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Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again
John Maynard Keynes
'As far as I am concerned, this is ... the most complex crisis we've ever seen due to the number of factors in play'
Spanish Economy Minister Pedro Solbes speaking this week to Spanish radio station Punto Radio
Jose Luis Borges tells a story about two rascally villains, eternal rivals, who - under sentence of death - are offered one last bet: rather than accepting a conventional execution they can agree to have their throats slit simultaneously, just to see who is a able to run the farthest. Immortality, rather than fame, in an instant. Now I mention this since tale I can readily anticipate the immediate feelings many will have on reading what follows (I am at the end of the day going to argue that it is necessary to inject money - and I do mean rather a lot of money - into a banking and construction system which many will want to argue is largely responsible for Spain's present distress, and indeed, that having made a good deal of money out of the operation, these are the very people who should now be forced to don that sackcloth and ashes costume which so behoves them (actually the way things stand they are much more likely to find themselves reduced to a sporting a loincloth, but still). I understand why many ordinary Spanish people may have such feeling, but I do think this is a time for cool heads, and that what is most needed here is an extreme dose of pragmatism coupled with a lot of emotional intelligence. There is no point in agreeing to have your own throat slit just to see people you don't like have their's slit first.
Martinsa Fadesa The First To Go
This week's filing by the Spanish property developer Martinsa-Fadesa for protection from its creditors has brought Spain's ongoing economic agony back to the headlines. The decision follows a request from Martinsa Fadesa last Friday to its creditor banks for a postponement of the deadline on their requirement that the company obtain a 150 million euro ($235.7 million) loan. The banks refused the request and the rest is now, as they say, history. The failure of Martinsa - Fadesa whose debts are in the region of 5 billion euros - is not only the largest corporate bankruptcy in Spanish history, it is also a reflection of the pain which must now be being felt in Spain's troubled banking and construction sectors, and a harbinger of what is, in all probability, going to be much worse to come.
Spain At Risk
So to come directly to the matter which has provided me with the header to this post, just what is the risk that the present recession in Spain is something a bit more than a mere recession? What is the risk of a real and serious economic melt down just across France's Southern border, a mere stone's throw away (by plane) from Brussels or Frankfurt, yet still on the other side of that intellectual and cultural divide which seems to be formed by that ever so picturesque natural barrier known as the Pyrennees? Well it is a non-negligable one, in my view. Let me explain a bit.
First, as background it would be worth reading my Artemio Cruz Syndrome post, since all the main macroeconomic arguments are presented there (and those who seriously want to know what is going on should definitely read the excellent "Spain:Bubble Bursting - We now expect a full-blown recession" desknote from PNB Paribas).
Secondly, we need a bit of vocabulary clarification, since the terminology being used has become somewhat confusing of late. We could reasonably break things down as follows I think:
i) Soft Landing
ii) Hard Landing
iii) Melt Down
Now, in terms of the available semantic space, why don't we allow that "soft landing" means a recession of the more or less garden variety (as Portugal or Italy have at this moment, or as say France may anticipate, or Denmark) and not consider this to mean avoiding recession completely, which is how some seem to have used the term in recent times (I think it is hard to imagine any EU 15 economy avoiding recession completely between now and Q2 2009). Possibly Hungary up to this point could also be said to have had a comparatively soft landing.
"Hard Landing", on the other hand would be what they are currently experiencing over in the Baltics, what they may well soon experience in Romania, Bulgaria, the UK, and Ireland, and what is now most certainly taking place in Spain. Thus by "hard landing" I mean a very sharp slowdown in growth, a medium sized contraction in consumption, financial distress and bankruptcy in some areas, and a recession which drags itself on for more than a mere two quarters (in and out of negative growth) and probably results in annualised negative growth for a period of at least 12 consecutive months. What happened in Turkey in 2000 was certainly a hard landing in this sense.
iii) "Melt Down", following such definitions, would then be a Hard Landing plus, a Hard Landing plus a shock (or in Hungary's case, where the shock would be a run on the forint, you could imagine what initially is only a Soft Landing being converted into a melt down, but arguably Hungary's case is very special given the very high level of exposure of household balance sheets to CHF denominated forex loans).
Such a shock could be a banking crisis, a run on the currency, a sovereign default (this is where Italy's series of perpetual soft landings could move decisively into meltdown mode one of these fine days if something isn't done to correct the low growth/high sovereign debt to GDP dynamic while there is still time).
Now in this sense, Spain's economy is at some significant level in danger of having a melt down - lets define this as more than two years of negative GDP growth with a magnitude of more than one percentage point, coupled with (in the case of countries which have their own currency) very sharp devaluations, and in the case of those that don't severe and extended price deflation (ie a mini version of what happened in the USA in 1930).
Now the recession in Spain is, I think, more or less most certainly already served. The Spanish press were talking earlier in the week about a quarter on quarter contraction of 0.3% in Q2, and it is hard to see any acceleration of the economy in Q3. Pedro Solbes, when questioned explicitly by Punto Radio on the possibility that whole year growth for 2008 could turn negative replied diplomatically "It's not my feeling at the moment", which means basically that it might well turn out to be the case.
If this expectation if fulfilled then Paribas may have to revise their latest forecast slightly (see above link) since - in what is really an excellent general analysis - they pencil-in the recession to start in Q3 2008 and then move on to anticipate a contraction in the Spanish economy of 0.75% in 2009 (although as they freely admit all the risks here are skewed to the downside). My own personal call at this point is that the recession may well have started in Q2 (we will soon know) and that the contraction in whole year 2009 will be over 1 percentage point. Further than that I am not willing to go at this stage, since it all depends, and in particular it depends on whether or not we get a nasty "event" or series of events which send the economy hurtling out of the "hard landing" bracket and into the "melt down" one. It is because I strongly believe we be should doing everything we possibly can to avoid that eventuality that (and not continue to languish under our blankets with a heavy dose of the Artemio Cruz syndrome) that I am writing this post now.
Before continuing, however, I should point out that even the Paribas idea of negative growth in 2009 is still very nonconsensual, despite the widespread pessimism which currently surrounds the Spanish economy. The consensus economic survey for June gives a median 2009 growth forecast of 1.5%. The lowest forecast in the survey is 0.4% but most are grouped in the range 1.0-1.8%. Maybe the consensus will catch up with the curve in due course.
Structural Unwind
So what would be my justification for making such an apparently gloomy forecast? Well as I argue in my Artemio Cruz piece, and as Paribas re-iterate in their study, this is no ordinary crisis. It is taking place against a background of a severe credit crunch which affects the entire financial sector, in a country with an enormous external deficit (CA deficit over 1o% of GDP and rising), which has a strong external energy dependence, and at a time when food and energy prices have been rising sharply. All of this is bound to exert a very strong downward pressure on internal consumer demand, and as a knock-on impact on investment spending. At the same time slowing growth globally, and in the EU and eurozone economies in particular, makes for a very difficult external environment where increasing exports (even assuming Spanish export prices were currently competitive, which they aren't) becomes difficult, if not well nigh impossible.
Serious Structural Distortions
So let's take a quick look at some of the underlying structural issues. In the first place both Spanish households and corporates are extremely highly leveraged at this point in terms of their outstanding debt obligations. The levels of debt to GDP are really extraordinarily high when compared with their eurozone peers.
So how did Spain get into this rather precarious situation? Well I don't think you need to look too far to discover the answer. As can be seen in the chart below, Spain effectively had negative interest rates throughout the entire period between the start of 2002 and the autumn of 2006. That this state of affairs was produced in the very earliest years of the history of the eurozone was indeed, in my opinion, truly unfortunate, since it meant that inflation expectations had not had time to be "steered down" by a central bank track record. Thus a very widespread reaction on the part of ordinary Spaniards to what were generally perceived to be derisory interest rates for savers was to withdraw money from longer term deposit accounts and to place it in what was considered to be the safest of safe inflation hedges: property. Thus began what may well turn out to have been one of the most serious property bubbles in recent history.
The situation was also doubly unfortunate, since the ECB along with other central banks had lowered interest rates in an attempt to support economic weakness produced by a drop in stock market values following the collapse of the internet boom. In Spain's case however, the excesses caused by the internet boom never really had the opportunity to unwind, since as one boom ended, another one simply got going in its place. This effect can be clearly seen in the chart for long term quarterly GDP growth produced below, where we can see that following the 1992/93 recession (and up to Q2 2008) Spain simply hasn't had one single quarter of negative growth - that is during 15 years. Hence the legend of the Spanish economic miracle was born. But as with all legends, we should also really be asking ourselves what the reality was which lay behind it, since as we can now see, the absence of recession - and in particular the absence of recession in 2002/03 - simply means that we now have a lot of extra "distortion" lying out there and waiting to be "corrected" (the waste-pipes were effectively never flushed, which is why we are now faced with such a peculiar smell emmanating from the sewage system). This would be the main reason why I would argue that what we cannot now expect is a relatively smooth "return to trend" in 12 to 18 months time, since Spain has effectively been "off trend" for some six or seven years now, and the magnitude of the excesses (10%+ CA deficit, 5 million immigrants in eight years, corporate indebtedness pushing the 120% of GDP mark etc etc) is prima facie evidence for this. So even in the best of cases we are almost certainly now facing a significant period of negative and then very low headline GDP growth. But we may not be lucky enough to get away from all this with a simple best case scenario.
