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Edward Greenspon, Andrew Mayeda, Rebecca Penty and
Thursday, 24 April 2014 11:23 PM
The State Department, Obama said, would be making an announcement later that day putting the Keystone XL pipeline project on hold. There was no choice, according to the president. Nebraska wanted the route changed to protect a key aquifer under millions of acres of prime farmland. This would necessitate a new environmental assessment. He assured Harper the call wasn't a game changer; neither a yes nor a no, just a delay.
Harper was far from assured — he was irritated. The project had already undergone three years of study and was, so the Canadians believed, on the cusp of approval. Delay, he told Obama, served no one's interest.
By the time Harper hung up, according to people with knowledge of the episode, he had sized up the potential economic calamity for Canada and its oil ambitions. Western Canada's land-locked Alberta oil sands hold roughly 168 billion recoverable barrels of heavy crude known as bitumen. America gobbles up almost all of Canada's oil exports. An energy research group in Calgary had run the math: If Keystone died, it could cost Canada C$632 billion ($573 billion) in foregone growth over 25 years — 94 percent of it from the economy of Alberta, the province Harper calls home.
So here was Obama, in Harper's view, jeopardizing Canada's welfare by throwing a sop to his anti-Keystone environmental supporters. He had blinked and might well blink again. A year or two could be three or four. Or never.
That the U.S. couldn't be counted on to take Canada's oil came as a shocking epiphany, said a former senior government adviser with knowledge of the call who asked not to be identified because the person isn't authorized to speak publicly.
The president's call that day jolted the Canadians awake. It convinced Harper that Obama was treating a long-presumed "special relationship" between Canada and the U.S., enshrined in the 1989 Free Trade Agreement, as a political football. It would set a brittle tone on both sides of the border as the Keystone battle became a contest of contrasting political wills and sensibilities as much as a fight over oil development.
Canada was so blinded by its long-held expectation that the U.S. wanted to buy its oil as much as Canada wanted to sell it that it missed critical cues — including the hydraulic fracturing revolution that was starting to flood the U.S. with vast new energy supplies — that Keystone was running into political trouble.
This story of Harper's and Obama's frayed relations and how Keystone got bogged down was put together after on- and off-the- record interviews with more than 75 people -- current and former Canadian and U.S. government officials; Harper's political advisers; industry executives; and Nebraska and Alberta politicians involved in the Keystone fray. A number of well- placed Canadian officials in a position to know the inside story asked not to be identified because they aren't authorized to speak.
Today, Harper's pessimism over that 2011 call seems justified. On April 18, as Christians marked the Good Friday holiday, the Obama administration notified the Canadians that the pipeline would be held up one more time over unresolved legal issues involving the Nebraska route.
The delay comes despite a favorable State Department environmental assessment in January that seemed to clear Obama's major hurdle for approval — that the pipeline wouldn't significantly worsen global warming because the oil sands would be developed even if Keystone is blocked.
The stakes are high in the U.S. too. Building the pipeline would create 3,900 jobs over its two-year construction period, contributing $3.4 billion in economic growth, according to the State Department. On the Gulf of Mexico, refiners from Total SA to Royal Dutch Shell Plc have spent more than $25 billion to upgrade U.S. refineries so they could process what they thought would be an avalanche of heavy oil from Canada.
In public pronouncements, both the White House and Harper's office say the countries remain staunch allies despite Keystone friction. "Canada is one of our closest partners," said White House spokesman Matthew Lehrich, who characterized the latest delay as White House deference to the State Department's role of "evaluating whether the Keystone pipeline project is in the national interest."
Harper, in a Jan. 14 interview with Bloomberg News, characterized his relationship with Obama as "good" while noting that "there are times when we do have to stand up in a way that's not necessarily the same view as the American administration."
Even before the Keystone clash, the relationship between Harper, leader of Canada's Conservative Party, and the Democrat occupying the White House was at best coolly cordial, said officials familiar with the dynamic. Keystone has made it frosty. Irritated themselves, Obama and the State Department had offered Harper some advice – toning down Canada's aggressive Washington lobbying would let the regulatory process play itself out without the appearance of unseemly outside pressure.
Harper, an economist by training who had cut his teeth in petroleum-rich Alberta, wasn't swayed. He has staked a great deal of his political capital on getting Keystone built as part of an ambition to re-brand Canada as a global energy superpower. Harper, according to many of his advisers, thinks of Obama as a kind of frustrator-in-chief.
Instead of toning it down, Harper chose to make Keystone a "bilateral irritant" that Obama couldn't ignore, according to these insiders. Two months before Obama's heads up call, Harper, during a swing through New York, called approval of Keystone a "no brainer" — a zinger aimed at challenging the judgment of Keystone opponents while goading Obama into action. He hasn't hesitated to repeat similar digs.
In the January Bloomberg interview, Harper criticized Obama for kicking the can down the road. Asked what he had learned from Keystone about dealing with the president, he replied: "I don't think I've learned anything I didn't know already. I'll just leave it there. Look I'm not telling any tales out of school that the reason for the holdup is politics, and it is politics of a fairly narrow nature."
To raise the pressure, the Canadian oil industry and its Keystone allies have also aggressively been pushing a theme that, whether it irritates Obama, certainly irritates his anti- Keystone environmental supporters. Kill the pipeline and we'll truck, barge or ship by rail that oil to the U.S. anyway — and, by the way, also find ways to sell it to the Chinese.
The 54-year-old Harper's role in this has been unquestionably shaped by his background. He grew up in Toronto, where his father worked as an accountant for Imperial Oil Ltd., part of the Exxon Mobil Corp. empire. He dropped out of the University of Toronto in his first year to take a job in the mail room of Imperial's Edmonton office.
Soon enrolled at the University of Calgary, he imbibed Alberta's sense of alienation, especially when former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's Liberal government introduced its National Energy Program, reviled in Alberta as a nationalistic tax grab over a provincially owned resource.
Harper's views that Western Canada and its oil interests had been continuously dealt an unfair hand by unfriendly governments in faraway Ottawa would become a cornerstone of his politics. By the time he was sworn in as prime minister in February 2006, Harper saw the oil sands as his nation's route to riches and stature.
The new prime minister began charting his own energy course that July. On his way to his first G-8 summit in Russia, he arranged a stopover in the U.K. to deliver an address to the international community.
His unspoken goal was to meet his political hero, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose politics of conviction were in full flower as he came of age in the conservative movement. Harper aides recall that she was kind enough to come to his suite at the five-star Jumeirah Carlton Tower hotel in London's affluent Knightsbridge neighborhood. His minders scrambled to stock her favorite brand of scotch.
The meeting proved both exhilarating and heart-breaking. Thatcher's struggle with the early stages of dementia became apparent from her rehearsed responses and tendency to repeat them. Harper did come away with one indelible piece of advice, according to people with knowledge of the meeting: Stand four-square with the Americans, Thatcher told him. For Harper, this seemed like good counsel — until Obama entered the picture.
With the hands of the Iron Lady laid upon him, the prime minister went downstairs to a cherrywood-paneled ballroom outfitted with Viennese crystal chandeliers. There, he talked up Canada's energy resources generally and northern Alberta's expanse of thick, sticky crude — known to its proponents as the oil sands and its detractors as the tar sands — most particularly.
The new Canadian government intended to turn the country into an "energy superpower," Harper told the influential audience of more than 300. The unconventional petroleum beneath the forests and muskeg of his home province offered "the most attractive combination of circumstances for energy investment of any place in the world." Its extraction and refining represented a "monumental challenge," he said, yet one Canada was prepared to meet. "It is an enterprise of epic proportions, akin to the building of the pyramids or China's Great Wall. Only bigger."
As it turned out, Harper had never actually seen the fabled oil sands. It was a shortcoming he would rectify with a brief visit in late 2007 highlighted by a ride on a heavy-hauler truck with 13-feet high wheels and a bone-chilling flyover in an unheated Canadian Forces helicopter.
Development, he could see, was brisk, with private and state-owned producers from around the globe investing C$18 billion that year. Harper's challenge then and now was how the growing volumes of viscous crude would get to market. With the U.S. essentially its only market, Alberta oil sells at a discount to the world price, resulting in some C$18 billion a year in lost revenue, according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. Lack of pipeline capacity to get that new crude to the U.S. would cost billions more.
Enter Keystone XL. On Sept. 19, 2008, TransCanada Corp., Canada's second-largest pipeline company, submitted an application for a 2,673-kilometer (1,661-mile) route from Hardisty, Alberta, to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Nobody gave it much thought. As former Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver observed during an interview, "pipelines were like watching paint dry, the absolute definition of boredom."
In retrospect, the timing was inauspicious. Four days earlier, Lehman Brothers had collapsed, deepening a financial crisis that would roil the U.S. and world economies for the next half-dozen years. Millions of jobs would be lost. With the U.S. reeling, Obama, a junior senator from Illinois who liked to talk up the threat of climate change, was gathering a head of steam in his pursuit of the White House.
Obama, according to one of Harper's university contemporaries, represented many of the characteristics Harper most disliked: An oratorically gifted Harvard Law grad embraced by the Hollywood culturati and preaching the politics of hope. They shared keen intellects, aloof personalities and, as they would note on Obama's first visit to Ottawa, young families. However, they lacked the personal chemistry that allowed some former U.S. and Canadian leaders to cut through difficult issues. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, for example, got along famously with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and Prime Minister Jean Chretien hit it off with Bill Clinton.
