can you help me?
When did the Church first warn about the Masons? 1738 AD. You can read all about it here. But if you are allergic to things that are dry as dust, scroll to the bottom, where you'll find what Pope Clement had to say back then.
The last time I discussed the Catholic Church's teachings about the Free Masons, some Free Masons hair went on fire. Be sure and read the comments section, unless you can't stand the smell of burning hair. It's like an exploded blow dryer in there. I'll let you wade through this. I'll have some coffee while you read.
So that's that.
The Order of the Eastern Star is a women's auxiliary group for the Masons. When it started way back when, you had to be related to a Mason to be eligible. You had to be a daughter, wife, widow, niece...something familial...to a Mason. The rules have relaxed (no doubt to increase dues revenue) to include women who have some sort of relationship with a Mason. I'm not sure how close the relationship has to be. Or how you would prove that relationship. Maybe you have to show your Facebook page.
I don't know what was going on with that nun. She shouldn't have been in the Order of the Eastern Star, the Church expressly forbids it. Maybe her poor misguided father was a Mason, and she was somehow 'gifted' with a membership and just stuck the membership certificate in a drawer where it stayed until she died. Let's hope that was the case.
I'm not inclined to behave as though Masons and their families are devils with horns, unless one is willing to judge that such notables as Clara Barton and that lady that wrote "The Little House on the Prairie" (both members of the Eastern Star) were Satan worshippers. But the Church has asked us not to be Masons.
So that's that. If it all makes you smolder, try this.
5 comments:
- Maureen said...
In my overprotected and naive youth, I had no idea of the hatred shown to Catholics by the Masons.
To this day I remember how shocked I was, to find, when I was first introduced to the grandfather of a current boyfriend, that he regarded me with the deepest loathing and hostility. Grandpa was very involved with the Masons, some sort of head honcho; and he was a lawyer, and apprently it was important to be a Mason if you aspired to the practice of Law. I have yet to meet a decent member of that profession.
Of course, it didn't help that I was also Jewish, to boot - (Jewish mother).
Needless tosay, that particular relationship did not last..... - 4:12 PM
- Whitney said...
I'm an Anglo-Catholic (it's like an Episcopalian that wishes we were a Catholic) and I'm also apart of the masonic family. They don't do any devil worshiping, special rituals or... well, anything interesting. Masons are a bunch of old men who get together and get drunk and Eastern Star is basically the same, except with old ladies and more tea.
Being said, if you're going to be Catholic you should do it right and do what the Pope says. From what I can tell, the 18th century issues with the masons have pretty much died down. It's more of an issue of -- just do it cause I say so.
Which isn't a big deal. There's lots of other clubs where old men can get together and drink! :)
(oh and if any masons reply with hair burning again, just ignore them. A lot of masons don't have lives outside of masonry -- my husband included -- so they get overly offended when any comment -- even a correct one-- is said about them) :) - 4:41 PM
- Donna. W said...
It isn't only the Catholic Church that disapproves of things Masonic: Several of the denominations frown on it, too. Although I know several men who ignore the disapproval and become Masons anyhow.
My grandfather was an Episcopal vicar. He said he conducted a funeral once where the deceased asked for a Masonic rite. Thinking it would be something like a few additional prayers by the lodge brothers, my grandfather allowed it. He said it wound up being much more than that and he felt it crossed some kind of line that separates the sacred from the profane. He vowed he'd never do another Masonic funeral. (Which is different from doing a funeral for a Mason.)
- Paige said...
This is why there will never be a(nother) Catholic president.


text:
June existing home sales might be down 5.4 percent nationwide but hot weather is heating up hot markets to boiling, pushing sales to levels unseen in years and raising the specter of price bubbles.
Increased competition for the limited inventory of non-distressed property listings helped push the average home sales-to-listing price ratio to 95.6 percent in June, according to the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey.
This was the first time in nearly three years this important ratio has been this high. But the HousingPulse monthly survey also found that much of June's growth in sales-to-list price ratios was driven by brisk home purchase activity in three states - California, Arizona and Nevada.
"Strong demand, particularly in areas of California, Arizona and Nevada, are pushing up home prices very quickly in the short-term. And because many of the home purchases in these areas are cash transactions, there appears to be less braking of prices by our current appraisal system than seen in other parts of the country," noted Thomas Popik, research director for Campbell Surveys and chief analyst for HousingPulse.