The last piece of structural evidence I would offer in this post refers to the CA deficit situation. Since I deal with that reasonably exhaustively in the Artemio Cruz piece, I will only refer to one item here: the deteriorating balance on the income account.
Now this is important in my opinion. It is important since obviously any of the remedies to Spain's short term financing problems imply borrowing money (in some way, shape or form via the support which is offered by belonging to the eurosystem). Spain needs one of those proverbial "bailouts", even though since Spain does not have its own idependent currency this position is somewhat masked by the fact that everything is denominated in euros. But debts incur interest, and the more you borrow, the more you effectively have to pay, not only in capital, but also in interest. And if Spain country risk rises sharply in any way - as some analysts are suggesting it may have to - well then what is already a serious problem is only going to become a more serious one.
Land Prices
So where are the risks? Well I think it is no simple accident that Martinsa-Fadesa has been the first major developer to go, since a very large part of their portfolio is composed of land. According to press reports Martinsa Fadesa had land totalling 28.67 million square metres, 41 percent of which is outside Spain (and 50% of which is not "zoned", that is it is without the necessary premission to build). They also have a stock of more than 173,000 newly-built and unsold properties (again by no means all of these are in Spain). Now land is going to be a very important component in this whole "correction", since a lot of land (as we can see) has been accumulated with intent to build, and much of this land may now become virtually worthless. And land prices are already falling faster than house prices. Data from the Ministry of Housing shows that land for building fell to 251 Euros/m2 in March, a 7.7% drop when compared with March 2007. Land prices had fallen for 3 consecutive months by March with the average cost of land in Spain now being back somewhere around where it was at the end of 2004.
So I would say this is one of the first issues the Spanish government needs to tackle, and quite urgently. Frankly I can see little alternative to having the government intervene and take this land off the books of those who are holding it - not at market prices, they can handle some sort of "haircut" - but I don't think the government should be sitting idly back and watch one developer after another simply fold, since the end result of this is that the problem then moves over into an already overstretched banking sector.
Which brings me to my exhibit one: Japan land prices.
One of the key features in Japan's ongoing battle against deflation has been the way in which land prices were simply allowed to fall after the property bubble burst in 1991. The above chart shows the sharp rise in Japanese land prices from 1986 to 1990 - a period during which they more than doubled - and how they subsequently fell - albeit more gradually — by roughly two thirds from 1990-91 to 2005. Although urban land prices started to turn up slightly post 2006, land prices still continue to fall elsewhere, and of course we still haven't seen how the latest construction "bust" in Japan is going to leave things. Unsurprisingly, residential construction has remained virtually dormant in Japan over this entire deflationary period.So the question is, what is to stop this happening in Spain. I would be grateful to anyone who can present me with a reasoned argument as to why what happened in Japan won't happen here. Meanwhile the risk is evidently there.
The Builders In General
Obviously even if the most immediate and pressing problem in Spain is arising in the area of land prices, the rest of the housing related construction sector will not be far behind. This is a problem that is simply waiting to happen. According to the latest data from the Spanish housing ministry, average Spanish property prices fell by 0.3% in the 3 months to the end of June, but they were still 2% up on prices in Q2 2007, a factor which is leading many to question the reliability of the Spanish data (one more time Artemio Cruz strikes, since Spanish institutions are far from swift in responding to problems, and would seem to prefer denying that they exist). One explanation for the present situation may be that prices are being measured in terms of the initial asking price and not the final selling price. Whatever the explanation prices are certainly set to tumble, and even the the G-14 developers' association, traditionally a staunch upholder of the immobility of property values, has had to admit that new-build prices have fallen by 15% in the last 6 months alone, while Cue Mariano Miguel, ex-president and present board member of the much troubled developer Colonial, is already predicting a fall in the region of 25% to 30% over the next two years. And new property in Barcelona (which is where I live) is now taking ten times longer to sell than it was only a year ago, according to real estate consultancy Aguirre Newman.
Meanwhile we learn from Jose Luis Malo de Molina, director general at the Bank of Spain (speaking at a recent conference in Valencia) that the number of new homes which will be completed in Spain in 2008 will beat all previous records (I said this was a system which was slow to react), simply piling one more house after another in order to add to that glut of newly completed homes that is already idly languishing and casting its long shadow over the Spanish property market. Muñoz's explanation for this phenomenon is simply that "the real estate sector can't turn around quickly, it works in the medium and long term, so this year the properties started at the end of 2005 and beginning of 2006 will be completed, which means the number of new properties on the market will hit an all time high." As I say, "just in time" may be an idea that has entered the heads of the more agile companies like the textile consortium Inditex, but most of Spain is a very, very long way from being able to offer an agile response. On the anecdotal front, a friend of mine recently went to visit family homes in the North West of Spain. In Vigo he spoke to the owner of a brick factory, and in Leon someone who had a quarry. In both cases production was continuing (there is simply no on/off switch here) but the inventory already had piled up to the extent of being now prepared to satisfy normal requirements for the whole of 2009 (in both cases), and of course, in 2009 requirements will not be normal, since housing starts in 2008 have collapsed to a forecast of below 200,000 (down from 600,000 plus in 2007).
At this point estimating the volume of unsold housing in Spain is really a question of "its anyone's guess" rather than a matter of scientific fact. The number 1 million is popular, but I suspect this is more a question of serving up an easily managed factoid than one of accurately measuring empty houses one by one. The same applies to the estimates for the size of the likely fall in property values. All we can safely say at this point, I think, is that the number in both cases is large.
The big question for our current concerns is who is exposed to the risk on all this, and the answer to that question is a lot simpler: Spain's already cash-strapped banking system.
One common estimate of the exposure of the banks to the builders would be somthing of the order of 300 billion euros - this is the opinion of Spanish analyst Inigo Vega at Iberian Securities (and it is one I more or less share). So we could say we have something in the region of 20% to 25% (or more) of Spanish annual GDP in play here.
Bank Exposure Through Mortgage Backed Securites
To this second order exposure of the banking system to the construction sector alone (and remember, through the negative impact of all this on the real economy, we should never lose sight of those non-construction corporates, you remember, the ones who had all that indebtedness we saw in the first chart) we need to add the exposure of the banks to the cedulas hipotecarias, which alone run to something in the 250 to 300 billion euro range (to which we need to add, of course, other classes of more conventional mortgage backed-securities ). If we add these two together - the builders and the cedulas - then we are obviously talking about a potential injection into something of over half of one years GDP in Spain.
According to Celine Choulet of PNB Paribas mortgage-backed securities in the broader sense of the term (ie including cedulas and MBS) now add up to around 37% of outstanding mortgage loans in Spain. She also estimates that asset backed securities held by non-residents may amount to as much as 81% of the total securities issued.
Outstanding home loans (for purchases and refis) represent a substantial percentage of the Spanish banking institutions' balance sheets (21.5% of total assets and 35.6% of total loans to the non-financial private sector in the second quarter of 2007). In the second quarter of 2007, outstanding home loans amounted to 589 billion euros, 56.4% of which were distributed by cajas (29.8% of their assets), 37.2% by commercial banks (15.4%) and 6.4% by mutual institutions (30.9%).
If we add together home loans and the financing of real estate sector (construction and property services), the overall exposure of Spanish credit institutions has increased significantly over the last decade (37% of assets in the second quarter of 2007, 61.5% of total loans to the non-financial private sector). Exposure of Spanish banks to the real estate sector has exceeded, both in level and in growth rate, that of US, Japanese and British banks. In total, in the second quarter of 2007, cajas (49.7% of assets, 70.5% of loans) and mutual institutions (46% and 56.3% respectively) were almost twice as exposed as commercial banks (28% and 55.2% respectively).
According to Choulet - and just to take one example - in 2006 total new funding to the Spanish mortgage market reached 201.3 billion euros, of which 88.3 billion took the form of covered bonds (representing 43.9% of the total of mortgage securities market) and 113 billion was in mortgage-backed securities (56.1%).
And remember the cedulas all need to be "rolled over" in the next few years (with a big chunk coming up between now and 2012). And the problem starts this autumn. According to an article in the Spanish daily El Pais at the end of June the Spanish banking sector needs to raise 62 billion Euros before the end of this year just to rollover what they have coming up on the immediate horizon.
So what does all this add up to? Well, to do some simple rule of thumb arithmetic, just to soak up the builders debts and handle the cedulas mess, we are talking of quantities in the region of 500 to 600 billion euros, or more than half of one years Spanish GDP. Of course, not every builder is going to go bust, and not every cedula cannot be refinanced, but the weight of all this on the Spanish banking system is going to be enormous. Banco Popular is the most visible sign of the pressure, and their shares have already dropped by 44% this year, and by 7.9% on Tuesday alone (they were the listed bank which was most exposed to Mrtinsa Fadesa).
So it is either inject a lot of money now - more than Spain itslelf can afford alone - or have several percentage points of GDP contraction over several years and very large price deflation - ie a rather big slump - in my very humble opinion. And it is just at this point that we hit a major structural, and hitherto I think, unforeseen problem in the eurosystem (although Marty Feldstein was scratching around in the right area from the start). The question really we need an answer to is this one: if there is to be a massive cash injection into Spain's economy, who is going to do the injecting? Spain alone will surely simply crumble under the weight, and it is evident that the problem has arisen not as the result of bad decisions on the part of the Spanish government, but as a result of institutional policies administered in Brussels and monetary policy formulated over at the ECB. And yet, the Commission and the ECB are not the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve, no amount of talk about European countries being similar to Florida and Nebraska is going to get us out of this one: and it is going to be step up to the plate and put your money where your mouth is time soon enough. Yet, cor blimey, we are still busying ourselves arguing about the small print on the Lisbon Treaty.
