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Link Session: Hurricane Sandy Relief Edition v. 2
Revised and expanded from last week, but by no means complete.
Studios and Labels in Need of Assistance:
- Norton Records Needs Your Help Now! Their warehouse in Red Hook got absolutely decimated. Jacob Blickenstaff has the complete low-down here.
- Un-Flood BK Music is taking donations to help rebuild studios and practice spaces destroyed by the storm, including Translator Audio.
- The Musical Extravaganza to Restore Red Hook!, Nov. 21 at the Bell House, which will include a squaredance hosted by NYC Barn Dance followed by music from Rosanne Cash, Jesse Lenat, John Pinamonti and the Brotherhood of the Whiskey Spitter Rebellion, and a screening of "B61", a new film on the bus that runs through Red Hook by Michael Buscemi. Proceeds to Restore Red Hook. [Ed note: The Bell House has a LOT of benefit shows set up. Check their listings for more!]
- Taking Back Sunday, collectively from Long Island, will be playing a benefit show on Nov. 25 at the Pine Belt Arena. Proceeds will go to the Toms River Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund (New Jersey).
Things to Attend:
Things to … Continue reading


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Spring is in full swing here in northern Virginia. How do I know this? Well, it could be the warmer temperatures or cherry blossoms blooming. But it's not. For me, I know it's spring because my 14-month-old dog, Luke, has been trying desperately to catch a frog since they have reemerged with the nicer weather.
We have always had dogs. I like having two. The older dog teaches the younger one and they keep each other company. Luke is our newest puppy. He came to cheer Gus up after we lost our Swissy, Gretchen. I have to say that Luke is one of the funniest dogs we have ever had. I will not be able to resist periodically sharing some of his and Gus's antics.
However, for most of you, spring is about warmer temperatures and whatever it is you have blooming around you. I'm very fortunate that I live close to the Potomac River. I walk along the river three or four times a week. Monday of this week had to be the most gorgeous day of the year. Greeting me was a spectacular array of native flowers—bloodroot, toadshade, Dutchman's breeches, toothwort.
The most amazing, though, were the Virginia bluebells which were at their peak. There was a carpet of bluebells stretching into the woods as far as one could see and reaching in the other direction to the banks of the river.
I often take colors from nature and use them in my quilt and fabric designing. Here are the colors of the Virginia bluebells.
I think these colors make a beautiful palette for a quilt. How did I get them from the image? It's pretty simple if you have Photoshop.
- Open the image in Photoshop.
- Go to the top menu bar to Image/Mode/Indexed Color. Select the number of colors you want to see from the pop-up menu. You can go up to 250.
- Next go to Image/Mode/Color table. The chart with all the colors will come up.
Once you can clearly see the colors in the image, it is easy figure out your fabrics. I've used my Portable Palette which has swatches of all 150 of my Palette fabrics.
So take a walk and get inspired. Oh, and Luke? He's still out there trying to catch a frog.