"This trend raises the distinct possibility of housing price bubbles emerging in some of these hot housing markets," he added.
While a rise in sales-to-price ratios was one of the most visible signs of improvement in the non-distressed property sector of the housing market, the average time on market and the average sales price for non-distressed properties also registered strong improvements. In fact, closed sales prices for non-distressed properties would have increased more if it were not for tough appraisal standards placing restraints on mortgage-financed property prices.
HousingPulse results showed time on market for non-distressed listings fell sharply in June to 11.7 weeks, a drop of a full week from the May reading of 12.7 weeks. As recently as March, the non-distressed property time on market had been 14.0 weeks. The June 2012 time on market for non-distressed listings is the lowest in over two years and substantially below the June 2011 reading of 15.0 weeks.
Metrics for non-distressed properties are some of the best indications of housing market conditions, because month-to-month policy decisions of mortgage servicers on REO (real estate-owned) and short sale disposition do not bias these statistics.
The average sales price for non-distressed properties rose from $257,200 in May to $260,900 in June, an increase of 1.4 percent in only one month. Numerous real estate agents responding to the HousingPulse survey indicated that prices would be increasing more rapidly, except that appraisal standards require comparables from distressed properties. Additionally, comparables that are several months old do not match recent market values, hampering mortgage-financed buyers from placing winning bids in multiple offer situations and instead giving properties to more frugal cash-only purchasers.
In markets with a high proportion of cash sales, property prices are increasing more rapidly. Markets with a high proportion of cash sales and strong price appreciation include California and Arizona/Nevada. HousingPulse results indicated that sales-to-list price ratios in the western regions of California and Arizona/Nevada exceeded all other areas of the United States by wide margins.
The Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey involves approximately 2,500 real estate agents nationwide each month and provides up-to-date intelligence on home sales and mortgage usage patterns.


text:
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text:
Still Me
The third Lou Clark novel, following the number one international bestsellers Me Before You and After You.
Lou Clark arrives in New York ready to start a new life, confident that she can embrace this new adventure and keep her relationship with Ambulance Sam alive across several thousand miles. She is hurled into the world of the super-rich Gopniks: Leonard and his much younger second wife, Agnes, and a never-ending array of household staff and hangers-on. Lou is determined to get the most out of the experience and throws herself into her job and New York life within this privileged world.
Before she knows what's happening, Lou is mixing in New York high society, where she meets Joshua Ryan, a man who brings with him a whisper of her past.
In Still Me, as Lou tries to keep the two sides of her world together, she finds herself carrying secrets – not all her own – that cause a catastrophic change in her circumstances. And when matters come to a head, she has to ask herself: Who is Louisa Clark? And how do you reconcile a heart that lives in two places?


text:
Contact Us
911 Restoration of Northwest Michigan
Our professional technicians are ready 24/7/365 to give you the Fresh Start that you deserve. Whether you need water damage restoration, fire damage restoration, mold remediation, sewage cleanup, commercial restoration or any other disaster restoration, we'll be here for you. Call 911 Restoration no


text:
Greetings from the Department of Natural Resources Atchafalaya Basin Program!