Demographics and Construction
The third major area of risk I would like to highlight today relates to the problem of demographics and their impact on the construction outlook. PNB Paribas (see initial link) see demography as one of the principal downside risks to their forecast. They put it like this:
"With United Nations population projections pointing to growth of only 300k per year on a 'high-population' variant for 2010-15, housing starts could fall considerably further. Hence the risks to our central forecast of 30% off housing investment by end-2009 are to the downside. The correction could be more rapid than expected. If not, it is likely to persist into 2010. ...........Our forecast has housing investment converging to levels consistent with relatively strong population growth. A weaker population assumption or some undershoot of the 'equilibrium' level would lead to a worse outcome."
Basically, I think the big topic in this context is the coming rate of new household formation. And here it is worth remembering that while the countries most affected by the property-driven credit crunch in the EU would appear to be Spain, Ireland and the UK, the UK is rather different from the other two, since while housebuilding grew by 187% in Spain between 1996 and 2006 (and by 177% in Ireland), the equivalent increase in the UK was just 12%. Planning restrictions in Britain meant fewer homes were built and the resulting relative scarcity may provide one part of the explanation for why house prices have almost doubled, in real terms, in the UK since 1999 despite the comparatively low percentage of new builds (this would bring us back to the huge zoned and un-zoned lang overhang in Spain, and what the dynamics are that produced it). That is, while the UK can to some extent offset the impact of the crisis in the longer term by increasing homebuilding (to house, for example, all those extra people from Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe), in Spain and Ireland the problem is going to be very different, since they both have to sharply reduce housebuilding capacity.
So what are the main sources of new household formation in Spain? Well basically they are threefold: natural population development, migration, and second homeowners from the north of Europe. Now if we start with the question of natural population evolution in Spain, ex-migration the Spanish population is virtually stationary at this point - with an average annual increase of a mere 30,000. But what matters in housing terms is not so much the size of the population as its age structure, and here we don't need to go to the level of refinement involved in looking at longer term UN population projections (high, median or otherwise) because in terms of Spanish property from now to 2020 (at least in terms of natural population drift) the deal is now done (or rather the goose is now cooked), and a quick glance at the US Census Bureau IDB population pyramid for 2000 should make this abundantly clear (see below).
What we can effectively see is that in 2000 (and please click on the image if you want a better look) Spain's three historically largest 5 year cohorts constituted the 25 to 40 age group. But if we mentally fast forward as far as 2015 we will see that the aggregate size of the cohorts in this age range is very significantly smaller, and if we fast forward again to 2020, we will see that what we have are the three smallest cohorts in the last forty years. And from here on in we only go down and down - talk about absence of sustainability!
So we are left with North Europeans is search of second homes and migrants to offer some support to Spain's rapidly crumbling housing sector in the coming years. Well on the North Europeans front the picture doesn't look exactly promising either, since the bulk of the buyers in recent years have been British (Britons own an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 properties in Spain), and they are already having their own problems, plus the fact that changes in the value of the GBP and interest rates mean that affordability is becoming an issue, an issue to which you have to add the drop in attraction of properties whose prices may now be set to seriously deflate, and over a significant number of years.
Indeed, according to Manuel Gandarias, president of the 'Live in Spain' holiday-home developers' association, sales of holiday homes in Spain are now down by 50% from the peak "In recent years between 120,000 and 125,000 holiday homes were sold each year, this year it will be half that," he is quoted as saying. And of course it isn't only the cost of buying the home that has been going up, it is also the cost of servicing the debt that buying the home brings with it. Josep Suárez, director at Solbank in London estimates that the combined impact of rising Euribor rates and the appreciation of the Euro against the pound (15% in the last 9 months) means that mortgage payments for Britons with mortgages in Spain are now 25% higher than they were a year ago.
So the outlook on the North European second home market doesn't exactly look bright either, which leaves us with the migrants. As is now generally well known, Spain's population has increased dramatically in recent years - from around 40 million in 2000 to around 45 million in 2008 - and this increase has been almost exclusively (natural increase is no more than a quarter of a million) the result of huge inward migration.
Basically the future of all these migrants is now deeply uncertain. I would even say that losing the migrants constitutes the most important of all the downside risks to the Spanish economic crisis for the impact it will have on urban rents and mortgage delinquency in the short term (since many of the migrants have bought flats), and for the consequences for Spain's housing market and pensions system in the mid term. Evidently, since most of the migrants are economic migrants the inward flow must surely be about to dry up (since there are few if any jobs for them) and thus our attention should be focused on the need to hold onto those we already have.
Is There A Rescue Plan Available?
Basically, and on the basis of all the above, I would like to now put forward a five point "rescue" plan for the Spanish economy. It would look something like this:
1/ Set up a national land agency, to buy up land and to irrevocably convert it to other uses (agriculture wouldn't be a bad bet where possible given present food prices). This to include the proviso that such land could never again be zoned.
2/ Buy out and close down the bankrupt builders as part of a general restructuring programme such as the one which was developed for the shipyards and the mines.
3/ Buy up and burn immediately ALL outstanding cedulas hipotecarias. Well, I'm exaggerating here, but something very decisive needs to be done to take these things out of circulation in the longer term, or we will never ease Spain out from under this.
4/ Establish a programme to help immigrants in difficult circumstances, and offer training etc to prepare for the future. Abasic focus of policy needs to be on trying to persuade migrants to stay.
5/ Restructure all existing mortgage contracts - which will involve every one paying more - in order to put mortgage financing in Spain back on a sound footing. This will obviously require legislative intervention, and will equally obviously involve breaking the direct tie with one year euribor. It has been following euribor up and down which has gotten the Spanish mortgage market into this mess in the first place.
OK, I warned you. I said none of this was going to be popular. And none of these propsals should be consider as carved in stone. Better ones could well, I am sure, be put forward, but in the absence of anything credible in the way of alternatives I am putting them forward now. As I said at the start, there is no point in agreeing to have your own throat slit just to see people you don't like have their's slit first.
It is very, very important that some form of "corta fuegos" (fire break) is put in place, and put in place now, otherwise the whole of Spain could very easily burn down in just the same way the Liceu opera house did here in Barcelona, simply because some chump decided to do on-stage soldering repairs with the safety curtain up! Risk sir, there's no risk here. It's all as safe as houses.


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You may have decided that you'll just make food that you cannot eat for your guests or if you're going somewhere, plan to eat beforehand.
Well, this year you don't have to do that.
I will tell you some easy steps on how to host your own exclusively Gluten Free Super Bowl party that even those on a regular diet will enjoy! Or if you are attending someone else's party, you can just bring with you one or more of these items.
- Ruffles Original Potato Chips
- Tostitos Restaurant Style with a Hint of Lime Tortilla Chips
- Pirate's Booty
- Snyder's of Hanover Gluten Free Pretzels
- Arico Foods Cassava Chips
- Popcorn Indiana's Chip'ins
- Tostitos All Natural Chunky Salsa (serve with tortilla chips)
- Tribe Hummus (serve with fresh veggies)
CHEESE and CRACKERS -
- Glutino Gluten Free Original Crackers
- Blue Diamond Barbeque Almond Nut Thins
- An assortment of cheese from Applegate Farms
- Applegate Farms Natural Gluten Free Chicken Nuggets w/ Heinz Ketchup
- Coca-cola
- Pepsi-cola
- Sprite
- 7-Up
- Mug Root Beer
- Canada Dry Ginger Ale
- Anheuser-Busch Gluten Free Redbridge Beer
Now, for those of you that are more adventurous and want to make some delicious snacks, here are some great gluten free recipes from an assortment of excellent gluten free bloggers that you should check out:
The above gluten free items can be found at most major supermarket chains along with select health food stores. You may also want to check out Ms. Celiac's Market's Super Bowl section for additional items.

subset: commoncrawl


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Garnets don't break dormancy well I've found. They were about a month or so behind my Purples and Beauregards last year, so I decided to start them in January instead of the beginning of March. They usually are very productive, but they got put in late last year and the other plants that had been in for a week over took them and pretty much smothered the poor things. This year I want to give them a chance.
Next up are my onions. I planted my bunching onions in the back small container with just randomly scattered seed. Then I made two full flats of 1 1/2" soil blocks. Sadly I used some seed from 2011 as my Redwing seed hasn't shown up yet. It is on backorder. I hope it sprouts. But if it doesn't I'll redo the blocks when the rest of my seed gets here. Typically I buy onion seed every year or two as the seed doesn't keep its viability long. Three years is pushing it.One flat was nothing but Copra. It is my mainstay storage onion. Half of the next flat was Ailsa Craig a sweet onion, and the other half was the aforementioned Redwing, which is a good red storage onion. I ought to put more into Copra and less into Ailsa Craig. That onion can only keep for about 2 months. And 36 very large onions (and yes they get very very large) is doable, but hard to go through. Last year I got more poundage out of these onions than the other two combined in 1/3 of the space. I wish onions froze well, but I just don't like frozen onions.