In May 2011, Harper won his coveted majority after two minority terms. Keystone seemed to be making its way through the hoops of a complex process, poised to deliver on the energy superpower promise.
Still, the prime minister was unhappy that depictions of Canada as a "dirty oil" nation were not being adequately confronted by the industry or his ministers. He had become enamored with an argument put forth by conservative commentator Ezra Levant in a book called "Ethical Oil." It posited that many petro-nations used their oil riches to finance nefarious activities and subjugate their own citizens.
Canada, in the view of Levant, stood practically alone as an ethical producer. In a "mandate letter" setting forth his priorities, Harper instructed Oliver, his new Natural Resources Minister, to become a take-no-prisoners salesman for Canada's greatest resource.
In informal chats, U.S. officials suggested it would help Obama with his green constituency if Canada would move to regulate emissions from the oil and gas industry. The embassy in Washington, according to an official posted there, constantly relayed messages back home that Canada was being depicted as lax, almost indifferent on the environment. The message would come back that regulations were in the making.
The regulations didn't surface because Harper and his closest advisers were dubious they mattered. They had come to the conclusion that Obama swallowed concessions whole and gave nothing back. Without an administration commitment to a joint approach, they felt Canada would be digging itself into a competitive hole, according to people familiar with the back- and-forth of the discussions.
Keystone remained well down the list of bilateral issues preoccupying the prime minister's office in the late summer and early fall of 2011 — below a pending agreement to ease the flow of goods and services over a "sticky border" and below a request for U.S. help to get Canada into the Trans Pacific Partnership talks.
Unappreciated by Canada, anti-Keystone storm clouds were gathering. U.S. environmentalists, who raised large sums of money for Obama, organized a celebrity-studded, two-week protest that summer against the pipeline and the "dirty oil" it would carry. Republicans, sensing a wedge issue in the making, also were stirring, raising concerns in Canadian quarters that the White House wasn't clearly distinguishing between its political opponents and northern Conservatives with the same cause.
People in regular contact with the prime minister say that despite periodically talking up a need for greater trade diversity, he felt no major cause for alarm. His outlook seemed validated in late August when the State Department conferred its environmental seal of approval on the project. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird maintained close contact with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, viewed as pipeline friendly. Keystone looked set for approval.
Then just like that, or so it seemed in Canada, the emerging energy superpower got stopped in its tracks in Nebraska, America's 37th-largest state by population and one crisscrossed by pipelines. The Canadians were surprised and stunned by the pushback, said a Canadian diplomat who worked on the file.
In Lincoln, the state capital, Republican Governor Dave Heineman was being lobbied by an unprecedented alliance of environmentalists, farmers and ranchers over a tiny stretch of the project in the Sandhills region. The pipeline crossed the Ogallala aquifer there, a natural endowment that provided drinking water for 1.5 million people and irrigated almost half of Nebraska's cropland.
On Aug. 31, just after the State Department passed its favorable assessment, Governor Heineman wrote Obama and Clinton. "Do not allow TransCanada to build a pipeline over the Ogallala Aquifer and risk the potential damage to Nebraska's water," he stated, adding he generally favored pipelines.
TransCanada was eager to get the line operating and deliveries started to the Gulf refineries. It resisted calls by legislators to reroute the line and antagonized some landowners with letters threatening legal action if they didn't agree to allow Keystone to cross their property.
Chief Executive Officer Russ Girling said in an interview that the success of the grassroots campaign, employing scare tactics about unrelated matters like BP Plc's Gulf of Mexico blowout, made TransCanada realize the game had changed for the pipeline industry.
"We were caught flat-footed because historically we hadn't had to deal with that issue on the ground," he said.
In mid-October, with talk building of a special legislature session to stop the pipeline route, Speaker Mike Flood organized a last-ditch four-hour meeting in his Norfolk office between four state Senators and two TransCanada representatives. Compromise was not to be found. A week later, the company dispatched a letter declaring that at such a late stage "it is impossible for us to move the route to avoid the Sandhills."
The Canadian embassy was aware of tensions — Ambassador Gary Doer paid a visit to Heineman in September — but didn't fully grasp the speed at which the Prairie fire was spreading. Nor was TransCanada sounding alarm bells. Heineman summoned legislators for a special session on Nov. 1 that granted the state authority over the pipeline's path through Nebraska.
For Obama, the political calculus of Nebraska was indirect yet important. The national campaign had little interest in the state's five electoral votes, Bob Kerrey, the Democratic Senate candidate, recounted. Yet with a Republican governor opposed, it raised the pain point with environmentalists for the president to say yes.
Only on Nov. 10, with Obama's call, did Canada fully appreciate that building a pipeline no longer amounted to watching paint dry. Little empathy existed for Obama's political challenge versus the benefits of a project seen to be so clearly in the national interests of both countries.
Within four days of the Nebraska vote, TransCanada agreed to come up with an alternative route and Heineman climbed on board. It was too little, too late. Just yards from the goal line, Keystone's drive had been halted by a pro-pipeline governor in a pro-pipeline state.
In the hours after Obama's Nov. 10 call, Harper ordered the agenda cleared for the next weekly priorities & planning committee of cabinet, a grouping of the most powerful ministers, scheduled for Nov. 15. He then flew to Hawaii for a weekend Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit hosted by Obama, where they found 15 minutes for a short stroll on the grounds with suit jackets slung over their shoulders. It ended in the proverbial frank exchange at a picnic table, according to people with knowledge of that meeting.
Back in Ottawa Tuesday, a frustrated and determined Harper gathered with his senior ministers in the cabinet room on the third floor of the main Parliament building. The level of urgency and import had rarely if ever felt higher, participants recalled.
Harper opened by describing a world in which Europe's economy was in shambles yet it preferred to talk about matters like climate change. The U.S. had shown itself prepared to sacrifice energy security and job creation to curry environmental favor. Only Asia, he said, treated economic growth seriously.
Harper decided to put the government's weight behind the most imminent option — the Northern Gateway pipeline that would assure landlocked Alberta oil reached the West Coast, where it could then be shipped to Asia. Other ideas would be considered, too. Canada somehow needed to get bitumen to tidewater — that was the new imperative. It could never be an energy superpower otherwise.
The meeting, recalled a person who attended, was filled with drama and tension, with Harper demanding creative solutions. He also insisted his ministers stop the infighting that had stalled measures to speed up environmental assessment reviews of major projects and give his cabinet, not regulators, final say.
The government had been horrified that approval for the C$16 billion Mackenzie Valley pipeline that would transport natural gas from the Beaufort Sea had taken about seven years, almost all on their watch, according to people with knowledge of the thinking. By then, fracking in the U.S. had decimated the export market and the Mackenzie line wasn't built.
Harper's government was determined to do whatever it took to avoid a similar fate for Gateway and other oil sands outlets, much to the eventual outrage of environmentalists, aboriginals and opposition parties.
Also emerging from that meeting was a strategy to refocus U.S. lobbying on vulnerable Democratic senators representing pro-oil states. The White House, State Department and embassy kept cautioning that making a fuss of any kind would merely taint a sensitive process subject to litigation. Harper demurred.
Despite Thatcher's advice that he stick with the Americans, Harper believed it was Obama who had failed to stand with Canada. He had observed over the years, one of his advisers explained, that Obama didn't like to make decisions unless absolutely required — and that the squeaky wheel often got the grease.
By making Keystone a bilateral irritant — being in Obama's face at every turn and pushing every conceivable button — he would raise the pain threshold of a Keystone rejection. Lobbying and advertising would be stepped up. Future remarks such as "not taking no for an answer" were no accident, according to government officials. They flowed from a tactical decision taken that November. An added bonus: if Keystone was eventually turned down, the Conservative base would know the government had gone to the wall. A squeaky wheel served that purpose, too.
On Jan. 18, 2012, Obama phoned again. This time, he told Harper the Republicans had forced his hand by attaching to a tax bill a mandate that he make a Keystone decision within 60 days. Obama said it didn't allow sufficient time to conduct a proper assessment of the route change through Nebraska. Harper, sitting in the same spot across from Parliament Hill, asked the president point-blank if Keystone was dead.
Definitely not, Obama replied. TransCanada could re-apply. The prime minister, preparing for a visit to China, reiterated he had no choice but to go out and state Canada would turn to Asia to realize its energy ambitions. Obama said he understood. They said their goodbyes.
Harper couldn't let go. Even his inner circle was a bit taken aback by the depth of his criticism for Obama and the frankness with which he expressed it. Dining with National Hockey League owners at an All-Star game weekend soiree in Ottawa that January, the Prime Minister surprised a listener with his harsh words about the President's half-hearted commitment to job creation.
Down the road, his chief of staff told Trade Minister Ed Fast the Prime Minister was tired of being lectured to by Obama on Canada's lax intellectual property rights, and that negotiators should hold their ground. The Canadian side was agitated when Obama failed to put money into the budget as part of the Beyond Borders plan to relieve congestion at the critical Detroit-Windsor border crossing.