News: The Advocate: Outdoors notebook: LDWF seeking comments on proposed season dates Montgomery Advertiser: Rheta Johnson: Of sinker cypress and causes New Orleans Advocate: Cajuns invented having a good time The Advocate: Macaluso: Weekend to bring much-needed sunshine Save the Date: Catahoula Levee Trail Hike, Jan 17, meet at 8 am at Pack and Paddle in Lafayette Prehistoric Mounds Tour, Jan 24 from 10 am - 12 pm at Marksville State Historic Site New Docent Training and guided bird walk at Cypress Island Preserve Visitor Center. Please RSVP Kacy King at firstname.lastname@example.com or (337) 356-1373. Vigilantes on the Bayou, Jan 23 - 24 from 9 am - 4 pm at Longfellow-Evangeline State Historic Site in St. Martinville Cinema on the Bayou, film festival to advance "the understanding of Cajun and Creole cultures through film screenings, film panels and cultural exchanges among French Louisiana, the United States and the Francophone countries of the world." Jan 21 - Jan 25 in Lafayette Save the Basin Fundraiser, Jan 25 from 11 am - 5 pm at Artmosphere Bistro in Lafayette Healing Traditions of Acadiana, Jan 31 from 11 am - 2 pm in Vermilionville Learn Your Binocular, Jan 31 from 3 - 7 pm at the Highland Road Observatory in Baton Rouge Good Gumbo for a Good Cause, Jan 31 in Opelousas Help Friends of the Atchafalaya purchase a kayak for the Atchafalaya Swamp Base, through Feb 13 Quilt the Swamp, Contemporary Fiber Artists of Louisiana's annual exhibit on display at Bluebonnet Nature Center in Baton Rouge from 9 am - 5 pm Tues - Sat and from 12-5 on Sunday through Feb 15 Manchac: In the Wake of North Pass, a visual art exhibit that explores the destructive beauty and complex role of invasive aquatic plants upon the fragile ecology of Louisiana's bayous, Jan 10 through March 15 at LASM in Baton Rouge
Save the Date:
Send in your Basin Pics! Let us know if you have an upcoming event to promote the Basin!
Send in your Basin Pics!
Let us know if you have an upcoming event to promote the Basin!
Checking the water:The information below is obtained from the USGS and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and has been compiled by DNR into this format to allow a quick look at information pertinent to the Atchafalaya Basin. Click here for current weather conditions and water levels.
Data is for 1/15/2015
Ohio River at CairoLocation: Southernmost gauge on the Ohio River in Illinois Reading significance - used to forecast rises on the Mississippi. Lag time, 4 to 6 days.Flood Stage: 40'Stage: 22.3'24 hour change: -1.2'Forecast: expect to FALL to 21.1' by 1/20
Mississippi River, just south of ORCS, at Red River LandingReading: Mississippi River south of ORCS, after the diversion into the Atchafalaya Flood Stage: 48'Stage: 36.6'24 hour change: -0.1'Forecast: expect to FALL to 34.1' by 1/20
Mississippi River at Baton RougeFlood Stage: 35'Stage: 22.4'24 hour change: 0'Forecast: expect to FALL to 20.1' by 1/20
Mississippi River at New OrleansFlood Stage: 17'Stage: 6.9'24 hour change: +0.1'Forecast: expect to FALL to 5.8' by 1/20Atchafalaya River, just south of ORCS, at SimmesportReading: The combined latitudinal flows of the Red, Black, Ouachita, and ORCS flow from the Mississippi Flood Stage: 47'Stage: 18.9'Forecast: expect to FALL to 16.7' by 1/20
Atchafalaya River at MelvilleFlood Stage: 34'Stage: 14.0'Forecast: expect to FALL to 12.0' by 1/20
Atchafalaya River at Krotz SpringsFlood Stage: 29'Stage: 12.4'Forecast: expect to FALL to 10.8' by 1/20
Atchafalaya River above Butte LaroseFlood Stage: 20'Stage: 9.2'Forecast: expect to FALL to 8.2' by 1/20Atchafalaya River at Bayou Sorrell Locks on the GIWWFlood Stage: 12'Stage: 5.3'Forecast: expect to FALL to 4.6' by 1/20
Atchafalaya at Millet (Myette) PointFlood Stage: 15'Stage: 5.7'Forecast: expect to FALL to 5.4' by 1/20
Atchafalaya River at Morgan CityFlood Stage: 6'Stage: 2.8'Forecast: expect to FALL to 2.4' by 1/20
Murphy Lake near Bayou SorrelStage: 10.30'
Lower Grand River at Bayou SorrelStage: 6.62'
Bayou CourtableauStage: 21.39'
Buffalo Cove at Round IslandStage: 6.55' Middle Fork, Bayou LongStage: 6.67'
Arm of Grand Lake near Crook CheneStage: 8.42'
Bayou Darby at Fausse Pt. CutStage: 13.69'
Pontoon Bridge at Butte LaroseStage: 12.47
Lake Pelba at I-10, HendersonStage: 13.06'


text:
IIT Madras
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Cousins Evan And Ally Honor The Memory Of Their Grandmother With A Sharsheret B'nai Mitzvah Project
We are going to be running the Baltimore Marathon 5K on October 12th in memory of our grandmother, Ruth Merwitz. Our "Mom Mom" passed away this past January from Primary Peritoneal Cancer which has symptoms very similar to Ovarian Cancer. Mom Mom was a very warm and caring person who had a very unique way of making everyone around her feel special. Everyone loved her because she was such a joy to be around. She loved to laugh and enjoyed everything about life. She cared with such kindness and such a big and open heart and so unconditionally. She was truly an amazing person. All of us, her 8 grandchildren, thought we were her favorite because of the way she made us feel- so loved, so cared for, so special, so complete.