The onions were put under some cool white fluorescent shop lights. Since these are long day onions I have the lights on for about 12 hours. That will keep them from bulbing up prematurely. I'll put them out in early April. Starting onions from seed is a PITA. They take a long time to get to a reasonable size. And I need a lot of them to fill a bed. I keep thinking our area needs a bulk buy from Dixondale Farms. If you buy in bulk it is pretty inexpensive. But I'd have to find enough people that want to go in on it. I think about 10 bunches would make it cost effective over growing them under lights (two months of a shop light costs about $7-$8 I think, not to mention seed and soil costs). With 10 bunches it would only be $4.28 for 50-75 plants. I'd want about 2 bunches myself. Though that would be splitting a couple of the bunches if I kept my sweet and red onion level at half my yellow onion level. Sadly I don't know of any place here that sells onion plants cheap.
Hmm Are there any other Bostonians out there that would come to East Arlington for a bulk buy (3/4 mile from Alewife subway stop, on the 77 bus line, and 1 mile from Route 2)? If so I'll collect names and emails and ask again come November to see if people are still interested. If so send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com. And tell me about how many bunches you would want - as low as a 1/2 and as high as you need (this is not a commitment, but just to get an idea if it is feasible). It can't happen this year as I've already ordered my seeds, and I'm just thinking about it now. But oh it would be nice to not have to do onion starts every year.


text:
LOS ANGELES — Kathy Griffin is fighting back against the abuse and "death threats" she has received in light of controversial images released earlier this week that showed the comedian holding up a bloody head resembling that of President Donald Trump.
In a news conference on Friday, a Griffin's attorney Lisa Bloom accused Trump and his family of "using their power to target her."
"If you don't stand up, you get run over," Griffin said. What's happening to me has never happened in this great country. A sitting president of the U.S. … is personally trying to ruin my life forever."
Bloom said the comedian was contacted by the U.S. Secret Service and said she has retained a criminal lawyer.
"As a result of the first family bullying her, she has been vilified, getting death threats, fired from multiple jobs and had multiple events canceled," Bloom said.
Bloom is a victim's rights attorney who is best known for representing high profile clients, including former Fox contributor Wendy Walsh, who accused host Bill O'Reilly for sexual harassment.
On Tuesday, photos were released of Griffin that showed the comedian holding up a bloody head resembling Trump. They quickly drew backlash on social media.
Griffin apologized for the "disturbing" photos, taken by provocative celebrity photographer Tyler Shields, later that day.
"I beg for your forgiveness. I went too far," she said in a video posted to Instagram late Tuesday. "I made a mistake and I was wrong."
"Kathy never imagined it could be misinterpreted as a threat of violence against Trump. That was never what she intended," Bloom said.
Although Griffin tearfully apologized again during her press conference, she said that she will continue to use Trump as fodder for her comedic material.
"I'm going to make fun of him more now. I have no desire to hurt anybody … I'm under a secret service investigation … they are using me as the shiny object so that no one is taking about this FBI investigation. I made a horrible mistake and horrible call."
Trump said of the photos that Griffin "should be ashamed of herself."
By Wednesday, the backlash was loud enough to get Griffin fired from her gig on CNN's New Year's Eve program, which she had co-hosted alongside Anderson Cooper since 2007, and cost her an endorsement deal with Squatty Potty, a line of bathroom footstools.
Griffin said five of her stand-up gigs have also been canceled in wake of the backlash.


text:
Meet the Sherlock Holmes.
Length: |
About 3 hours.
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All devices, all viewports, all operating systems and all modern browsers. See support page for more information. This book is "iPad first" and is supported on all iPads Gen 2+, iPhones 4+ (Safari, Chrome or Firefox), Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 (Silk) and above, Google Nexus & Android 5+ (Chrome, Firefox or UC Browser) and all versions of modern desktop browsers on windows, mac or linux. Some books may contain webgl or shaders that could limit support or experience on older devices or browsers. |


text:
On this date in 1940, the former Soviet People's Commissar for Agriculture was shot for treason.
The 1930's were a scary time in the USSR, but the agricultural posts — forced collectivizations, production quotas, and screw-ups that starved thousands — were particularly fraught.
R.I. Eikhe inherited the job from a fellow purged in the trial of the 21. And, unsurprisingly, he went the same way.
It was another former agricultural commissar (of Ukraine), Nikita Khrushchev, who managed to succeed Stalin.
When, in 1956, Khrushchev made his "secret speech" denouncing the savagery of his predecessor, the fate of his old comrade Eikhe was lamented in detail.
Excerpted below is the relevant portion of Khrushchev's report, as cited here.
The great modesty of the genius of the revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, is known. Lenin had always stressed the role of the people as the creator of history, the directing and organizational role of the party as a living and creative organism, and also the role of the central committee.
Lenin never imposed by force his views upon his coworkers. He tried to convince; he patiently explained his opinions to others. Lenin always diligently observed that the norms of party life were realized, that the party statute was enforced, that the party congresses and the plenary sessions of the central committee took place at the proper intervals.
In addition to the great accomplishments of V. I. Lenin for the victory of the working class and of the working peasants, for the victory of our party and for the application of the ideas of scientific communism to life, his acute mind expressed itself also in this that lie detected in Stalin in time those negative characteristics which resulted later in grave consequences. Fearing the future fate of the party and of the Soviet nation, V.I. Lenin made a completely correct characterization of Stalin, pointing out that it was necessary to consider the question of transferring Stalin from the position of Secretary General because of the fact that Stalin is excessively rude, that he does not have a proper attitude toward his comrades, that lie is capricious, and abuses his power. . . .
Vladimir Ilyich said:
"Stalin is excessively rude, and this defect, which can be freely tolerated in our midst and in contacts among us Communists, becomes a defect which cannot be tolerated in one holding the position of the Secretary General. Because of this, I propose that the comrades consider the method by which Stalin would be removed from this position and by which another man would be selected for it, a man, who above all , would differ from Stalin in only one quality, namely, greater tolerance, greater loyalty, greater kindness, and more considerate attitude toward the comrades, a less capricious temper, etc."
As later events have proven, Lenin's anxiety was justified …
Stalin originated the concept enemy of the people. This term automatically rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven; this term made possible the usage of the most cruel repression, violating all norms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations. This concept, enemy of the people, actually eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight or the making of one's views known on this or that issue, even those of a practical character. In the main, and in actuality, the only proof of guilt used, against all norms of current legal science, was the confession of the accused himself, and, as subsequent probing proved, confessions were acquired through physical pressures against the accused. . . .
Lenin used severe methods only in the most necessary cases, when the exploiting classes were still in existence and were vigorously opposing the revolution, when the struggle for survival was decidedly assuming the sharpest forms, even including a civil war.
Stalin, on the other hand, used extreme methods and mass repressions at a time when the revolution was already victorious, when the Soviet state was strengthened, when the exploiting classes were already liquidated, and Socialist relations were rooted solidly in all phases of national economy, when our party was politically consolidated and had strengthened itself both numerically and ideologically. It is clear that here Stalin showed in a whole series of cases his intolerance, his brutality, and his abuse of power.
Stalin's willfulness vis-a-vis the party and its central committee became fully evident after the 17th party congress, which took place in 1934. . . .
It was determined that of the 139 members and candidates of the party's Central Committee who were elected at the 17th congress, 98 persons, that is, 70 percent, were arrested and shot (mostly in 1937-38). [Indignation in the hall.] . . .
The majority of the Central Committee members and candidates elected at the 17th congress and arrested in 1937-38 were expelled from the party illegally through the brutal abuse of the party statute, because the question of their expulsion was never studied at the Central Committee plenum.
Now when the cases of some of these so-called spies and saboteurs were examined it was found that all their cases were fabricated. Confessions of guilt of many- arrested and charged with enemy activity were gained with the help of cruel and inhuman tortures. . . .
An example of vile provocation of odious falsification and of criminal violation of revolutionary legality is the case of the former candidate for the central committee political bureau, one of the most eminent workers of the party and of the Soviet Government, Comrade Eikhe, who was a party member since 1905. [Commotion in the hall.]
Comrade Eikhe was arrested on April 29, 1938, on the basis of slanderous materials, without the sanction of the prosecutor of the USSR, which was finally received 15 months after the arrest.
Investigation of Eikhe's case was made in a manner which most brutally violated Soviet legality and was accompanied by willfulness and falsification.
Eikhe was forced under torture to sign ahead of time a protocol of his confession prepared by the investigative judges, in which he and several other eminent party workers were accused of anti-Soviet activity.
On October 1, 1939, Eikhe sent his declaration to Stalin in which be categorically denied his guilt and asked for an examination of his case. In the declaration he wrote:
"There is no more bitter misery than to sit In the jail of a government for which I have always fought."
On February 2, 1940, Eikhe was brought before the court. Here he did not confess any guilt and said as follows:
"In all the so-called confessions of mine there is not one letter written by me with the exception of my signatures under the protocols which were forced from me. I have made my confession under pressure from the investigative judge who from the time of my arrest tormented me. After that I began to write all this nonsense. The most important thing for me is to tell the court, the party and Stalin that I am not guilty. I have never been guilty of any conspiracy. I will die believing in the truth of party policy as I have believed in it during my whole life."
On February 4 Eikhe was shot. [Indignation in the hall.] It has been definitely established now that Eikhe's case was fabricated; he has been posthumously rehabilitated.