TransCanada did re-apply and in January won State Department support again with a positive environmental review. Last weekend, with the lawsuit challenging Nebraska's authority over the changed route working its way through the courts, Obama returned to his 2011 play book.
David Domina, lawyer for the Nebraska landowner complainants, blames the mess on TransCanada, which he said "got the cart way ahead of the horse by contacting landowners with first threats, then promise, then threats" — all before securing approval. TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard said the company was legally required to send letters to landowners explaining its offers and what would happen if agreements couldn't be reached.
In the meantime, Canadian oil producers have come up with new ways of moving bitumen to market, notably by rail. The method generates greater emissions than pipelines and so presents a dilemma for environmentalists who argue Keystone is a climate-change issue.
For Canadian policymakers and some U.S. Keystone supporters, each new Obama delay is more indefensible. Representative Lee Terry, a Nebraska Republican, criticized the Good Friday announcement, saying Obama had "punted a tough decision in the name of political expediency." Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, seen as a possible contender to replace Harper one day, said the decision "will place unnecessary strain on relations with our trading partner."
Yet analysts say Canada has made its share of questionable judgments, too, most obviously its original misreading of Nebraska but also allowing itself to become stigmatized as an environmental laggard. John Kirton, a director of the G8 and G20 Research Groups at the University of Toronto who is writing a book on climate-change politics, said Harper has always taken a hesitant stand on climate change issues in domestic politics and at international summits, failing to build bridges and leaving Obama little to work with.
Many long-time players in Canada-U.S. relations, including some of Harper's own diplomats, also question whether Canada was wise to position itself as an equal partner and choose to irritate rather than accommodate. "We're not the G-1, the U.S. is," said Peter Harder, foreign affairs deputy minister during Harper's first year in office. "We're the ones who need to be working harder to have a good relationship."
The Canadian government also failed to appreciate how the explosive growth of shale gas and oil produced by fracking has changed the rules of U.S. energy politics. Canada was still playing the classic energy security card at a time when import pressure was subsiding under a green president.
"If there's a lesson in this," said Preston Manning, Harper's party leader when he first entered Parliament, "it's that these market opportunities won't last forever. I think Canadians just took it for granted that the U.S. could take all the oil and gas that Canada could ever produce."
Some see a larger issue for Canada beyond pipelines and oil. "With Obama saying no to Canada or what amounts to a no, the lesson is that we cannot rely anymore on the United States for our economic well-being," said Allan Gotlieb, former deputy minister of foreign affairs and Ambassador to Washington during the free trade talks. "Not getting the oil sands out will cost many billions of dollars of lost economic opportunity for Canada. We are at an historic turning point in this special relationship."
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She may be tall, thin, beautiful, and, of course, a famous movie star, but Gwyneth Paltrow dealt with post-baby body issues just like many other women, she tells Redbook, after she gave birth to her second child, son Moses, back in 2006.
See More From the Gwyneth Paltrow Cover Story
"With my daughter [Apple, born two years prior to Moses] it had been easier, but this time, no matter what I did, I felt stuck. I couldn't shift the weight," Paltrow says in the magazinea's January issue in a joint interview with her trainer, Tracy Anderson. Anderson was the one whom Paltrow eventually turned to for help to get in shape for her first role in 2008's "Iron Man" and for some brutal honesty. "I met Tracy and she was this force from the second I met her. She pulled my pants off. I'll never forget it. She was like, 'Oh, my God, wow, I just am so surprised, because you look so good in clothes. I wasn't expecting this.'"
Getting into tip-top condition has other perks as well, explains Anderson. "When you feel your best, you're more confident in bed. It's not lights-out, under-the-covers sex. It's more like, 'Take a look at this!'"
And Paltrow admits she's experienced those benefits first hand thanks to her training regimen with Anderson. "It did such wonders for my life, my confidence, my sex life, everything."
The "Country Strong" actress also confesses to the magazine that while she was anxious about approaching 40, she's now at ease with the big milestone. "I feel really happy being 40, now that I'm on the other side of it. There was definitely some uncomfortable anticipation. But I'm amazed at what I've been able to accomplish, that I've maintained my important relationships and have such incredible women friends, that I have two funny, beautiful children who can give me a real life," explains Paltrow. "In a way, I feel like no one should make big life decisions until 40. It's when it all starts to settle and become clear."
Most Iconic Celebrity Makeup Looks Ever
The mother of two may have a reputation for being out of touch with most of the world, thanks to her lifestyle website GOOP, where she encourages readers to buy $60 olive oil and hawks $90 plain white T-shirts and her 2011 cookbook, in which she writes about the life-changing benefits of having your own in-home pizza oven. But in the Redbook interview, Paltrow admits she's not perfect.
"I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I have the good fortune of knowing what they are," she shares. "I can recognize my limitations, forgive myself, and celebrate the fact that I have made it to this important birthday with the information I need to keep making corrections."
More celebrity features on Yahoo!:
The Top 99 Most Desirable Women of 2013
Lea Michele on Diva Rumors: 'You Can Think What You Want About Me'
Tom Brady Hits the Park With His Boys While Gisele Bonds With Baby Vivian
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subset: commoncrawl


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Especially when you do so with your bare forehead, as Mike Vrabel supposedly did before the Buckeyes game against Michigan last month.
Former Patriots linebacker Vrabel, now an assistant with his alma mater Ohio State, was so pumped before the Big 10 rivalry match against the Wolverines on November 24 that he headbutted one of his players during pregame warmups. Only problem was that while said player was wearing his helmet, Vrabel was not, and the end result was a nasty gash on the forehead that needed some stitches to close it up.
The incident was nothing more than rumor and hearsay, until one of the guys from Eleven Warriors reached out to Vrabel's wife Jen to confirm the story, and she went above and beyond by posting photographic evidence of the damage done to her hubby's head on her Twitter account along with the following tweet…
Sound advice from Mrs. Vrabel, although you'd expect a guy who's been around football as much as Vrabel has would know better when it comes to helmets, headbutts and exposed heads, but apparently not.
[ USA Today]
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Each case has an integral hang hole, and is designed to nest so you can stack multiple cases securely in a drawer or on shelving. For quick blade identification, two adhesive-backed labels are provided for marking the details, and a VCI (Vapor Corrosion Inhibitor) chip is included to protect the blade from corrosion while in storage.
The bevel-up blade case measures 2-5/8" x 5-1/2" x 1/2" thick; fits all Veritas block planes (including apron and skew), small, low-angle and bevel-up smooth planes, plus jack and jointer planes.
The bevel-down case is 3" x 8" x 1/2" thick; fits Veritas #4 & 4-1/2 smooth, #5-1/4 bench, and #6 fore, plus Veritas-made blades for Record and Stanley planes (#2, 3, 4, 4-1/2, 5, 5-1/4, 5-1/2, 6, 7 & 8 bench planes; #9-1/2 & 60-1/2 block planes).
Made in the U.K.


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Back to All Events
Earlier Event: December 16Symposium: Science, society and policy makers
Later Event: January 16Cognitive aging across the Themes
To share our findings with the both a wider audience as well as the scientific community, and to keep ourselves updated about work of others, you can find us on meetings and conferences regularly. Some lab members will represent the lab on the events below. Come talk to us!


text: WTF, England: The British government has banned Martha Stewart from entering the UK because of her criminal convictions in 2004. Wait, didn't Paris visit England a few months ago? • Some genius just found out that word-of-mouth influences shopping decisions and now the workplace is being called a "lucrative marketing channel for advertisers." Ugh. • A Mass. high school has banned the nickname, "Redmen," from their sports teams, while residents claim they will continue to fight to keep the name. Goody! I wonder if these "residents" will enjoy my new sport's team nickname, "'Nillamotherfuckers." I think it sounds "very noble and dignified." • GOP women are defecting from McCain! Ok, two women. But one of them is rich! • Meanwhile, the other side of the political spectrum (sort of) thinks reproductive rights aren't playing a big role for women this election year. • Overheard at the beach: "I'll tell you what I would do if a guy gave me a promise statue! I'd lube that shit up and stick it in my vag!" • A woman beat a man with a baseball bat after learning he was a level 3 sex offender from a police flyer. She snapped after remembering him talking to her young daughter, she said she "would do it again" if given the chance. • Oh look! It is a swimming hedgehog! And he's named Shming! Excuse me for a moment, I have to go see if you can nom a hedgehog. (Warning: The voices on the video may cause your head to explode).


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There are 1 item(s) tagged with the keyword "backpack safety".
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In part I we discussed kids wearing heavy backpacks (link to that article) and the concerns healthcare providers raise about possible long term effects of misuse of backpacks by children. In part II we discuss warning signs of improper backpack use and recommendations for proper use to avoid aches and pains and future problems.
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Well, I asked my 3-year-old daughter, Karli, for ideas for my column just to see what she would say, and she said that I should write about commercials. I didn't feel that this was a good idea, so I chose otherwise.
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Fair Oaks Village Real Estate
Fair Oaks Village is defined by its cozy small town appeal with antique stores, coffee shops, brew pubs, and quaint restaurants. The historical neighborhood sits in the heart of Fair Oaks, bordered by bluffs and trails of the American River on one side and amenity-filled conveniences of Sunrise and Fair Oaks Boulevards on the other.