Being Jewish was something that was very important to Mom Mom. We always loved spending time with her having sleepovers, playing games, and going on outings. But we especially loved being with her for the Jewish Holidays. We do not think we will ever taste matzo ball soup as good as hers! Mom Mom will forever live in our hearts and we will always remember the special times we spent together.
Doing things for others is what truly made Mom Mom happy. To honor the loving person she was, we have decided to support Team Sharsheret for our Bat and Bar Mitzvah projects. We hope that we can help save lives and prevent other families from ever having to feel the pain of losing someone they love. Please consider either joining our team on October 12th or supporting us by clicking here to make a donation to Sharsheret in honor of our very special Mom Mom, Ruth Merwitz.
As she used to always tell us,
we love you to the moon and back!
Ally Merwitz and Evan Feuerman


text:
A DISPENSER-ELECT of Patronage gave notice through the newspapers that applicants for places would be given none until he should assume the duties of his office.
"You are exposing yourself to a grave danger," said a Lawyer.
"How so?" the Dispenser-Elect inquired.
"It will be nearly two months," the Lawyer answered, "before the day that you mention. Few patriots can live so long without eating, and some of the applicants will be compelled to go to work in the meantime. If that kills them, you will be liable to prosecution for murder."
"You underrate their powers of endurance," the official replied.
"What!" said the Lawyer, "you think they can stand work?"
"No," said the other - "hunger."
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Chicago: Ambrose Bierce, "The Hardy Patriots," Fantastic Fables in Fantastic Fables (New York: The Century Co., 1899), Original Sources, accessed July 20, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=LBDIP2KCVLBSUSL.
MLA: Bierce, Ambrose. "The Hardy Patriots." Fantastic Fables, in Fantastic Fables, New York, The Century Co., 1899, Original Sources. 20 Jul. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=LBDIP2KCVLBSUSL.
Harvard: Bierce, A, 'The Hardy Patriots' in Fantastic Fables. cited in 1899, Fantastic Fables, The Century Co., New York. Original Sources, retrieved 20 July 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=LBDIP2KCVLBSUSL.


text:
The official US beatification of Martin Luther King has come at the heavy price of silence about his radical espousal of economic justice and anticolonialism.
It is easy to forget that in his day, in his own country, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was considered a dangerous troublemaker. Even President John Kennedy worried that King was being influenced by Communists. King was harassed by the FBI and vilified in the media. The establishment's campaign to denigrate King worked. In August 1966 – as King was bringing his civil rights campaign to Northern cities to address poverty, slums, housing segregation and bank lending discrimination – the Gallup Poll found that 63 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of King, compared with 33 percent who viewed him favorably.
Today Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is viewed as something of an American saint. The most recent Gallup Poll discovered that 94 percent of Americans viewed him in a positive light. His birthday is a national holiday. His name adorns schools and street signs. In 1964, at age 35, he was the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Americans from across the political spectrum invoke King's name to justify their beliefs and actions.
In fact, King was a radical. He believed that America needed a "radical redistribution of economic and political power." He challenged America's class system and its racial caste system. He was a strong ally of the nation's labor union movement. He was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, where he had gone to support a sanitation workers' strike. He opposed US militarism and imperialism, especially the country's misadventure in Vietnam.
In his critique of American society and his strategy for changing it, King pushed the country toward more democracy and social justice.