On this day..
- 1820: The pirates of the William
- 1926: Iskilipli Mehmed Atif Hoca, headstrong
- 1707: Baron Otto Arnold Peikel
- 1939: Maurice Pilorge, Le Condamné à mort
- 1784: James Andrews, the last to hang in the Grassmarket
- 2015: Sajida al-Rishawi and Ziyad Karboli, Jordan's revenge on ISIS
- 1653: Jasper Hanebuth, robber and murderer
- 1999: Sean Sellers
- 1940: Nikolai Yezhov, terror namesake
- 1529: Ludwig Haetzer, Anabaptist
- 1703: 47 Ronin forced to commit seppuku
- 1738: Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, "Jud Süß"


text: Moroccan rugs are the weaves, carpets, and textiles that have been traditionally hand-woven in Morocco. Rugs have been woven by the indigenous people of Morocco since the Paleolithic Era. Traditionally, Moroccan rugs have been woven by tribal peoples for their utility rather than for decorative purposes. Twentieth-century Moroccan rugs are widely collected in the West, and are almost always woven by tribes people who do not seek nor possess formal artistic training.


text:
Regulation Size and Weight.
Material: Duck Cloth & Cotton. Made from 2 layers of heavy duty duck cloth with one side having an additional layer of cotton added.
Measure 6" x 6", weigh 14-16 oz.
Traditional corn filled or all weather resin.
Set of 4 - Nightlife Solo Cups +


text:
Some college students are abusing powerful taxpayer funded computer networks to download and distribute movies and other copyrighted material which is why we are committed to working with universities to develop and implement plans to address this problem. We commend Senator Reid for his leadership in getting this important legislation passed through the Senate which will help encourage universities to do more.
At the time, Mr. Glickman estimated that downloading at universities cost the industry $500 million annually. Why not the Austin Powers ONE BILLION DOLLARS? Apparently members of Congress later failed to read the MPAA's January 2008 admission that its numbers in a commissioned survey about the extent of alleged unauthorized file sharing on campus were way off, the result of alleged "human error." But even the new number was phony and also failed to take into account the fact that most students live off campus.
This raises one of the features of Washington DC that rightly baffles those outside the Beltway: how is that a trade association gets an issue so wrong, but then still manages to get legislation passed that addresses a non-problem that the association deliberately concocted? The answer, supplied by Mr. Glickman, is: leadership.
MPAA's initial efforts were defeated fortunately, and the history of the bill during late 2007 and early 2008 is recounted in a series of very informative posts by Anne Broache for Cnet here , here, and here. Congress, in the bill that just passed, instead of mandating filtering and bad boy lists, mandated various requirements for educators to undertake, all of which involve spouting MPAA and RIAA's propaganda. Here are the relevant pages from the Joint Explanatory Statement of the Managers in the Conference Committee report describing the requirements:
Institutional and Financial Assistance Information for Students.
The Senate amendment and the House bill require institutions to make available to current and prospective students the institution of higher education's policies and sanctions related to copyright infringement, including a description of actions taken by the institution of higher education to detect and prevent the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials on the institution of higher education's technology system.
Both the Senate and the House recede with an amendment to replace language in (iv) with language requiring institutions to make available the development of plans to detect and prevent unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material on the institution of higher education's information technology system which shall, to the extent practicable, include offering alternatives to illegal-downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property, as determined by the institution of higher education in consultation with the Chief Technology Officer or other designated officer of the institution.
The Conferees have combined elements from both bills to require institutions to advise students about this issue and to certify that all institutions have plans to combat and reduce illegal peer to peer file sharing.
Experience shows that a technology-based deterrent can be an effective element of an overall solution to combat copyright infringement, when used in combination with other internal and external solutions to educate users and enforce institutional policies.
Effective technology-based deterrents are currently available to institutions of higher education through a number of vendors. These approaches may provide an institution with the ability to choose which one best meets its needs, depending on that institution's own unique characteristics, such as cost and scale. These include bandwidth shaping, traffic monitoring to identify the largest bandwidth users, a vigorous program of accepting and responding to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices, and a variety of commercial products designed to reduce or block illegal file sharing.
Rapid advances in information technology mean that new products and techniques are continually emerging. Technologies that are promising today may be obsolete a year from now and new products that are not even on the drawing board may, at some point in the not too distant future, prove highly effective. The Conferees intend that this Section be interpreted to be technology neutral and not imply that any particular technology measures are favored or required for inclusion in an institution's plans. The Conferees intend for each institution to retain the authority to determine what its particular plans for compliance with this Section will be, including those that prohibit content monitoring. The Conferees recognize that there is a broad range of possibilities that exist for institutions to consider in developing plans for purposes of complying with this Section.
Numerous institutions are utilizing various technology based deterrent in their efforts to combat copyright infringement on their campuses. According to a report of the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities, many institutions of higher education have taken significant steps to deal with the problem. Indiana University, for example, hosts an extensive "Are you legal?" educational campaign for students on the issues, and enforces campus policies on proper use of the network. It acts on DCMA notices by disconnecting students from the network and requires tutorials and quizzes to restore service. Second offenders are blocked immediately and are sent to the Student Ethics Committee for disciplinary action.
Audible Magic's CopySense Network Appliance provides comprehensive control over Peer-to-Peer (P2P) usage on a university's network. The CopySense Appliance identifies and blocks illegal sharing of copyrighted files while allowing other legitimate P2P uses to continue. It filters copyrighted P2P content by sensing an electronic fingerprint unique to the content itself, which is very similar to the way virus filters operate.
Red Lambda's "Integrity" is a network security solution dedicated to the management of file-sharing activities via protocols like P2P, IM, IRC, and FTP. This technology is able to detect all P2P, OS file-sharing, FTP, IM, proxy use, Skype and application tunneling over HTTP, HTTPS, DNS and ICMP protocols.
The University of Maryland, College Park, severely restricts bandwidth for residential networks and block certain protocols. It designed "Project Nethics" to promote the responsible use of information technology through user education and policy enforcement. A third violation can result in eviction from the university housing system. Montgomery College in Maryland enforces an Acceptable Use Policy on its wired and wireless networks.
Additional existing technological approaches can deter illegal file sharing by automatically processing notices sent by scanning vendors then taking actions such as messaging the user via browser redirection, applying the appropriate sanction and automatically re-enable browsing after a timeout or reconnect fee is paid. Other institutions use technology to appropriately manage their campus networks by limiting and/or shaping bandwidth, such as Packeteer's packet shaping technology.
This statement, in all likelihood written by MPAA, is extraordinary in many respects, especially for its detailed endorsement of private sector products. No general principles here like the text of the bill, and that of course is one of the abuses of legislative history that Justice Scalia and others rightly complain about: the tenor of the legislative history would never have been able to pass as legislative text. But the legislative history was inserted to serve a long-term agenda: there is likely to be an effort in the next Congress to mandate these technologies. The MPAA, with figures no better than the ones they retracted, will complain about universities' alleged failure to be MPAA's cops, and will lobby for mandated use of technologies, along with forfeiture of federal funding for not doing so. Why not throw in a 10 year federal prison term (no parole in the federal system, btw) for the President of a University that isn't up to snuff. Or, how about adopting Sarbanes-Oxley for university officials who will have to swear on penalty of perjury (and imprisonment) that they have fulfilled MPAA's requirements?
Here is the relevant statutory language:
3 (a) INFORMATION DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES.—
4 Section 485(a) (20 U.S.C. 1092(a)) is amended—
5 (1) in paragraph (1)—
6 (A) in subparagraph (G)—
7 (i) by striking ''program, and'' and in
8 serting ''program,''; and
9 (ii) by inserting '', and (iv) any plans
10 by the institution for improving the aca
11 demic program of the institution'' after
12 ''instructional personnel''; and
13 (B) by striking subparagraph (M) and in
14 serting the following:
15 ''(M) the terms and conditions of the loans
16 that students receive under parts B, D, and
18 (C) in subparagraph (N), by striking
19 ''and'' after the semicolon;
20 (D) in subparagraph (O), by striking the
21 period and inserting a semicolon; and
22 (E) by adding at the end the following:
23 ''(P) institutional policies and sanctions re
24 lated to copyright infringement, including—
25 ''(i) an annual disclosure that explic
26 itly informs students that unauthorized
1 distribution of copyrighted material, in
2 cluding unauthorized peer-to-peer file shar
3 ing, may subject the students to civil and
4 criminal liabilities;
5 ''(ii) a summary of the penalties for
6 violation of Federal copyright laws; and
7 ''(iii) a description of the institution's
8 policies with respect to unauthorized peer
9 to-peer file sharing, including disciplinary
10 actions that are taken against students
11 who engage in unauthorized distribution of
12 copyrighted materials using the institu
13 tion's information technology system;
...25 U.S.C. 1094(a)) is amended—
1 (i) in paragraph (23)—
2 (I) by moving subparagraph (C)
3 two ems to the left; and
4 (II) by adding at the end the fol
5 lowing:
6 ''(29) The institution certifies that the institu
7 tion—
8 ''(A) has developed plans to effectively
9 combat the unauthorized distribution of copy
10 righted material, including through the use of a
11 variety of technology-based deterrents; and
12 ''(B) will, to the extent practicable, offer
13 alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to
14 peer distribution of intellectual property, as de
15 termined by the institution in consultation with
16 the chief technology officer or other designated
17 officer of the institution.''.