subset: commoncrawl


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|This image was originally published on Refinery29
Chicago Street Fashion - Brittany Southworth LaFlamme
6 comments:
i am obsessed with this entire get-up.ReplyDelete
Nice boots!ReplyDelete
Love her entire look!ReplyDelete
Shop winter accessories and designer ankle boots at CITY SOLES in Wicker Park and online!
Great blog! I have never been to Chicago but this makes me want to visit even more. C'est très cool :)ReplyDelete
Thanks The Baker, Come to Chicago! I'll snap your pic. PS your blog isn't too shabby either!ReplyDelete
Also Mary Anne this outfit is SO YOU.
Très Awesome
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STORRS, Conn. (AP) — UConn fan Bryan Jackson says he thought his taste buds were safe when he joked last week on Twitter that he'd drink a spoonful of hot sauce if his Huskies came from behind to beat Marquette.
After all, it was already the second half, UConn was down by 18 points and its best player, James Bouknight, had gone down with an injury.
"I saw that people were very down on Twitter and I just wanted to add some levity to the situation," he said. "I thought people might get a chuckle out of it. And the other aspect of it, it was kind of an offering to the basketball gods."
The Huskies did come from behind, winning the Jan. 5 game by 65-54.
And so, in what has since become a viral video, Jackson, a 2006 UConn graduate who lives in Boston, posted a tweet of himself downing a large spoonful of Black Bison hot sauce, then taking another swig from the bottle, while chanting, "U-C-O-N-N, UConn, UConn, UConn."
Another fan tweeted that he believed all UConn fans should follow suit, in penance for doubting their Huskies.
Numerous fans began posting videos of themselves taking shots of hot sauce. They did it again when UConn (7-1, 4-1 Big East) went to Butler and won on Saturday, and more fans joined in after a close win on Monday at DePaul.
That's when the Husky Ticket Project stepped in. The charity, formed by three alums three years ago, raises money to send underprivileged kids to UConn football and basketball games. They organization asked everyone for a donation of at least $5 to go along with their hot-sauce shots.
"It sparked an idea in my head that we should make this like the ALS ice bucket challenge," said Kevin Solomon, one of the charity's founders.
Jackson volunteered to take swigs of hotter and hotter sauces as fundraising goals are met. Others joined the cause. One hot sauce brand got wind of the challenge and is offering discounts to participants who buy their sauce.
"It just caught on. I can't tell you how surprised and grateful we are," Solomon said. "UConn fans are the craziest, most passionate fans, and now we've found out they are also the most generous."
On Wednesday, less than two days into the challenge, the Husky Project already had been tagged in numerous videos and collected more than $10,000.
"It's already become a thing," said Chris Licata, a 37-year-old graduate who is on the hook to down a cocktail of several sauces just before the tip of UConn's next game, which is scheduled for Monday against St. John's. "I never really expected to take a shot, but I told them if they reached $3,000 I'd do it. They blew right past that."
Dan Toscano, the chairman of the school's Board of Trustees, said he's decided to donate his seats for an upcoming game to a random fan who participates in the challenge. He said he's hoping to get on the court with coach Dan Hurley after a win and drink some sauce.
Toscano acknowledges he's not thrilled by the taste test part of the deal. But said it signifies something bigger — the revival of UConn basketball after NCAA issues and conference realignment that left the school in the American Athletic Conference for seven years before this season's return to the Big East.
"People lost their mojo and I think this shows it is coming back," he said.
The school broke into the rankings at No. 25 this week for the first time since 2016, though Bouknight is out indefinitely after undergoing surgery on his left elbow.
Organizers of the challenge reached out to Hurley and women's coach Geno Auriemma, in hopes they might get involved, either by supporting the challenge or actually drinking some hot sauce.
Hurley said Wednesday that he's on board.
"I think it's great how much the fans are involved in our season, even though they can't be at the games," he said. "And I want to get involved in what is a really good cause and helps kids get to our games. I'm not a big spice person, but I'm ready to suck it up one time."
Jackson is now committed to downing sauces at the top to the Scoville spice scale, with names such as Dave's Ghost Pepper Garlic Insanity Sauce, the Torchbearer Garlic Reaper and The Last Dab. Should UConn go on to win a conference title or a fifth national championship, he's worried he may need a fundraiser of his own to help pay for reviving his mouth.
"I mean, I'd have to celebrate with some hot sauce," he said. "I just don't know that I can go any hotter than what I've already committed to."