Homes are eclectic and range in style from craftsman and cottage to bungalow and modern, attracting families, professionals, and retirees with its ideal location and amiable character. The Village is a rural oasis amidst an urban landscape with lush greenery, winding roads, and rolling hills. It is bike and pedestrian friendly and is near the Sacramento Waldorf School, a 22-acre campus for grades K through 12. Highway 50 is just minutes away, providing an easy commute to downtown Sacramento.
There are many local events such as the Fair Oaks Chicken Festival, paying homage to the area's chickens. The Fair Oaks Village Enhancement Committee, a grass roots revitalization group, strives to keep the neighborhood thriving while retaining its unique personality. Other cultural amenities include the Veterans Memorial Amphitheatre, home of the Fair Oaks Theater Festival, and concerts in the Village Park every Thursday throughout the summer. Christmas in the Village, complete with carolers, tree lighting and a parade, is also a local favorite.
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i'm still at my mom's for thanksgiving. i love being home. i'm not sure i ever want to leave!
my sweater is from urban outfitters and my skirt is the UNIF nevermind skirt, which i got on sale at dollskill.com (unfortunately, it appears they are out of stock now).
socks are the crazy long ones from american apparel
no make up on mah face
i've been watching supernatural for about two months now, averaging two and a half episodes a day (seriously...) and i'm almost done with the show. they're still making new episodes but i'm nearly finished with season 7 and then i'll watch what's out of season 8 and then i'll be forced to watch one episode a week like a normal human being. it's been a crazy ride.
hope you all had a great thanksgiving! i ate so much throughout the day that i ended up only having some asparagus and salad for dinner, haha!


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Legal issues
A grab-bag collection of citations on legal issues.
The Hacker Defense (aka Trojan/Virus Defense)
Below are accounts of different hacker/virus/Trojan related defenses. Albeit some of these are not 'reputable' web sources, but they should all have official court backing from wherever the various investigators that do similar. And the CPS (sort of FBI in UK) is training prosecutors en masse about 'trojan defenses' (link below). These types of actions would not occur unwarranted. Why do all the extra work for nothing?
"The "Trojan defense" has now become standard in many types of computer crime cases. But the defense often plays on the ignorance of juries and prosecutors. It has raised the need for the CPS to do more to explain complex technical issues in simple terms to judges and juries, says George." (Esther George is the policy adviser at the Crown Protection Services) http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/01/27/221526/high-tech-crime-is-put-on-trial.htm
US man, Eugene Pitts, found not-guilty of tax evasion after blaming a computer virus. Avoids ~$900,000 in fines. http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2003/08/va_virustax.html
United States v. Michael McCourt U.S. Court of Appeals Case 1/24/06 Western District of Missouri. Guilty charge upheld. http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/06/11/061018P.pdf
Karl Schofield walked free from court yesterday after prosecutors accepted an expert's report that the "Trojan" program could have saved the 14 depraved images off the internet without his knowledge. http://www.getreading.co.uk/news/6/6541/program_put_child_porn_pics_on_my_pc
Julian Green, 45, of Torquay, Devon was cleared in court in July of 13 charges of making indecent images, claiming computer malware was to blame. http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2003/08/va_porntrojan.html
Aaron Cafrey acquitted with Trojan defense after US authorities claimed traced DOS activity to his machine http://news.com.com/2100-7349-5092781.html?tag=txt
A former Georgia teacher blames computer viruses for altering his Web sites and uploading child porn images. Guilty charge upheld. http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6130218.html
Odd spin on the issue, where a hacker used a Trojan to gain access to potential pedophile's computers. http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=118157
Bandy's defense attorney asserted that a "virus" or "trojan" must have downloaded the child pornography to Bandy's computer without his knowledge. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,247903,00.html
A man found with more than 1,700 indecent images of children on his computer claimed a virus was to blame, a court heard. But Mark Craney, 33, from Knowle, was found guilty at Warwick Crown Court on 16 charges of making indecent images of children by downloading them onto his computer. http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100localnews/tm_objectid=15104065&method=full&siteid=50002&headline=man-blamed-net-virus-for-child-porn-name_page.html
More links from previous research.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/10/28/hacker.defense.reut/index.html
[2] http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-5092781.html
External Links
Privacy and Surveillance Laws
18 USC 2510 et seq., 18 USC 2701 et. seq., 18 USC 1030 and other statutes regulate the information private entities and law enforcement can access over a computer network.
The following forensic tools, which can capture forensic images remotely over a network, may raise interesting legal questions under these and other statutes.
Paraben Enterprise and Shuttle: http://www.paraben-enterprise.com/
WetStone LiveWire Investigator: http://www.000.shoppingcartsplus.com/catalog/item/4170630/4050602.htm
ProDiscover IR: http://www.techpathways.com/ProDiscoverIR.htm
EnCase Enterprise: http://www.encase.com/products/ee_index.asp
Vontu: http://www.vontu.com/products/default.asp
Cybersecurity Research
- Toward a Culture of Cybersecurity Research, Aaron J. Burstein, University of California, Berkeley - School of Law. 2008, UC Berkeley Public Law Research Paper No. 1113014


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Article Text
Valvular heart disease
Original article
Interactions between inflammatory activation and endothelial dysfunction selectively modulate valve disease progression in patients with bicuspid aortic valve
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Monica has joined us as an Account Analyst, helping our schools with their student, staff and transportation data. You may have met her at an ASCUS meeting or in your interactions with some of the schools.
We are so happy to have her as a part of our team!
Here's what she has to say…
I am excited to join the ADE School Finance team and look forward to working with my schools. I was born in Morenci, AZ but grew up in Tucson. I have lived in the Phoenix area for about ten years; some of my experiences include working at charter high schools in Tempe and Phoenix. I hope that my background working in the field will help me to provide my LEAs with genuine customer service. It is my top priority to provide knowledgeable solutions and be a good resource for my contacts.
When I am not dedicated to my work I enjoy time off with my husband and our two young children, who give me more reasons to enjoy life, laugh a lot and consume large amounts of coffee! Once again, I am thrilled to join the ADE team and look forward to interacting with my schools. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have questions, concerns or just want to introduce yourself.
Please join us in welcoming Monica! To see if Monica is your new analyst, please check out our LEA Account Analyst list and search for your LEA.


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Cryptocloud VPN
From ForensicsWiki
Revision as of 06:31, 16 August 2012 by Joachim Metz (Talk | contribs)
Cryptocloud VPN is a commercial, consumer-oriented VPN service provided by Cryptocloud. It uses a modified implementation of the OpenVPN toolset to provide TCP-and UDP-based VPN connectivity to customers worldwide. Cryptocloud has publicly stated that it does not keep user-detail logfiles of its customers' usage of its network [1].


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This is a great tool. I have one query related to this:
I have a script which reads thousands of mail id from database and then send indivisual mail to each one based for some criteria. This not a regular job. runs on demand.
I have to set a one time job for this whenever I get a request. Suppose I got a request today and i would like to schedule the job tonight. This is a huge and will take long time to run.
How do I set one time job using this tool?
One time Job?
Post your support requests/solutions for phpJobScheduler [website]
2 posts • Page 1 of 1
- MODS thats what I do that is! But definately NO mod music! It has to be ROCK!
- Posts: 1810
- Joined: Mon Oct 25, 2004 8:20 pm
- Location: Huddersfield, UK
- Contact:
Re: One time Job?
I missed replying to this a long time ago!
Anyhow, the new version supports single run jobs.
Anyhow, the new version supports single run jobs.
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Dear Musicians - Please Be Brilliant or Get Out of The Way
Towards a New Music Business Model And The New Thinking That Is Required.
"The future does not fit in the containers of the past." – Rishad Tobaccowala
"..we are now in an era where spectatorial culture is giving way to participatory culture". Henry Jenkins director, Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT.
I give thanks once again to Brian Zisk and his incredibly motivated crew for inviting me to speak at the upcoming SanFranMusicTech event on December 7th in San Francisco, and later at the SXSW Conference in Austin in March 2010. Brian is one of the organizers of SanFranMusicTech and is moderating the panel that I will be on at SXSW. [If you've never attended SanFranMusicTech I would encourage you to do so. It's a wonderful, energetic mix of entrepreneurs, tech experts, musicians and thought leaders in the digital space. In other words it's not just for musicians or techies…] The panel discussions will revolve around the premise of how, or if, musicians are using the tools available to them on the Social Web.
I have written this essay as a prelude to the upcoming panels, both to outline my views on the subject in advance, and also as a way to organize my thoughts and past essays into one place. The debate surrounding online music distribution still evokes passion from critics and supporters alike, the most vocal being musicians who believe that I am working to make music free online and therefore deny them income from CD sales. Nothing could be further from the truth, I simply argue that musicians need to monetize everything around their musical output and stop dreaming that CD sales will one day return to previous levels; where the 2009 equation means 100k is the new 1mm, 10k is the new 100k etc. I should point out for the record that I am focusing almost exclusively on non-mainstream, independent musicians. [Although there is no reason at all that mainstream, commercial artists shouldn't be doing the same thing.]