text:
Merlin's weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
Merlin's weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.
"What's 43 Folders?"
43Folders.com is Merlin Mann's website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.
The War of Art, and JoCo on becoming a "true person"
Merlin Mann | Mar 8 2007
007: Interview: Jonathan Coulton, Part 2 | The Merlin Show I first heard about The War of Art from David Allen during our GTD podcast series last year. I finally picked up a copy a couple months back and read it in an evening. Like a lot of self-help books, it's longer than it needs to be (and it's not actually very long to begin with), but it does make some great points about what its author calls "resistance." Resistance can be thought of as anything that pulls us away from doing the work we know is most important to us. It takes many forms (including procrastination, fear, distraction, and negative self-talk), but the effect is often similar: we find or permit all kinds of barriers to keep us from becoming the person we want to be, or from completing the thing we really want to make. Whether that's being a published author, a composer, a playwright, or a painter, our impulse to create constantly battles an impulse to do something else, or to do nothing -- to not upset our weirdly comfy stasis. This book came up twice in my recent interview with Jonathan Coulton; both in part one and today's recently released part two. Jonathan strikes me as someone who has, so far, succeeded at talking down the resistance he'd faced, and now he's doing what he's great at, and, in his words, he's working hard to become the kind of "true person" that he wants to be for his daughter. I think it's really important to underscore that beating resistance does not have to mean quitting your job or doing something equally dramatic; it just means that you identify and then choose to beat the crap out of whatever perceived obstacle keeps you from doing your work. You "go Pro" as Pressfield (not "Pressman") says, making it all about the work, and not allowing yourself to trail off when it gets hard or when you have to fight in order to get your stuff done. Pretty inspiring stuff, as far as I'm concerned. I really liked this second part of the interview with JoCo; particularly when Jonathan confessed that his lack of an email system has him "screwed." POSTED IN:
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About MerlinBio Merlin Mann is an independent writer, speaker, and broadcaster. He's best known for being the guy who created the website you're reading right now. He lives in San Francisco, does lots of public speaking, and helps make cool things like You Look Nice Today, Back to Work, and Kung Fu Grippe. Also? He's writing this book, he lives with this face, he suffers from this hair, he answers these questions, and he's had this life. So far. Merlin's favorite thing he's written in the past few years is an essay entitled, "Cranking." |
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text:
Does your spiritual lineage work with Ifá or is it an Ocha house? (Ocha is a Spanish contraction of Orisha) This is a common question you'll hear among santeros and it is a topic of great debate. There seem to be two major ways of working the religion of Santeria: spiritual lineages who work with Ifá and Babalawos, and those who don't. Both are legitimate and valid practices but what is the difference, and why does this disparity exist in Santeria?
What is Ifá and Who are Babalawos
Ifá is the name of the sect of Orunmila within Santeria. Orunmila (also spelled Orunla or Orula) is the orisha of divination who knows how our fate will unfold. Some practitioners also call Orunmila by the name Ifá. The reason I specifically call out Ifá as a separate sect is because the ritual functions within the Ifá sect can only be accomplished by priests of Orunmila – called Babalawos (or Oluwos if they were orisha priests prior to passing to Ifá – which many are). Only Babalawos can give the Eshu that is received in Ifá. Only Babalawos can give the Idé of Orunmila (bracelet of Orunmila), which is always worn and keeps the spirit of Ikú (death) at bay. Only Babalawos can divine with the okuelé (diviner's chain) and the ikín (palm nuts) – and these are the ONLY divination tools used in Ifá. Only Babalawos can give Kofá or Awofakán (Mano de Orula), giving a smaller shrine of Orunmila for people to have in their home (note this is not a consecration as a priest of Orunmila – it is a reception of his mysteries into your life for balance and to learn one's destiny). Only Babalawos can consecrate other Babalawos as priests. A Santero or Santera cannot do these things.
But the inverse is also true. A Babalawo cannot do many of the things a Santero or Santera can. They cannot give addimú orishas (token Orishas) to others except for the Warriors (Eshu, Ogun, Ochosi, Osun), Osain, Olokun and Oduduwa – and even then they can only give the Ifá style ones that can never be passed on by that individual (unless they become a Babalawo in time). They do not read diloggún (cowrie shells) – they stick only to the use of the diviner's chain and palm nuts. There is a pataki (legend) that Orunmila surrendered the cowries to Oshun and the orishas to use after she mastered the skill simply by watching him – and he swore that he would create a new system only for men, and only for his priests; that was the okuelé and ikin. Babalawos cannot give the initiation of Elekes (necklaces) – but they can give Orunmila's eleke to people. They cannot initiate people in the Kariocha ceremony to be priests of other Orishas. They can perform sacrificial rights, or entrance readings leading in to a kariocha but they cannot be in the sacred room when the initiation is taking place. They do not birth orishas.
So in many ways, the Ifá sect is a subdivision of Santería. A cloistered sect of diviners with membership limited to heterosexual men, who dedicate their lives to the mastery of divination, the science of Ifá and the knowledge of Odu. Babalawos are not the high priests of our religion. That is a misnomer perpetuated in many of the early books on Santeria written by outsiders to our faith. They are the masterful diviners in our religion who focus solely on the function of Ifá.
Lineages that Work with Ifá
Many of the spiritual lineages, or "houses", that work with Ifá will regularly go to Babalawos or include them in their ritual functions. Babalawos are consulted when determining the tutelary Orisha of an individual. In this ritual, three Babalawos (minimum) gather together and use the ikin (palm nuts) and the Opón Ifá (table of Ifá) to determine that person's tutelary Orisha. This is often done when a person received their Kofá or Awofakán (mano de Orula, hand of Orunmila). Ifá believes that only a Babalawo can determine a person's tutelary Orisha because Orunmila witnessed destiny unfold. (Orisha priests will argue this point and explain that it was Orunmila and Elegguá who witnessed fate together and that Elegguá actually preceded Orunmila, so Elegguá can also tell us who a person's tutelary orisha is.) Houses that work with Ifá will also employ Babalawos to perform sacrificial rites during ceremonies, and they will have Babalawos perform the entrance reading and the Ebó Até (cleansing at the mat) during a person's life reading.
A person becomes a Babalawo when they are told they have a destiny in the sect of Ifá through divination. This can be through the life reading when receiving Awofakán, or it can be through a life reading received after their Kariocha. Not everyone can become a Babalawo. Women and gay men are strictly prohibited from being initiated as Babalawos in Santería Lucumi (Lukumí). Some individuals go from being an Aborisha directly into the sect of Ifá as a priest of Orunmila. Most others end up being initiated as an Olorisha to their tutelary orisha (Elegguá, Ogún, Oshun, Yemaya, etc.) and then later in life "pass to Ifá" and become ordained as a priest of Orunmila (Babalawo). These individuals are called Oluwos (Oluos). The moment they pass to Ifá they no longer function as an Olorisha and can no longer participate in the rituals that an Olorisha officiates (elekes, warriors of ocha, kariocha, etc.). They dedicate their lives to the sect of Ifá and the ritual functions to which they are limited.
Lineages that Do Not Work with Ifá
Many spiritual lineages, or "houses", do not work with Ifá at all. In these houses the Obá Oriaté will officiate all ceremonies. The Oriaté is an orisha priest who has been specially consecrated due to his knowledge of divination and all of our ceremonial rituals, to officiate rituals in the sacred room (igbodú). Since the Oriaté is a Santero or Santera, he/she can do much more for an orisha initiate than a Babalawo can – but he cannot perform the special functions that are restricted to Ifá. An Oriate can determine the tutelary Orisha of an individual (actually any orisha priest can, provided he or she is a skilled diviner). This is performed either using the cowrie shells of the godparent's tutelary orisha, or with the diloggun of Eleggua (because Elegguá witnessed all destiny and knows everything taking place – and is truly neutral). Houses that do not work with Ifá argue that Olorishas are the only ones who should truly determine a person's tutelary orisha because they actually birth orishas and crown people as priests, where Ifá does not. (Personally I do not think this is a determining factor because you can cite the impartiality of Ifá as an equally valid reason to let Babalawos do this.) In non-Ifá houses, the Oriaté performs sacrificial rites (so can any individual who has received Pinaldo – the sacred knife), the Oriaté does the entrance readings prior to Kariocha and the Ebó Até (cleansing at the mat) during a person's life reading. The Oriaté officiates the kariocha ceremony where a priest is initiated. Oriatés can birth and give addimú orishas (token orishas) or any other function in the religion. They are the Orisha High Priests.
Why the Division? Where Did This Originate?
The separation between Ifá and Ocha lineages has historical roots. When the slave trade of the Yoruba began, the spiritual practices of the Yoruban tribes were just starting to solidify into one religion. As millions of Yoruba people, especially Olorishas, were sold into slavery, the Yoruba populace was divided by the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. The religion continued to evolve back in Africa, and evolved differently here in the Americas. This accounts for this disparity between the two religions and explains why Yoruba Traditional Religion has commonalities with, but cannot be compared directly to Lucumi/Lukumí Religion. The followers of Ifá in Africa were relatively untouched by the slave trade, and the sect of Ifá in Africa grew in prominence and ritual function. In Traditional Yoruba Religion, Ifá is deeply intertwined with Orisha worship and plays a different role than in Lukumí. The followers of Ifá, as a population, were the last group taken in slavery and brought to Cuba.