If he were alive today, he would certainly be standing with Walmart employees and other workers fighting for a living wage and the right to unionize. He would be in the forefront of the battle for strong gun controls and to thwart the influence of the National Rifle Association. He would protest the abuses of Wall Street banks, standing side-by-side with homeowners facing foreclosure and crusading for tougher regulations against lending rip-offs. He would be calling for dramatic cuts in the military budget to reinvest public dollars in jobs, education and health care. He would surely be marching with immigrants and their allies in support of comprehensive immigration reform. He would be joining hands with activists seeking to reduce racial profiling by police and ending the mass incarceration of young people. Like most Americans in his day, King was homophobic, even though one of his closest advisors, Bayard Rustin, was gay. But today, King would undoubtedly stand with advocates of LGBT rights and same-sex marriage, just as he challenged state laws banning interracial marriage.
Indeed, King's views evolved over time. He entered the public stage with some hesitation, reluctantly becoming the spokesperson for the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, at the age of 26. King began his activism in Montgomery as a crusader against racial segregation, but the struggle for civil rights radicalized him into a fighter for broader economic and social justice and peace. Still, in reviewing King's life, we can see that the seeds of his later radicalism were planted early.
King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929, the son of a prominent black minister. Despite growing up in a solidly middle-class family, King saw the widespread human suffering caused by the Depression, particularly in the black community. In 1950, while in graduate school, he wrote an essay describing the "anticapitalistic feelings" he experienced as a youngster as a result of seeing unemployed people standing in breadlines.
During King's first year at Morehouse College, civil rights and labor activist A. Philip Randolph spoke on campus. Randolph predicted that the near future would witness a global struggle that would end white supremacy and capitalism. He urged the students to link up with "the people in the shacks and the hovels," who, although "poor in property," were "rich in spirit."
After graduating from Morehouse in 1948, King studied theology at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania (where he read both Mohandas Gandhi and Karl Marx), planning to follow in his father's footsteps and join the ministry. In 1955, he earned his doctorate from Boston University, where he studied the works of Reinhold Niebuhr, the influential liberal theologian. While in Boston, he told his girlfriend (and future wife), Coretta Scott, that "a society based on making all the money you can and ignoring people's needs is wrong."
When King moved to Montgomery to take his first pulpit at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he was full of ideas but had no practical experience in politics or activism. But history sneaked up on him. On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and veteran activist with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), decided to resist the city's segregation law by refusing to move to the back of the bus on her way home from work. She was arrested. Two other long-term activists – E. D. Nixon (leader of the NAACP and of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) and Jo Ann Robinson (a professor at the all-black Alabama State College and a leader of Montgomery's Women's Political Council) – determined that Parks' arrest was a ripe opportunity for a one-day boycott of the much-despised segregated bus system. Nixon and Robinson asked black ministers to use their Sunday sermons to spread the word. Some refused, but many others, including King, agreed.
The boycott was very effective. Most black residents stayed off the buses. Within days, the boycott leaders formed a new group, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). At Nixon's urging, they elected a hesitant King as president, in large part because he was new in town and not embroiled in the competition for congregants and visibility among black ministers. He was also well educated and already a brilliant orator, and thus would be a good public face for the protest movement. The ministers differed over whether to call off the boycott after one day but agreed to put the question up to a vote at a mass meeting.
That night, 7,000 blacks crowded into (and stood outside) the Holt Street Baptist Church. Inspired by King's words – "There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression" – they voted unanimously to continue the boycott. It lasted for 381 days and resulted in the desegregation of the city's buses. During that time, King honed his leadership skills, aided by advice from two veteran pacifist organizers, Bayard Rustin and Rev. Glenn Smiley, who had been sent to Montgomery by the pacifist group, Fellowship of Reconciliation. During the boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, and he was subjected to personal abuse. But – with the assistance of the new medium of television – he emerged as a national figure.
In 1957, King launched the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to help spread the civil rights crusade to other cities. He helped lead local campaigns in different cities, including Selma and Birmingham, Alabama, where thousands marched to demand an end to segregation in defiance of court injunctions forbidding any protests. While participating in these protests, King also sought to keep the fractious civil rights movement together, despite the rivalries among the NAACP, the Urban League, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and SCLC. Between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles, spoke more than 2,500 times, and was arrested at least 20 times, always preaching the gospel of nonviolence. King attended workshops at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, which connected him to a network of radicals, pacifists and union activists from around the country whose ideas helped widen his political horizons.