It Has Been Almost Fifteen Years
It has been more than a decade since I was last fully immersed in the recorded music business [and then only peripherally as GM of eMusic.com,] and I have long held out hope that musicians would ditch the old media model, both the business and the manufacturing sides, and fully embrace the huge possibilities that the unfettered social web allows them – asymmetrical distribution as opposed to old media distribution silos, two-way communication with music fans as opposed to old media PR, and marketing tactics and an unparalleled universal sandbox in which to experiment.
I am still waiting. Unfortunately my patience is now wearing thin. And my impatience is no longer with the record labels, it's with the musicians. Despite all the data and untold amounts of writing about the decline in music sales, mainly the fall off of CD sales, musicians appear to be sitting on their hands. The reason I am no longer impatient with record labels is because their business model is transparent – they exist to make money from musicians. On the other hand, musicians are [or ought to be] immersed in their art; no one guarantees a living from the arts, but talk to the average musician about internet music distribution and you will often hear the same refrain – "downloading and file-sharing is killing music and denying me a living.." [BTW, that is not the best argument in the for and against wars of online music distribution; in the USA musicians conveniently forget that MTV and commercial radio is built on the back of musicians and those companies don't pay royalties for that privilege. You can include MySpace in there too.]
I have long argued that musicians need to drop the notion of making money from CD sales through record labels and concentrate on making money from the experiential awareness that surrounds their brand; a brand they own, no one else. The downside to this for musicians is that they need to get organized and work hard, or arrange for what I call the "fifth Beatle" to help with online communications, selling merchandise etc. Consider this from Russell Davies
Creating music is only the first step to creating something valuable and timeless. For instance, David Byrne played a building. Music released as part of an event is the future – Radiohead's release of In Rainbows was the first step toward the album release as event, if it's an album at all.. How it's done is also important. The container has changed forever. Remember what Rishad Tobaccowala has to say to advertising agencies trying to embrace the social web – "The future does not fit in the containers of the past." It is no different for bands. The organizing principle of recorded music is now in the hands of musicians, not technologists, not record labels. Consider this or perhaps release your music like this.
As I have written before: "Control has moved from the few to the millions of many. If dull labels and dull bands keep offering dull, flat, non-experiential product – e.g. a CD, they will go the way of the Dodo. Consider what Cirque Du Soleil provides as an experience compared to Barnum and Bailey's circus. Or Burning Man compared to your average music festival."
Valuable and Timeless – Some Examples
So who is working at the edges of independent rock music for instance? Below are but a few examples of musicians currently providing what I feel is valuable and timeless work; I consider valuable and timeless as 'worth spending time in the present with,' as time is our one truly finite resource; art does not necessarily exist to entertain us, it should fill our time with wonder.
From left to right: Karin Dreijer Andersson as Fever Ray, Radiohead's 52 minute long 'Scotch Mist,' Dirty Projectors Stillness Is The Move video, Sunn 0))) live as reviewed by Sasha Frere-Jones, Patti Smith, back in the 70's performing Horses on British TV and DJ Spooky performing on Earth Day in Washington, DC. [I know I'm walking on thin ice here as music taste, as with one's taste in art, is highly subjective, but…] Click on the images to link to content.
Online Music Businesses Cannibalize Each Other's Model
As we approach 2010 we can now look back at the decade we are leaving behind and arguably acknowledge that only Apple, with its iTunes software and well designed and ergonomic hardware, was able to move the needle when it came to monetizing the MP3 download – this I know from just a cursory look at my Warner Music royalty statements. The one-stop iTunes package, coupled with the affinity that consumers feel when engaging with the Apple brand, simplified the downloading of music for millions of people. Those with more technical knowledge continue to use torrents to access music and film downloads.
Subscription services such as Rhapsody and EMusic continue to survive, but judging by their subscriber numbers, they have only created niche businesses supported by a minority of music fans. Recently News Corporation has signaled its willingness to enter the fray and two founders of Skype will soon launch Rdio, yet another subscription model. These two are following in the footsteps of iLike, LaLa, Spotify, Google Music and now MOG. Clearly the music access space is becoming crowded which only leaves consumers with paltry options, all based around similar offerings. None of this bodes well for the future of music, or for musicians, if we consider that income from these services has come nowhere near the level that it was from CD sales a decade ago. And by the way, I do not align myself with those that say the Internet is killing music. On the contrary, I argue that the major record labels and the RIAA, through their relentless lawsuits campaign, destroyed the trust and goodwill that music fans felt when interacting with music brands [musicians, artists, bands,] and by doing that they pushed music into being a good, a mere commodity. We need new thinking….
The Physical Space to Digital Space Dilemma for Producers [Brands and Musicians]
In a classic producer to market economy the producer typically has access to, and/or controls, the distribution channels and uses mass media channels to market the product. This works just fine in the physical world of CDs or vinyl records but the Internet shatters that model. In the past, musicians signed to labels and signed away the rights to their copyrights and masters, in return for access to manufacturing and distribution. [Unfortunately some still do..] The labels controlled the system and the purse strings – for artists it was a heavy price to pay.
These days the web gives individuals access to the same level of technologies as any organization; the playing field has been leveled. In what now seems like ancient history, Sean Fanning and a buddy started Napster while in college just over ten years ago, not because they wanted to create a new music business model but because the tools to create an online music file sharing system were at hand. It did not require a well-capitalized organization to start Napster – whether he knew it or not, Fanning was simply a pioneering disrupter who brought the music business to the brink of disaster. Venture capitalists soon swooped in an attempt to force through a new music business model, but the labels fought back litigating the original Napster out of business. [BTW, the record labels missed a huge opportunity by not embracing Napster but that's another story.]
In a recent post on his blog, my business partner at Fight, Justin Spohn, writes of how brands face a similar disruption as they move from the physical to digital space:
"In the physical world, brand competition can be, and has been, essentially symmetrical. Even as new competitors come into the market, there are certain practical restrictions – legal, social and physical that they're all bound by. Competing brands have similar opportunities based on similar goals, laws, availability of scarce resources, development of distribution chains, and access to communication channels. This symmetry helps to create a stasis that keeps established brands on top [and] prevents upstarts from posing immediate risk to established institutions.
In the digital space though, almost none of this applies. Resources are not scarce to begin with, and become more widely available everyday. Practically speaking, there is no such thing as a distribution chain, and where there is something that might resemble one, the iPhone app store for example, access to it has nothing to do with the size of your organization. Because on the web individuals have access to the same level of technologies as any organization, and because they can distribute it just as effectively, it means that brands are now not just competing with other brands, but with individuals whose goals are not only not the same as a brand, but possibly in direct conflict. The competitive landscape is flat with established brands fighting what amounts to a global asymmetrical battle."
The paragraph above outlines very clearly why Rhapsody, EMusic, LaLa, iLike, Spotify, Google Music, Rdio and the new offering from News Corp via MySpace are all fighting an asymmetrical battle – the online music landscape is flat, these company's offerings are almost identical [i.e. they all license music from the same pool of copyright holders,] and they are fighting each other for a miniscule share of music fans' dollars. In short they are cannibalizing each others business models. Only iTunes stands alone as a differentiator. The CEO's of the other companies need to understand that the only thing that's scarce on the Internet is attention, and they should be looking very closely at what their company's brand strategy is, as only that will inform their social web music business strategy. They should be constantly looking over their shoulder, as any individual could disrupt their web business models at any moment.
In his essay Data-mining The Disconnections: Bits vs Atoms, The Rematch my friend Roy Christopher concludes by saying – "There are several trajectories here, but the main thing I want to point out is just that: the multifaceted influence of technological mediation. Every change has unintended consequences, and we lose something with every gain. These changes are neither good nor bad, but we should be mindful that they're happening."
Get Over Sucking on the Music Nanny State teat. A Digital Future Requires Strategy
Now that the internet has provided disrupting producers with all the tools they need to bypass the existing recorded music system, there should be no excuse for musicians to not go it alone. Yet, the producers – the musicians themselves, remain the problem. I believe that the safety and comfort offered to them in the past – record label deals, publishing deals, old media distribution, plus MTV and commercial radio for the most successful – created a diabolical music Nanny state, an addictive teat at which to suck that they are now having trouble weaning themselves off. I know there are many examples of musicians embracing the web but they have taken only baby steps and are in the minority – the majority are still staring into the headlights. [I purposefully won't discuss Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails here as much has been written about their successful use of the social web and I consider them special cases.]
The Nanny state reduced risk taking and danger in popular music. The very founding spirit of rock and roll was danger. Danger as perceived by those who didn't understand the outburst of energy and excitement that this early musical form drew out of teenagers. Parents and adults in authority voiced their concerns and this led to ridiculous moments in musical history such as TV cameramen being told to only film Elvis Presley from the waist up.. If we fast forward to 1975 in the UK, we find that rock and roll, a mere 20 or so years later, with only a few exceptions, had become commercial, flabby, conservative and mostly dull. Then along came a new genre of music delivered by bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Siouxie and the Banshees who injected rock with some street smarts and and sprinkled it with just a soupcon of danger. It was known as Punk Rock.