In Cuba, as Santeria Lucumi started to take form, there was a marked absence of Babalawos and the Ifá sect. The style of initiation performed in the Yoruba city of Oyo became the most prominent style of initiation in Santeria. This initiation includes the reception of the "four pillar" orishas of Santeria regardless of that person's tutelary orisha: Obatala, Oshun, Yemaya and Chango. The Obá Oriaté functioned as the master of ceremonies in all rituals. Women were the strongest leaders in Santeria and every lineage will honor mighty women in their Moyuba prayer. Santeria Lucumi unified in practice and purpose in the late 1800's. There is historical evidence that by 1860, Lucumi people were performing ordinations to priesthood. Santeria, without the influence of Ifá, was functioning strongly in Cuba up until the early 1900's.
In the early 1900's, women who were once the strongest and most powerful leaders in Santeria, began losing prominence as the Babalawos and sect of Ifá rose in power. In the sect of Ifá, when a Babalawo marries a woman Olorisha, she becomes an Apetebí Aya Ifá (slave of Ifá) and is forbidden from performing diloggun divination. Divination becomes the sole domain of the Babalawo in that house, and women are subjugated. Many of the most powerful women in Santeria were getting married to Babalawos because of the status associated with the position, but in the process, women lost power in Santeria. Babalawos became the master of ceremonies in those houses, and thus began the difference between spiritual lineages that work with Ifá versus those that are Ocha-centric. The office of Oriaté, once traditionally held by the most influential women in our religion, became dominated by men. To date there are two, perhaps three, female Oriatés left in the United States, and a few more in Cuba. In modern times, most Apetebís know very little about Ocha, and mainly defer to their husbands about knowledge of Ifá.
Therefore, the lineages that do work with Ifá typically introduced this sect into their Santeria practice through marriages in the past. A female Olorisha likely married a Babalawo and he began divining for everyone and running the show. Lineages that don't have Ifá strongly involved in their practice likely never experienced this phenomenon. Both are traditional practices according to the culture bearers of the religion of Santeria.
Everyone Comes to the Feet of Ifá
In spite of the division between Ifá and Ocha-centric lineages, everyone will eventually come to Ifá for some need. Some go to Babalawos to get their Kofa or Awofakán (Mano de Orula, Hand of Orula) and that's it. Others come for an occasional reading from time to time, or to receive the Idé of Orunmila (bracelet of Orunmila that keeps death at bay). Some will visit Babalawos when facing a very difficult spiritual obstacle to employ the tools of Ifá to break through it. While it is not required to participate with Ifá, at some point everyone will come to the foot of Ifá for assistance. For this reason alone, regardless of the divisions between us, we should all respect Orunmila and his special sect of diviners, the Babalawos.


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I am a huge fan of Clay Burell, now over at Change.org; he also has a wonderful blog Beyond School where he attacks schooliness and ragged thinking while bringing to life classics such as Gilgamesh.
He recently posted a (justified) attack against a recent Science Daily article that highlighted a study that suggested that newer technologies had a hand in declining critical thinking skills. It's worth reading.
Still, the disciples of the high tech crowd did not disappoint this "reactionary clock-turn-backer" with their crowing. So I responded.
I wanted to carry a small piece of my words back here:
It's been awhile since I sat in a Friends (Quaker) meeting. The local meeting is unprogrammed, which means we sit silently for an hour or so. Occasionally someone will speak if so moved, but most times little (blessedly) is said.
The first few minutes I am incredibly twitchy, and cannot settle down until I remember I cannot settle down by trying, then am content to watch the sun beam creep across the bench in front of me.
I stare out a window looking at a tree. A few telephone lines run by it--I think about the tremendous amount of information that passes through those lines every minute. Then I think about the tree.
Both are marvelous things, the human wire, the mystery of trees, and both hold vast amounts of knowledge. The wire is ultimately knowable, the tree ultimately not.
I'm more interested in the tree, because it's more interesting.


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Mission to Vinland
In the course of a work gig, I lately read up on Leif Ericson. I have noted him before on this blog, a gloomy Nordic presence at the space banquet. His claim to fame is as the second to last person to discover America, proof that mighty voyages do not always have mighty results. (The connotations of 'mighty' depending, of course, on perspective.)
To recap the story, Leif was the son of Eric the Red - an even more unwelcome guest at the space banquet, since he founded the Norse colony in Greenland that ultimately failed, its life support technology overwhelmed by the Little Ice Age.
Leif heard that another Norse seaman had sighted land west of Greenland, bought the man's ship, and went to see for himself. He found a couple of rather bleak islands, then one that was a lot less bleak. He dubbed it Vinland.
Up until 50 years ago this whole story hung only on the saga accounts, glimpsed along with King Arthur and the Trojan War across the misty frontier between history and legend. Then archeologists dug at L'Anse aux Meadows, on the northern tip of Newfoundland, and found a Norse outpost.
Leif's colonization effort was shortlived - mostly due to short tempered Vikings - and it is not certain that a 'colony' was the intent, rather than a base camp for resource exploitation. A chance encounter at sea more than 300 years later indicates that the Greenland Norse were still sailing as far as one of Leif's intermediate islands, Markland (possibly Labrador) to gather timber.
In short, the entire Vinland episode was a matter of a small frontier settlement looking for additional resources to tap in neighoring regions, a process that would be repeated scores of times after 1492. Leif Ericson, like Christopher Columbus, had no idea that he was 'discovering America.' But Columbus did know that he was looking for a major trade route, one that if it panned out would bring fabulous wealth to Spain (and, from his Genoese perspective, poke one in the eye of the Venetians).
Leif Ericson was not looking for a major trade route, only a supply source for a remote settlement. The Greenland Norse were too few to exploit it, and no one else had any practical need for it. In space terms, Vinland was just one more outer-planet moon that turned out not to warrant follow-up missions. A great story in its own right, but not, after all, a story of failed discovery.


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Note: Article updated October 2018 to remove references to "Office 2016" and replace it with "Office 365 ProPlus" as the rollover to the 2019 release is seamless and does not change this products name.
Note: Article updated April 2018 Mid 2020 to support the new Channel names and XML updates and the new name for the product (Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise).
Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise (aka Office 365 ProPlus) Click To Run (which comes with Office 365 subscriptions) can be deployed via Group Policy, but there are a few things that you need to know and do first. These are:
- You cannot use the "Software Installation" features of GPO's to deploy the installer click to run software as this is an exe file, and "Software Installation" runs MSI files.
- You cannot run software with elevated installation rights, as the setup.exe shells out to other processes to run the installation (the officeclick2run.exe service).
- You cannot just drop the latest versions of the files in an existing 2013 deployment folder and expect the clients to update automatically – you must install 2016 to upgrade it and install it for the first time. This is not the case with the "2019" release. An existing installation installed before the "2019" release in October 2018 will seamlessly move to this version at the next applicable update.
Therefore you need to deploy the software via a computer startup script. But this is not simple either as startup scripts run each time the computer starts up (obviously!) but will run regardless of whether the software is already installed. Therefore you need to run the installation by way of a startup script that first checks if Office 365 ProPlus click to run has already been installed or not.
To do this you need to following:
- A read only file share containing the Office 2016 click to run files. Not this folder should not be the folder that already contains the Office 2013 files if you have them on your network.
- A read/write file share to store log files on (the deployment script logs the start and completion of the installation in a central location)
- An XML file to install Office 365 ProPlus click to run customised to your environment and the fact that you are using GPO deployment
- A batch file to detect an existing Office 365 ProPlus click to run deployment and if not present to install Office 365 ProPlus click to run from your file share.
- And finally the Office Deployment Tool setup program. This software has been updated a few times over the years, so ensure you download the current version before starting.
Steps 1 and 4 are part of a standard Office 365 ProPlus click to run deployment process and so not covered in this blog post. But once you have downloaded the Office Deployment Tool and created the XML using the creator tool at https://config.office.com you have your configuration.xml file. In step 3 you can run the deployment tool with setup.exe /download configuration.xml to download the Office binaries to the file share mentioned in step 1. If you have Office 2013 already deployed via this method (see http://c7solutions.com/2014/09/installing-office-365-proplus-click-to-run-via-gpo-deployment for these steps) then make sure that this folder for the binaries is not the same folder as contains 2013 files. The Office installer for Office 2013 Click To Run creates a subfolder called Office then another subfolder called Data. Into this it places v32.cab (or v64.cab) and other files. This cab file contains info relating to the version number of the software in this folder and if you download the current version to the same folder it will replace this file, but 2013 installed machines will still try and upgrade from this folder and fail. Therefore create another folder. This is shown in the example scripts below.
So here are the steps and details for doing all this for GPO deployment:
Creating Deployment File Shares
Create a software deployment file share that you have read/write access to and everyone else read only and create a folder called Office365ProPlus inside this to store the binaries.
Create a second file share that everyone has read/write access to (or CREATOR OWNER has write so that only the creator of the file can write it to the share and others can read or not see it at all). Create a sub folder in InstallLogs called Office365ProPlus.
In my demo these two shares and subfolders are called \\server\Software\Office365ProPlus and \\server\InstallLogs\Office365ProPlus.