It is often forgotten that the August 1963 protest rally at the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, was called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. King was proud of the civil rights movement's success in winning the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act the following year. But he realized that neither law did much to provide better jobs or housing for the masses of black poor in either the urban cities or the rural South. "What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter," he asked, "if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?"
King had hoped that the bus boycott, sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience would stir white southern moderates, led by his fellow clergy, to see the immorality of segregation and racism. His famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," written in 1963, outlines King's strategy of using nonviolent civil disobedience to force a response from the southern white establishment and to generate sympathy and support among white liberals and moderates. "The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation," he wrote, and added, "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
King eventually realized that many white Americans had at least a psychological stake in perpetuating racism. He began to recognize that racial segregation was devised not only to oppress African Americans but also to keep working-class whites from challenging their own oppression by letting them feel superior to blacks. "The Southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow," King said from the Capitol steps in Montgomery, following the 1965 march from Selma. "And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man."
When King launched a civil rights campaign in Chicago in 1965, he was shocked by the hatred and violence expressed by working-class whites as he and his followers marched through the streets of segregated neighborhoods in Chicago and its suburbs. He saw that the problem in Chicago's ghetto was not legal segregation but "economic exploitation" – slum housing, overpriced food and low-wage jobs – "because someone profits from its existence."
These experiences led King to develop a more radical outlook. King supported President Lyndon B. Johnson's declaration of the War on Poverty in 1964, but, like his friend and ally Walter Reuther, the president of the United Auto Workers, King thought that it did not go nearly far enough. As early as October 1964, he called for a "gigantic Marshall Plan" for the poor – black and white. Two months later, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, he observed that the United States could learn much from Scandinavian "democratic socialism." He began talking openly about the need to confront "class issues," which he described as "the gulf between the haves and the have-nots."
In 1966 King confided to his staff:
You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You're really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.
Given this view, King was dismayed when Malcolm X, SNCC's Stokely Carmichael, and others began advocating "black power," which he warned would alienate white allies and undermine a genuine interracial movement for economic justice.
King became increasingly committed to building bridges between the civil rights and labor movements. Invited to address the AFL-CIO's annual convention in 1961, King observed,
The labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who today attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.
In a 1961 speech to the Negro American Labor Council, King proclaimed, "Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children." Speaking to a meeting of Teamsters union shop stewards in 1967, King said, "Negroes are not the only poor in the nation. There are nearly twice as many white poor as Negro, and therefore the struggle against poverty is not involved solely with color or racial discrimination but with elementary economic justice."
King's growing critique of capitalism coincided with his views about American imperialism. By 1965 he had turned against the Vietnam War, viewing it as an economic as well as a moral tragedy. But he was initially reluctant to speak out against the war. He understood that his fragile working alliance with LBJ would be undone if he challenged the president's leadership on the war. Although some of his close advisers tried to discourage him, he nevertheless made the break in April 1967, in a bold and prophetic speech at the Riverside Church in New York City, entitled "Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence." King called America the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and linked the struggle for social justice with the struggle against militarism. King argued that Vietnam was stealing precious resources from domestic programs and that the Vietnam War was "an enemy of the poor." In his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), King wrote, "The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America."
In early 1968, King told journalist David Halberstam, "For years I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of society, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you've got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values."
King kept trying to build a broad movement for economic justice that went beyond civil rights. In January, 1968, he announced plans for a Poor People's Campaign, a series of protests to be led by an interracial coalition of poor people and their allies among the middle-class liberals, unions, religious organizations and other progressive groups, to pressure the White House and Congress to expand the War on Poverty. At King's request, socialist activist Michael Harrington (author of The Other America, which helped inspire Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to declare a war on poverty) drafted a Poor People's Manifesto that outlined the campaign's goals. In April, King was in Memphis, Tennessee, to help lend support to striking African American garbage workers and to gain recognition for their union. There, he was assassinated, at age 39, on April 4, a few months before the first protest action of the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, DC.
President Johnson utilized this national tragedy to urge Congress to quickly enact the Fair Housing Act, legislation to ban racial discrimination in housing, which King had strongly supported for two years. He signed the bill a week after King's assassination.