I bring up punk rock here as it defines a moment in rock music history that was as disruptive in 1976 as online music distribution became in the late 1990's. Punk rock challenged people's assumptions that popular music would always be, and could only be, controlled by large, well-capitalized, business organizations. Punk rock drove down production values and just like the Internet, became disruptive and leveled the playing field. Punk bands formed quickly, releasing records as 7″ vinyl singles on their own equally quickly formed record labels. A long term career in music was not the point of this enterprise, many bands flamed out within six months of their existence. Small independent labels sprang up to cater to this avalanche of bands, offering more favorable contracts than the majors had in the past. Business is business though, and the small label owners had plans for growth that ultimately led to punk rock's demise. Soon enough punk rock was commoditized and, after a brief fling with Post-Punk, quickly fizzled leaving the stage for the New Romantics and their ilk. It wasn't long until it was business as usual for the record labels – five years of promise had passed very quickly.
So I have to ask – why is there no online music equivalent of punk rock? Why is there no real and passionate embrace of the new?
The barriers to entry into the new music business are even lower than back in 1976. Why then, when the options to go it alone are everywhere online, do bands sign up with MySpace.com for instance, a News Corporation company owned by the right wing media curmudgeon Rupert Murdoch? [Without going in to too much detail, I wonder if musicians and artists have ever read the MySpace Terms Of Service agreement?] And then there's Facebook and Twitter, two privately owned companies who are amassing a large amount of data about their users – how will that information be shared, or will it? Who owns it? Questions about who owns what with regard to copyrights and masters were paramount during the punk rock period of 1976 – 1981. Why not now, as data becomes the new master copyright?
Example from Jay Rosen, Journalism Professor at NYU, from Twitter:
This headlong charge by musicians and artists into social networking, without thinking through the long term ramifications of such behavior with regard to their copyrights, most likely stems from the fact that the average 20 – 30 year old has grown up, knowing only progress and advances in society driven by Internet technology and mobile communications; the use of these networked tools is second nature to them. Kazys Varnelis, the Director of the Network Architecture Lab at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, has similar thoughts about young people and progress. Here is an extract from a conversation with the editors of Triple Canopy where he considers the collapse of complex societies and the end of technological advancement as we know it:
"The generation now in its twenties and thirties is used to nothing but growth and to the success of systems like the Internet and cell phones. They've seen their lives transformed, largely for the better, by technology. So they find it hard to understand other possibilities, which is going to make it very hard for them. In our culture of punditry, everyone expects an easy, overarching solution, but I don't think we're going to find one this time….[Edit]..I think that a young person today needs to learn to be enormously flexible. Ten years ago who thought that we'd be talking about how long the New York Times has to live?"
Digital Natives, Digital Youth and Mobile Computing
I believe that only a minority of musicians are less than precious about their musical works. In other words they understand the power of the social web and how, when a song is released online as a free MP3, it is taken and repurposed by todays creative digital youth. The results can be startling and can often be better than the original work, [although I accept that defining "better" is in the ear of the listener and the artist may not agree.] It is also hard to argue that any "song" by Girl Talk is not an original work even though it might be crammed with dozens of samples from other artists' songs [but that's another essay..]
The term Digital Native is defined in a Wikipedia article as "a person for whom digital technologies already existed when they were born, and hence has grown up with digital technology such as computers, the Internet, mobile phones and MP3s." The idea has many critics as it only considers a narrow slice of young people and "…It suggests a fluidity with technology that not all children and young adults have, and a corresponding awkwardness with technology that not all older adults have."
And yet it can be argued that when we expand the demographic range of the digital native it increases the audience for online music exponentially. Generation Z has no affinity for the CD or even a computer unless it's a mobile device, plus their parents and grandparents are now well up to speed with accessing the social web as well as dealing with mobile technology.
The Herald Sun ran an article earlier this year about Gen Z:
"Gen Z had easily adapted to the challenges of the modern world, including technology, terrorism and climate change, said Sarah Cornish, former editor of magazine Total Girl. "They have never known a life without the internet, let alone computers, and many don't know a world without mobile phones," she said. "Most are also born post-September 11 and some of our readers are concerned about terrorism, and they are much more environmentally aware than previous generations."
When the Herald Sun interviewed seven Gen Z students from Reservoir's Merrilands College, aged from eight to 13, almost all identified global warming and climate change as the world's biggest issue. When asked about terrorism most could recall the September 11 attacks, despite being only very young when they happened. "They blow up everything like the Twin Towers. People had to jump off the building otherwise they'd get a face full of fire," Royce, 12, said.
Technology is just another toy to play with for many of the children."
As we enter 2010, musicians need to acknowledge that the new generation of music lovers do not consider music as more important than the environment or terrorism. They also do not grow up with, or are burdened by, the " Curse of Knowledge," an endemic institutional culture problem that boils down to this – when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it.
The new generations will hold previous generations more accountable for creating harm instead of creating and doing good. Not in a liberal, wooly, back to the earth way, but how they define themselves – their personal brand – and how they want to be perceived in society. Young people will move from wearing a brand's clothing that defines them, such as shoe companies, to just simply wearing clothes made by companies that have traditionally used efficient, renewable earth-friendly ways to manufacture and produce. Brand clothing will be acceptable wear if the brand follows those principles and does "good." It will also apply to products. It will definitely apply to musicians and how the next generation perceives their actions, both politically and environmentally.
I will leave you with this Twitter post that I saw, from someone attending a recent media conference: Ominous thought on media upheavel from Cisco exec: "music is lucky because it went first." via @bmorrissey
So, musicians and/or bands – do you want the next generation of musicians saying "bands in the decade 2000 -2010 are lucky, because they went first?" I thought not. Please embrace the web.
Supporting Articles and Related Posts
Roy Christopher – The Disintegration of the Compact Disc
RWW – Top Internet Trends of 2000 – 2009 Online Music
PaidContent – The Music Business Lacks A Mass Market Strategy
Good – The Dark Side of Social Media
TechCrunch – Live From Hollywood: Google's Music Onebox Launches, Powered By MySpace And Lala
TechCrunch – Facebook Strikes Back At iLike: No-Spam Policy Cancels Concert Alerts
Cnet – Imeem Acquired by MySpace Means $30 Million Loss For Investors
Ze Frank – Digital Natives [Complete-ish]
Umair Haque [Harvard Business] – Create Something Valuable
Dave Allen : Some Essays and Posts Regarding Online Music
The End of The Music Album as The Organizing Principle
My Love of Vinyl Records, Some Thoughts on Marshall McLuhan, Neil Young on Analog
The End of The CD And The End of The CD Retailers
The Top 5 Reasons Why Vinyl Will Outlive CDs
David Byrne Tells Record Labels To Embrace The MP3
How Killing The Single Killed The Recording Industry
How Bands Can Make More Money By Not Putting A Price on Their CDs
Ben Taylor On Tour – Says Pay What You Want For My CDs, Sells More
Do Music Artists Fair Better in a World of File Sharing
Music Industry Attempts to Nudge Downloaders to Streaming Sites
Anton Corbin and U2 – End of the Album As Organizing Principle
Additional Articles and Posts
David Byrne Interview With Radiohead's Thom Yorke
Justin Spohn of Fight Web Site This Is Violence
ReadWriteWeb Google – What The Web Will Look Like in 5 Years
Google vs MySpace News Corporation's Google Saber Rattling Really About MySpace
Sasha Frere-Jones Glenn Branca's End Times
Sasha Frere-Jones Hip Hop's Demise
Sasha Frere-Jones Interview with Karin Dreijer Andersson of Fever Ray
Sasha Frere-Jones How Indie Rock Lost Its Soul
Amanda Palmer Web Site
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Phil Hardy The Music Industry in 5 Years Time
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When I create a reminder that is set to repeat, for example:
"take out the garbage" repeat every 2 weeks.
it pops up on my phone and on my desktop.
When I check it off on my phone, my computer never gets the message that it was checked off. If I check it off on my computer, my phone never gets the message that it was checked off.
I'm running OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2 and iOS 6.0.1 on an iPhone 4S.
This has never worked for me and I've been through several versions of each OS.
Any suggestions?


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Home >> Course Descriptions >> College of Education
Language Arts in Spanish
Three semester hours.
This course is a study of the methods and techniques for teaching language arts in Spanish to the bilingual child. Special attention will be given to the diagnosis of reading competence to ensure successful transition into English reading. Prerequisite: Admission to the College of Education, 2.7 overall grade point average, EDCI 3301 and SPAN 3300, SPAN 3305 and SPAN 3310.
Home - General Information - Student Services -
Academic Undergraduate Regulations -
Undergraduate Degrees - Academic Graduate Regulations -
Graduate Degrees - Course Descriptions - Faculty -
Appendix A - Appendix B - Appendix C - Appendix D


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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Investors don't often sell off a stock when a company's earnings are pretty much in line or slightly better than expectations.
But in the case of the beleaguered Netflix Inc. NFLX, -2.59%, after what the company calls its "brand hit" last year, it still has the capacity to earn the wrath of Wall Street. The company reported a first-quarter loss that was far less than Wall Street had projected, with revenues that were slightly above analysts' range.
The company also said it would return to profitability sooner than it had expected, due to continued growth in membership and higher efficiencies. Read more about Netflix's first quarter.
However, in light of Netflix's stormy relationship with Wall Street in the last year, investors seem to take every statement with a grain of salt. Its shares tumbled more than 16% in after-hours trading, before the company held its late-afternoon call with analysts to discuss the results.
Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney said that a Netflix outlook including the addition of 7 million new domestic streaming customers in 2012 is "higher than our 5 million estimate," adding that the forecast was in line with or higher than most Street estimates. "The issue is market skepticism that Netflix can reach this level given the June quarter guide."
Mahaney added that he, for one, believed Netflix can meet that guidance.
For now, many other investors, who likely feel burned after last year's flip-flop over separating the Netflix streaming business from a DVD-rental operation branded Qwikster, don't appear to be buying it.


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Unmanned vehicles call for unconventional power
One key advantage of unmanned vehicles is that their persistence is not limited by the human operator. This also means their size is set by the payloads and sensors that they carry, not by the need to accommodate a pilot or crew. But in many cases, this now means that unmanned systems run into an energy limit, both in terms of endurance and their ability to deliver power to radars, lasers and communications links.
Unmanned ground vehicles and small hand-launched UAVs continue to benefit from the fact that their electrical power requirements are not vastly different from those of consumer electronic devices, so they have been able to ride on a multibillion-dollar wave of investment. Larger systems face different challenges.
A number of efforts to develop multiday-plus endurance UAVs have foundered in the past year or so. The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency's (Darpa) Vulture project for a huge solar-powered UAV was canceled earlier this year. Lockheed Martin's HALE-D solar-powered airship impaled itself on Pennsylvania treetops last July, on its first flight attempt. The U.S. Air Force let the gas out of the MAV6 Blue Devil 2 project with a stop-work order. AeroVironment's Global Observer was canceled after the first vehicle crashed at Edwards AFB, Calif., and the other U.S. hydrogen-powered UAV, Boeing's Phantom Eye, is under repair after a rough first-flight landing. The surviving airship program, the Northrop Grumman Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEM-V) is running late, to the surprise of almost no one.
The art and science of lighter-than-air control is not well understood, and even with hydrogen fuel, heavier-than-air ultra-long endurance requires light, long wings, unusual propulsion arrangements and aggressive weight-saving. Phantom Eye takes off from a trolley and lands on a skid-and-wheel combination, the latter being the source of its problems.
Power issues were one reason for the USAF's attempt (being opposed in Congress) to retire the RQ-4B Block 30 Global Hawk while retaining the U-2S. The Rolls-Royce AE3007H meets the RQ-4B's needs for efficient propulsion, but such engines are sensitive to generator loads at the edges of their envelope (high altitudes and low speeds) and cannot run the kinds of sensors that the U-2's fighter-based F118 can support.
One propulsion engineer notes that standard military specifications are part of the problem, requiring the engine to tolerate very rapid fluctuations in generator load—necessary in combat, less so in a typical UAV mission. But the problems involved are severe—and explain why the notion of a nuclear-powered UAV, explored recently in a Sandia-Northrop Grumman study, still gets serious consideration.
At the lower end of the UAV size scale, attempts to develop heavy-fuel engines (spark ignition or diesel) to replace gasoline-fueled reciprocating or rotary engines have been underway for decades. Advantages in efficiency and logistics (gasoline has disappeared from ground forces and is detested on ships) are undoubted, but the challenge of developing an HFE that is light, reliable and low in vibration (including torque vibrations that stress reduction gears) and that is supportable, is still daunting.
Underwater, battery technology is leading to some improvements as it is fostering the development of faster, longer-range, near-silent torpedoes. However, mobility and endurance are problems for unmanned undersea vehicles. The U.S. Navy wants systems that can move quickly—to get into position to screen the fleet, for example —but then stay on station, employing sensors, for days or weeks.
One radical solution is under discussion at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL): turning ocean sediment into fuel for unmanned vehicles and unattended sensors. The idea is to create a microbial fuel cell that generates electricity using nothing more than organic material and oxygen that are readily available in the ocean. In theory, this could provide organic power for individual vehicles or power an unattended sea-bed "charging station" for unmanned undersea vehicles.
"Microorganisms have figured out how to acquire energy in this environment to satisfy their energy needs," says Leonard Tender, a research chemist in the Center for Bio-Molecular Science and Engineering at the NRL. "What we have figured out is how to tap into the microbial processes to extrapolate enough electricity to power oceanographic sensors."
The fuel cell works by harvesting the metabolic activity of microbial organisms that live in sediment—essentially mud on the ocean floor or at the bottom of estuaries—and then transferring that energy to a fuel cell, making it available to power the electronics on an unmanned system or sensor. This essentially creates a battery fueled by mud.
Turning ocean sediment into power is more than just a novelty for the Navy. Tender describes the need to power thousands of marine sensors as one of the "vexing problems" for the military. The idea is that instead of using sensors with batteries that run down, systems would be equipped with microbial fuel cells that could recharge themselves without human intervention.
A fuel cell that can be autonomously recharged opens the door to more extensive use of sensors and unmanned systems at sea, allowing them to operate autonomously over long periods of time, according to Tender. Such microbial fuel cells could also someday be used to power underwater vehicles that recharge themselves while at sea.
All this is easier said than done, however. Tender has proved the microbial fuel cell concept can work in small-scale demonstration in the lab, and some limited tests in the field, but it's "very, very hard," he says.
Getting the setup right requires implanting an electrode in just the right place below the surface sediment, which makes the lab's simulated environment critical to testing out the microbial fuel cell. "To get that arrangement is a real technological challenge," says Tender.
But if it works, naval researchers will have created something that will please military officials and civilians alike: an environmentally conscious power source for unmanned systems and sensors.
Another solution to some UUV requirements—so long as persistence rather than speed is important—is to eschew normal propulsion completely. Underwater gliders are slow but steady robot submarines that can cross oceans and carry out missions lasting months. They are typically no more than 6 ft. long and weigh 100 lb. The U.S. had previously dominated glider technology, but China is catching up fast and may even pull ahead in the coming years. Few of the developments are explicitly military but this is very much a dual-use technology.
A "National Defense Key Laboratory of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Technology" has been established at Harbin Engineering University. Published papers focus on sensing and navigation for autonomous underwater vehicles, and techniques for controlling fleets of them over a wide area.
"They're putting a lot of money, a lot of engineers into this field, "says Lyle Goldstein, strategic researcher at the U.S. Naval War College's China Maritime Studies Institute. "They're energized because they know there's a gap in underwater capability, and this is a chance to leapfrog ahead."
Rather than having propellers or thrusters, a glider adjusts its buoyancy by pumping gas in or out of an external bladder, then glides a shallow path as it rises or falls. Average speed is typically just half a knot, but with the endurance to cross oceans. Since their development in the 1980s in association with the U.S. Navy, gliders have won acceptance. Three U.S. companies now offer different versions.
The Navy is the biggest user, with up to 150 vehicles on order over three years for the Littoral Battlespace Sensing-Glider program. Teledyne Webb is supplying the gliders, which will carry out a variety of missions including measuring underwater conditions affecting sonar and communications.
A U.S. Defense Security Service report claimed that in 2010 "East Asian and Pacific-affiliated collectors targeted underwater gliders specifically" for technology espionage, and China appears to be catching up in the glider race.
In 2011 China tested its first locally designed glider, the Sea Wing, developed at Shenyang Institute of Automation. This deep-water research vehicle reportedly carried out several successful missions in the Western Pacific, diving to 2,700 ft.
Many more designs are in the pipeline. The Petrel is a hybrid craft from Tianjin University, with a propeller as well as a buoyancy engine, using the propeller for rapid, short-range manoeuvring. Petrel is undergoing field trials at Fuxian Lake.
Other Tianjin projects are extending the gliders' endurance. The Dragon has a fuel cell rather than lithium batteries, with perhaps a mission duration measured in years. Another Tianjin glider will have a 'temperature difference engine.' This is similar to the prototype thermal glider pioneered by Teledyne Webb, which extracts energy from the temperature variation between sea water layers at different depths. It has the potential to power a glider indefinitely.
Researchers at Northwestern Polytechnic University at Xian are improving glider agility by giving them wings that can move independently. The researchers claim this design is faster and more efficient than fixed-wing gliders, as well as more maneuvrable.
A second Xian project takes the idea further, with flapping wings that act like a turtle's fins to provide extra propulsion. This model is now starting laboratory trials. China excels in the field of "robotic fish" with flapping fins. Gliders incorporating this technology could put on a burst of speed without compromising stealth, while retaining glider endurance for long missions.
The U.S. is carrying out R&D in many of the same areas, though not at a rapid pace; comparing the two is difficult. There may be more research in China not in the public domain. Papers from "No. 710 R&D Institute," a facility at Yichang that carries out military research, mention studies of an underwater glider big enough to carry weapons. This would represent a dramatic new sea denial capability.
However, the Chinese have yet to prove that they can translate any of their advanced glider technology programs into a finished product that can outdo designs from the West.
"There has not been any Sputnik moment yet," says Goldstein.
Goldstein warns that it's too early to say whether the Chinese navy will commit itself to gliders on a large scale. But while the progress of a new aircraft carrier or nuclear submarine under construction can be tracked over years, new gliders could be built rapidly and in secrecy in large numbers, and they are difficult to spot even when deployed. That Sputnik moment might yet arrive.