Create an XML File for Office 2016 Click to Run Deployment
This XML file is as follows and is saved to \\server\Software\Office365ProPlus root folder. Call this file config.xml. You can create this XML file using the wizard at https://config.office.com
<Info Description="" />
<Add SourcePath="\\server\Software\Office365ProPlus\" OfficeClientEdition="64" Channel="MonthlyEnterprise" MigrateArch="TRUE">
<Product ID="O365ProPlusRetail">
<Language ID="de-de" />
<Language ID="MatchPreviousMSI" />
<ExcludeApp ID="Groove" />
<ExcludeApp ID="Lync" />
<Product ID="LanguagePack">
<Language ID="de-de" />
<Language ID="MatchPreviousMSI" />
<Updates Enabled="TRUE" UpdatePath="\\server\Software\Office365ProPlus\" Channel="MonthlyEnterprise" />
<RemoveMSI />
<Setup Name="Company" Value="DC Advisory" />
<User Key="software\microsoft\office\16.0\common\general" Name="shownfirstrunoptin" Value="1" Type="REG_DWORD" App="office16" Id="L_DisableOptinWizard" />
<User Key="software\microsoft\office\16.0\excel\options" Name="defaultformat" Value="51" Type="REG_DWORD" App="excel16" Id="L_SaveExcelfilesas" />
<User Key="software\microsoft\office\16.0\powerpoint\options" Name="defaultformat" Value="27" Type="REG_DWORD" App="ppt16" Id="L_SavePowerPointfilesas" />
<User Key="software\microsoft\office\16.0\word\options" Name="defaultformat" Value="" Type="REG_SZ" App="word16" Id="L_SaveWordfilesas" />
<Display Level="None" AcceptEULA="TRUE" />
The important entries of "no display" and the "Extended User Licence Agreement" having been accepted are important, as GPO deployment works as a system service and so cannot display anything to the screen. Also see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219426(v=office.15).aspx for the XML reference file for other settings you can contain here such as updates from the Internet (UpdatePath="") or no updates (Updates Enabled="FALSE"), the Channel value names and multiple languages (add more <Language ID="xx-xx" /> nodes to the file) or to match the language to the OS (MatchOS, with Fallback language and allowing internet download if the language is not available with AllowCdnFallback), etc.
Download the Office ProPlus Click to Run Binaries
Download the Office Deployment Tool from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49117 and if you downloaded this a few months ago, download it again as it changes frequently and improves the setup process.
Install this software to get setup.exe and some example XML files. Copy setup.exe to \\server\Software\OfficeProPlus.
Run \\server\Software\Office365ProPlus\setup.exe /download \\server\Software\Office365ProPlus\config.xml to download the latest version (or the specified version if you have added Version="184.108.40.206″ to config.xml where 22.214.171.124 is the build number you want to install). This will create the Office\Data folder in the \\server\Office365ProPlus share and download the binaries and any languages specified in the XML to that location – do not modify the folder structure as the Office Deployment Tool will expect this structure to find the files under during installation.
Create A CMD File To Script The Install
In Notepad create a cmd file and save it to <strong\\server\Office365ProPlus as well. It will eventually go in the GPO folder location, but this will be your master copy. The cmd file will look like the following and for this demo is called _InstallOffice365ProPlusGPO.cmd
setlocal REM ********************************************************************* REM Environment customization begins here. Modify variables below. REM ********************************************************************* REM Set DeployServer to a network-accessible location containing the Office source files. set DeployServer=\\server\Software\Office365ProPlus REM Set ConfigFile to the configuration file to be used for deployment (required) set ConfigFile=\\server\Software\Office365ProPlus\config.xml REM Set LogLocation to a central directory to collect script log files (install log files are set in XML file). set LogLocation=\\server\InstallLogs\Office365ProPlus REM ********************************************************************* REM Deployment code begins here. Do not modify anything below this line (check quotes are quotes though). REM ********************************************************************* IF NOT "%ProgramFiles(x86)%"=="" (goto ARP64) else (goto ARP86) REM Operating system is X64. Check for 32 bit Office in emulated Wow6432 registry key :ARP64 reg query HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432NODE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\ClickToRunStore\Packages\{9AC08E99-230B-47e8-9721-4577B7F124EA} if NOT %errorlevel%==1 (goto End) REM Check for 32 and 64 bit versions of Office 2013 in regular registry key.(Office 64bit would also appear here on a 64bit OS) :ARP86 reg query HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\ClickToRunStore\Packages\{9AC08E99-230B-47e8-9721-4577B7F124EA} if %errorlevel%==1 (goto DeployOffice) else (goto End) REM If 1 returned, the product was not found. Run setup here. :DeployOffice echo %date% %time% Setup started. &amp;gt;&amp;gt; %LogLocation%\%computername%.txt pushd "%DeployServer%" start /wait setup.exe /configure "%ConfigFile%" echo %date% %time% Setup ended with error code %errorlevel%. &amp;gt;&amp;gt; %LogLocation%\%computername%.txt REM If 0 or other was returned, the product was found or another error occurred. Do nothing. :End Endlocal
This will be run by GPO and at computer startup look for the Click To Run registry key that indicates Office has been installed. If not found for 64 or 32 bit OS's and 64 or 32 bit installations of Office then it will deploy office.
Create A Group Policy Object
Create in your domain a GPO object over an OU that contains the computers you want to install Office 2016 click to run on. This will run on all computers in this OU, so start with a test OU containing one or a few computers or use permissions to lock the GPO object down to specific computer accounts.
In this GPO set the following:
- A startup script that runs _InstallOffice365ProPlusGPO.cmd. A startup script will have a folder the script is located in (click Show Files button in the GPO editor) and copy the above cmd file from the Office deployment share to this folder.
- Then click Add and select the file – there are no script parameters.
- Your GPO object will look like this.
- In Adminstrative Templates/System/Scripts set the Maximum wait time for Group Policy scripts to 1800 seconds. This is 30 minutes. The default is 10 minutes (600 seconds) but I have found Office installs take just over ten minutes on a LAN and longer if the fileshare is remote to the client computer. The script will be cancelled if it takes over 30 minutes, so you may need a higher value for your network.
Deploy Office 365 ProPlus Click to Run Click To Run
Run gpupdate /force on a test computer that is under the scope of your GPO object and then reboot the computer. The installation will start automatically and Office will be ready to use a few minutes after reboot. Office takes about 10 minutes to fully install on a LAN but can be used about 2 or 3 minutes after installation starts. Though in my lab with a low resourced file server it took 30 minutes to install. Do not reboot the PC in that time.
Check \\server\InstallLogs\Office365ProPlus for a file named after the computer. This will have two lines, one for the start of the deployment and one at the end (with "Setup ended with error code 0" if successful).


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Thursday, 07 June 2012 08:18 AM EDT
Business social network LinkedIn and online dating service eHarmony said some of their users' passwords were stolen and millions appear to have been leaked onto the Internet.
LinkedIn Corp. did not say how many of the more than six million passwords that were distributed online corresponded to LinkedIn accounts. In a blog post Wednesday, the company said it was continuing to investigate.
Graham Cluley, a consultant with U.K. Web security company Sophos, recommended that LinkedIn users change their passwords immediately.
LinkedIn has a lot of information on its more than 160 million members, including potentially confidential information related to jobs being sought. Companies, recruiting services and others have accounts alongside individuals who post resumes and other professional information.
Later Wednesday, eHarmony said the passwords of a "small fraction" of its users had been compromised. The site, which says it has over 20 million registered online users, did not say how many had been affected. But tech news site Ars Technica said it found about 1.5 million passwords leaked online that appeared to be from eHarmony users.
The dating service said on its blog that it had reset the passwords of the affected users, who would receive an email with instructions on how to set new passwords. It recommended all its users adopt "robust" passwords.
There's added concern that many people use the same password on multiple websites, so whoever stole the data could use the information to access Gmail, Amazon, PayPal and other accounts, Cluley said.
Before confirming the breach, LinkedIn issued security tips as a precautionary measure. The company said users should change passwords at least every few months and avoid using the same ones on multiple sites.
LinkedIn also had suggestions for making passwords stronger, including avoiding passwords that match words in a dictionary. One way is to think of a meaningful phrase or song and create a password using the first letter of each word.
Cluley said hackers are working together to break the encryption on the passwords.
"All that's been released so far is a list of passwords and we don't know if the people who released that list also have the related email addresses," he said. "But we have to assume they do. And with that combination, they can begin to commit crimes."
It wasn't known who was behind such an attack.
LinkedIn's blog post had few details about what happened. It said compromised passwords have been deactivated, and members with affected accounts will be sent emails with further instructions.
While the passwords appear to be encrypted, security researcher Marcus Carey warned that users should not take solace from such security measures.
"If a website has been breached, it doesn't matter what encryption they're using because the attacker at that point controls a lot of the authentication," said Carey, who works at security-risk assessment firm Rapid7. "It's 'game over' once the site is compromised."
Cluley warned that LinkedIn users should be careful about malicious email generated around the incident. The fear is that people, after hearing about the incident, would be tricked into clicking on links in those emails. Instead of getting to the real LinkedIn site to change a password, it would go to a scammer, who can then collect the information and use it for criminal activities.
LinkedIn said its emails will not include any links.
Shares of LinkedIn, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., gained 8 cents to close Wednesday at $93.08.
EHarmony is a private company based in Santa Monica, Calif.
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