The campaign for a federal holiday in King's honor, spearheaded by Detroit Congressman John Conyers, began soon after his murder, but it did not come up for a vote in Congress until 1979, when it fell five votes short of the number needed for passage. In 1981, with the help of singer Stevie Wonder and other celebrities, supporters collected six million signatures on a petition to Congress on behalf of a King holiday. Congress finally passed legislation enacting the holiday in 1983, 15 years after King's death. But even then, 90 members of the House (including then-Congressmen John McCain of Arizona and Richard Shelby of Alabama, both now in the Senate) voted against it. Senator Jesse Helms, a North Carolina Republican, led an unsuccessful effort – supported by 21 other senators, including current Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) – to block its passage in the Senate.
The holiday was first observed on January 20, 1986. In 1987, Arizona governor Evan Mecham rescinded King Day as his first act in office, setting off a national boycott of the state. Some states (including New Hampshire, which called it "Civil Rights Day" from 1991 to 1999) insisted on calling the holiday by other names. In 2000, South Carolina became the last state to make King Day a paid holiday for all state employees.
In his final speech in Memphis the night before he was killed, King told the crowd about a bomb threat on his plane from Atlanta that morning, saying he knew that his life was constantly in danger because of his political activism.
"I would like to live a long life," he said. "Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."
We haven't gotten there yet. But Dr. King is still with us in spirit. The best way to honor his memory is to continue the struggle for human dignity, workers' rights, racial equality, peace and social justice.
This essay is adapted from the entry for Martin Luther King in Peter Dreier's book, The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame.
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Your Purchased iTunes, Ebooks Die With You
The iTunes license is nontransferable. So when you die, all access to the content you've bought goes with you. BYTE's Chris Spera thinks that's messed up.
The first anniversary of my dad's death this past week reminded me of the digital memories he left behind. Although I check his Facebook page from time to time, my mom and I have been closing down a number of accounts that he used. Figuring out what to do with his iTunes Store account is another matter. When a customer dies, everything he bought goes with him.
How messed up is that?
I blame the Recording Industry Association of America. It's the RIAA's fault that something as simple as inheriting an iTunes library is so flippin' complicated.
You can't will someone all or part of your MP3 collection, your eBook library, or any of your other online assets. Specifically, without a way to officially transfer a license from one person to another once a person dies, the nontransferable license that person purchased from Apple or Amazon to "use" the content expires with them.
I was surprised to see an article on Market Watch that reminded me of sticky points with the law and online accounts.
Did you know that it's technically a federal offense to access an online account with someone else's password, even if that person gave you permission? Technically, shared mail accounts are a no-no. In the same way, accessing the iTunes or Amazon Store account of your deceased relative also is illegal.
To get around this, most people simply use their loved one's computer to access those accounts, provided they still have the passwords.
But again, although companies have no way of knowing whether the person accessing the account is or isn't the actual account owner, the whole scenario creates a legal gray area that can make one feel uneasy.
This application of license isn't much different from what we're used to. The physical CDs, DVDs, and books that you buy contain--actually are--license keys. That key can be physically passed along with the content because they are one and the same physical entity. It gets more complicated when it comes to digital content.
When you buy content from either of the popular online stores, you are purchasing a license to use the content. Both Apple and Amazon grant nontransferable rights to use that content, meaning that the purchaser is legally allowed to listen to, read, and view the content. There's just one huge catch: the purchaser doesn't own the files he downloads. That's because unlike physical objects, the content is intangible.
Digital files are supposed to be used only by the person with the purchased license key--a.k.a. the password purchased with the account--but in fact, as we all know, MP3s and other digital content can be moved from one electronic medium to another and from person to person without buying another key. This makes industry watchdogs like the RIAA lose its mind.
There are a couple of ways most people get around the digital key problem. One keeps you in the legal gray area. The other gets you out of the gray area, but can create potential access problems later.
1. Burn to disc and rip. Back in the early days of iTunes and DRM, I didn't know anyone who did not do this. If you bought a copy of a music album through iTunes or some other online store, after downloading it you would immediately burn a physical copy of the album, delete the DRM'ed content from your computer, and then rip the CD back to your music library.
This also can work for video content, but gets a bit more complicated. You need an app that will convert your video file to the VOD format and will burn a set-top-box-compatible DVD. DVD formats are a bit touchy, and this isn't as easy an operation on the video side of things as it is on the audio side.
Pulling the DRM off the legally purchased and downloaded content by burning a backup copy and ripping it back into your library is the gray area. While not technically illegal, it might raise an eyebrow or two.