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Professor Marc van Regenmortel, a past ICTV President and ICTV life member, will end his 20-year stint as Editor-in-Chief of Archives of Virology in August, 2018. To honor Marc's service and celebrate his scientific achievements, the Medical University of Vienna and Springer, the publisher of Archives of Virology, are organizing a one-day scientific symposium on Friday, June 29th, 2018, at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria.
The full provisional program as well as details about registration (which is free) and contact emails can be found at http://www.springer.com/biomed/medical+microbiology/journal/705. Marc's successor as Editor-in-Chief, Tim Skern, is the scientific organizer of the symposium.
The 2017 ICTV taxonomy (released March 12, 2018) is now available online at http://ictvonline.org/virusTaxonomy.asp.
New templates for submitting proposals for new taxonomy are now available from https://talk.ictvonline.org/files/taxonomy-proposal-templates/m/templates.To prepare and submit proposals, please download all three files and read the Help file for detailed information on the submission process.
The deadline for this year's proposal submissions to Subcommittee Chairs is Wednesday, June 6.
The article, "Why virus taxonomy is important", published in Microbiology Today by Stuart Siddell, ICTV Vice President, discusses the importance of virus taxonomy and its role in helping to define the evolutionary relationships between viruses and understand the consequences of virus diversity.
The ICTV Executive Committee has sent a set of new taxonomy proposals to the ICTV membership (Executive Committee members, Life members, Subcommittee members, Study Group Chairs, and National Representatives) for their approval. The deadline for ratification voting is February 23, 2018. Following successful ratification, proposals will become official taxonomy, and will be incorporated into the new, 2017 Master Species List.
A meeting report provided by Andrew Davison on the 26th IVS meeting is available under the 'Meetings' section of this web site.
An article appearing in the Nucleic Acids Research 2018 Database issue, "Virus taxonomy: the database of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV)" describes the ICTV database and the web-based tools available to query that database: Lefkowitz EJ, Dempsey DM, Hendrickson RC, Orton RJ, Siddell SG, Smith DB. Nucleic Acids Res. 2017 Oct 13. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkx932. PubMed PMID: 29040670.
The Virus Metadata Resource (VMR) is a downloadable spreadsheet that provides information on exemplar viruses for each species. This information includes GenBank and RefSeq accession numbers for exemplar viruses and isolate and common names for viruses belonging to a species.
Minutes from the 2017 ICTV Plenary session held during the Singapore International Congress of Virology can be found here.
The ICTV announces the following changes to the Executive Committee following retirement of several long-standing members and the election of new members during the 49th EC meeting and Plenary session at the IUMS Conference in Singapore, July 2017:
We would like to thank our retiring members for their many years of service on the Executive Committee and wish them all the best in their future endeavors:
We welcome our three new Executive Committee members who will be serving as Elected Members:
We finally recognize current EC members who will be serving in new roles:
The 2017 ICTV Newsletter #14, July 2017 has been released. The Newsletter can be downloaded here.
To view (and comment on) proposals that have been submitted to the ICTV for consideration at this year's Executive Committee meeting this July in Singapore, please see the files listed by Subcommittee at https://talk.ictvonline.org/files/proposals/. Since each proposal requires two files (a description of the proposal and a spreadsheet detailing the taxonomic changes), the two files have been combined together as a single .zip archive for downloading.
The deadline for submission of taxonomy proposals for 2017 is June 8, 2017. Please see https://talk.ictvonline.org/files/taxonomy-proposal-templates/ for more information.
The next ICTV Executive Committee meeting will be held in conjunction with the 17th International Congress of Virology (ICV) that is part of the International Union of Microbiological Societies (IUMS) meeting in Singapore. All virologists are invited to the ICTV plenary session to be held during the IUMS2017 congress, on Monday 17 July, 11:30-12:30 at the Marina Bay Sands Conference Centre. The plenary session provides an opportunity to meet members of the Executive Committee, and to hear reports of ICTV activity over the last three years from the President and each of the Subcommittees. Voting members of ICTV (Life Members, National Members and Subcommittee members) can also participate in elections to many of the positions on the Executive Committee for the period 2017-2020. Please see the ICV Congress program for the location of the Plenary session. Infomration on the elections, along with profiles of the candidates can be found at https://talk.ictvonline.org/information/w/elections
We are sad to report the passing of Professor Hans Wolfgang Ackermann, a long-time contributor (since 1975) and life member of the ICTV. If you wish to leave condolences for his friends and family, please visit the following web site: http://www.fcfq.coop/avis-de-deces/hans-wolfgang-ackermann-139243/.
The ICTV Online (10th) Report on Virus Taxonomy is now available in a freely accessible format from the ICTV web site at http://ictv.global/report. Over a three-year cycle, ICTV Study Groups will update the information in the chapters of the 9th Report as well as produce chapters for newly created virus taxa. To start, updated chapters are available for the Ascoviridae and Flaviviridae families of viruses. Additional chapters will be added on a regular basis.
Summaries of the Online Report chapters will be published in the Journal of General Virology. These summaries will be linked to the full Online Report chapters on the ICTV website and be indexed in PubMed.
Summaries of the Online Report chapters are published in the Journal of General Virology, ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profiles section. These summaries are linked to the full Online Report chapters on the ICTV website and are indexed in PubMed.
The ICTV 9th Report on Virus Taxonomy is now available online in a freely accessible format from the ICTV web site at http://ictv.global/9th-report/. This online version contains a complete copy of all chapters published in 2011 in the printed Report. The 9th Report was based on the ICTV taxonomy of viruses released in 2009.
To mark the 50th anniversary of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), we have published a paper in Archives of Virology that discusses the history of the ICTV, past and current developments in virus taxonomy, and future prospects. The paper can be downloaded from the AoV link above, or from the ICTV web site.
In June of 2016, the Wellcome Trust sponsored a meeting organized by ICTV Executive Committee members on metagenomic sequencing and its impact on virus classification. Meeting participants have published a consensus statement in Nature Reviews Microbiology that considers the rationale for why metagenomic sequence data should, and how it can, be incorporated into the ICTV taxonomy. This publication includes proposals endorsed by the Executive Committee of the ICTV for moving forward with metagenomic sequence classification. More information is available from this link.
A comment on this article has been published by the Editors of Nature Reviews Microbiology in: "A sea change for virology", Nature Reviews Microbiology 15, 129 (2017).
The 10th ICTV Report will be published as a freely available, online resource, starting in January 2017. Over a three-year cycle, ICTV Study Groups, consisting of leading experts in the field, will update the factual information in the chapters of the 9th Report as well as produce chapters for newly created viral taxa, and provide direct links from the new chapters to the latest taxonomic database. Links will also be provided to external sequence and taxonomic databases.
Collaboration Between the ICTV and Journal of General Virology to Publish Chapter Summaries: Also starting in January 2017, Journal of General Virology will publish ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profiles – a new series of concise review-type articles that will summarize individual chapters from the Online (10th) Report on Virus Taxonomy. Written by ICTV Study Groups, these reviews will provide overviews of the classification, structure and properties of individual virus orders, families and genera. These summaries will be linked to the full Online Report chapters on the ICTV website and be indexed in PubMed.
Together, the summaries and online chapters will become the go-to place for researchers looking for up-to-date taxonomic and descriptive information on viruses.
The Online Report and the Taxonomy Profiles have been made possible thanks to a Biomedical Resources grant from the Wellcome Trust to the ICTV Executive Committee.
We are delighted to announce that Professor Eric Carstens has recently been elected as a Life Member of the ICTV. This follows nomination by the whole Executive Committee at its meeting in London in July 2015 and subsequent ratification by the entire voting membership. Eric is currently a Professor in the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and has a particular research interest in large DNA viruses that infect insects. Please see the article in Archives of Virology announcing his Life Membership.
Support for preparation of the Online Report and Report Summaries has been provided by:


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Worry No More: Americans with Pre-Existing Conditions Are Protected by the Health Care Law
Find out how many Americans with pre-existing conditions will benefit from the Affordable Care Act's protections against being denied health insurance.
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Find out how many Americans with pre-existing conditions will benefit from the Affordable Care Act's protections against being denied health insurance.
Shows the number of people in each state who have cancer, diabetes, chronic lung disease, or heart disease and who rely on Medicaid, including breakdowns by racial and ethnic group.
Presents new national and state data showing how cutting Medicaid would harm seniors, people with disabilities, their families, state workers, and the long-term care infrastructure.
Provides new national and state data on how many Americans have out-of-pocket health care spending that exceeds caps created by the Affordable Care Act.
Learn why expanding home- and community-based care is cost-effective in the long run and how states can do it using two new Medicaid options in the Affordable Care Act.
Discusses the gaps in the current health coverage system in each state and explains how the Affordable Care Act will fill those gaps and help state residents.
Find out which elements make websites consumer-friendly when shopping for health insurance in the marketplace.
Estimates the number of Americans who die prematurely because they don't have health insurance, has state-level breakdowns by week, month, and year.
Shows the financial benefits of the Affordable Care Act for families in each state, including help people will get with paying premiums and new, more affordable health insurance options.
Estimates that more than 25.7 million Americans will get help paying for health coverage in the health insurance marketplaces .