2. Use Home Sharing. Apple created Home Sharing so that people in the same household can share their iTunes libraries. You can even copy content from a shared library to your own library. All you have to do is turn on Home Sharing on the desired computers (up to five) with the same Apple ID. The content can then be played on those computers, played on any iDevice connected to any of the authorized PCs, or both. Users can use that content for as long as those PCs remain authorized. They also can burn copies to optical discs, but they should not be surprised when they receive an anti-piracy reminder when they do so.
The only issue with this scenario revolves around the Home Sharing credentials used to share the content. If at some point you have to rebuild your PC and restore the contents of your library, effectively rebuilding your iTunes library from scratch, including the shared content, you're going to need the Apple ID and password of the legal content owner to re-enable play of that content--if you haven't removed the DRM with the burn/rip method noted in option number 1, above.
If the content purchaser in question is deceased and that Apple ID is no longer active, you're technically no longer authorized to use the content. However, as long as your library is backed up and that backup includes the sharing authorization, you will still be able to view or listen to it.
So what does this all mean? If you buy digital content, only you are licensed to use it. If you die, the license to use it expires with you. If you've legally shared the content with your family via Home Sharing or other legal method, their license to use it also expires, though they technically can continue to use it.
Until there's a better solution to this problem, it looks like you really can take it with you. The problem is that no one left behind is allowed to enjoy your iTunes and Amazon libraries, too, at least not guilt free.
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Early last week I opened the New York Times and was surprised to see a front-page article about sham academic publishers and conferences. The article discussed something we in the library world have been aware of for some time: open access publishers with low (or no) standards for peer review and acceptance, sometimes even with fictional editorial boards. The publications are financed by authors' fees, which may not be clear from their submission guidelines, and, with the relatively low cost of hosting an online-only journal, are presumably making quite a bit of money. The article included an interview with and photo of University of Colorado Denver librarian Jeffrey Beall, compiler of the useful Beall's List guide to potentially predatory open access scholarly journals and publishers.
I've long been an admirer of Jeffrey Beall's work and I'm glad to see him getting recognition outside of the library world. But the frankly alarmist tone of the Times article was disappointing to say the least, as was the seeming equation of open access with less-than-aboveboard publishers, which of course is not the case. As biologist Michael Eisen notes, there are lots of toll-access scholarly journals (and conferences) of suspicious quality. With the unbelievably high profits of scholarly publishing, it's not surprising that the number of journals has proliferated and that not all of them are of the best quality. And there are many legitimate, highly-regarded journals — both open access and toll-access — that charge authors' fees, especially in the sciences.
As I've bounced these thoughts around my brain for the past week, I keep coming back to one thing: the importance of evaluating information. Evaluating sources is something that faculty and librarians teach students, and students are required to use high quality sources in their work. How do we teach students to get at source quality? Research! Dig into the source: find out more about the author/organization, and read the text to see whether it's comprehensible, typo-free, etc. Metrics like Journal Impact Factor can help make these determinations, but they're far from the only aspects of a work to examine. In addition to Beall's List, Gavia Libraria has a great post from last year detailing some specific steps to take and criteria to consider when evaluating a scholarly journal. I like to go by the classic TANSTAAFL: there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Get an email to contribute to a journal or conference out of the blue? It's probably not the cream of the crop.
So if faculty and librarians teach our students to evaluate sources, why do we sometimes forget (or ignore?) to do so ourselves? I'd guess that the seemingly ever-increasing need for publications and presentations to support tenure and promotion plays into it, especially as the number of full-time faculty and librarian positions continue to decrease. I appreciate reasoned calls for quality over quantity, but I wonder whether slowing down the academic publishing arms race will end the proliferation of low quality journals.
The Times article last week notes that one danger of increasing numbers of fraudulent journals is that "nonexperts doing online research will have trouble distinguishing credible research from junk." This isn't the fault of the open access movement at all; if anything, open access can help determine the legitimacy of a journal. Shining a light on these sham journals makes it easier than ever to identify them. It's up to us, both faculty and librarians: if the research and scholarship we do is work we should be proud of, prestigious work that's worth publishing, then it stands to reason that we should share that work and prestige only with and via publications that are worth it.