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NOTE: Some folks erroneously believe that Tenkara gear is no different than the cane poles they've used or other stick and string rigs they've fished with. Before proceeding on this thread, they should take a look at post #178 below titled "For those who fished cane poles".
This thread is not about a product - it is about fly angling. Part of my experience the past few days has involved Tenkara fly rods. First, a Yamame 12' fast action ( 7:3 in TenkaraUSA's system of classifying their rods ) and next an Ayu 13' slow action ( 5:5 in TenkaraUSA's parlance ).
Before going further, I want to thank Dan at the Grizzly Hackle in Missoula for permitting me to demo these rods and providing the lines necessary to do so. For the Yamame I used a 13' or thereabouts level line with 4X tippet and for the Ayu I used a Tenkara Furled Line which is about 10' long tipped with 5X.
Honestly, I didn't care for the Yamame with the level line. But when Dan insisted that I try the Ayu with the furled line, I decided to give it another shot. Thanks, Dan.
The Yamame is Tenkara's heavy duty rod - the one you would use for larger fish. The Ayu is one they would recommend for smaller fish on smaller water. That's what I had in mind for these rods, and the Ayu turned out to be a stellar performer, with a rod action that is outstanding once you get a feel for it, and a furled line / tippet setup that cast a size 10 FEB Hopper beautifully. It also cast a size 16 caddis emerger pattern, a size 14 Harrop's Henry's Fork Caddis, and a size 16 parachute CDL PMD effortlessly. But the water I was on is great hopper / golden stone water and I knew the FEB Hopper and an LF Golden Stone would be the workhorses today.
The first three places I fished today are ones that I have fished previously so I knew what to expect.
Pocket water where you have to cast far enough that you can't keep the line off the faster water and get a very short dead drift at best. With the longer rod and the very light line, a much longer drift was possible.
This little guy was first up on the caddis pattern provided a while back by BB member ScottP.
Then water far enough away that the 13' rod made it more of a reach than a cast, and with a high tip, it was simple to keep the fly in a dead drift.
Only caught two or three trouts in that little hole, but saw something like 10-12 around the fly in the short time I fished there.
On downstream a way, there is a pocket of soft water on the far bank that is more than a reach. It takes a cast and an immediate mend, and then some concentration to keep the line off the hard water and get a good drift.
This is the third time I have caught this cutthroat right at the lower end of the soft water pocket.
After catching the fish above, I moved off to another creek. The first stretch I fished, I had fished before. Full of smaller trouts, up to 8-9". Can't tell you how many hit the fly or ate it. The fly being an FEB Hopper. This little guy ate the fly after I cast it left handed.
Next I moved up to some water that has been calling to me everytime I drive through this area, but that I had never stopped to fish before. It is big enough to challenge the 13' Ayu, which has a total reach of maybe 25'. What's that old saying about fishing bigger water like it is 30' wide ?? Wade out a bit and you've got it covered.
Started a bit slow on this run. But when I started hitting the seam between the fast water and the soft water on the far side, I started picking up cutts. Three or four right on the seam. All about 12-13". Beautiful fish.
Then I decided to bring the fly right down the middle of the run - something like 7-8' deep, best I could tell. First up.
Last up and last fish of the day. 14" plus of wild, native West Slope Cutthroat not at all in love with the LF Golden Stone that he ate. What a sight to see this fish come up from the bottom and absolutely smash the golden stone !! And with only about 14' of line in addition to the length of the rod, he was a handful. Put a real bend in the Ayu before I could work him into the soft water just below my position.
Tenkara is going to be a continuing part of my fly angling experience. The Ayu will be mine by this time tomorrow. If this report whets your appetite, just google Tenkara and you can find out more about their product line.
For those who have questions about my experience, fire away !!


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By Ban'ya Natsuishi (Japan)*
Speech to the World Meeting of Directors of International Poetry Festivals
After Japan's recent catastrophes of an earthquake, a tsunami, and the consequent nuclear reactor explosion in March of 2011, I find myself thinking of the human condition and its stupidity; first, of Japanese stupidity and then more generally of the stupidity of humanity. I'm obsessed with the idea of human stupidity for these many months.
After the Second World War, French intellectuals, such as Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, looking upon the devastation and ruins of Europe brought about by the ferocity of total war, designed a philosophy and literature in keeping with the irrationality, the stupidity at the heart of humanity and nature. The philosophy they created was existentialism and the literature the theater of the absurd and novel of the absurd.
One of my early haiku has parallels with the existential position of the absurdity of the human condition.
You must vomit
at full gallop
into a donkey's ear
(Ban'ya Natsuishi, Shinku-ritsu, 1987, Japan)
After the disasters in Japan in March 2011, though I have not visited the devastated Northeast region of my country, where many cities and villages were simply washed away by the sea's fury in the tsunami, I cannot forget the riveting images of the tsunami's catastrophic path of destruction in dirty black and white images broadcast on television. I wrote some haiku based upon my raw response to these events and images.
No love:
a giant tongue of waves
licking everything
People deleted
by the tsunami
anyone can stare up
(Ginyu No. 50, May 2011, Japan)
The images I viewed of the tsunami confirmed, as if there were any doubt, that nature is immeasurable in expanse compared to humanity and existentially indifferent to humanity. For the multi-cosmoses man is not even an ant. Needless to say, then, our love for nature is extremely unreasonable. It's a ridiculous or absurd unrequited love.
And, the question poses itself, especially for writers of haiku, can we really say that nature is beautiful? Can we love nature without hesitation? Can we continue to look at nature as "Mother Nature," as nurturing nature? The answers to these questions can be found, but these answers would require a rethinking of our mediocre and superficial ideas about nature that have abounded in haiku for centuries.
I feel like I am living like a ghost in capital area of Japan, where physical damage from the three-fold catastrophes of March 2011 is minimal. Almost all the buildings are intact. We don't find rain of glass fallen from buildings, as I imagined we would after a gigantic earthquake. In fact, only the frequency of trains has been reduced, and some lights have disappeared from the streets. Nevertheless, our streets are still much brighter than European streets. Honestly, only some loss of electricity has occurred. I wrote a haiku to highlight these facts:
For a nightless castle in the Far East
tsunami is an anger
of one thousand years
(Ginyu No. 50, May 2011, Japan)
Concerning radioactivity, our situation is without parallel. Scattered radioactivity might surpass Chernobyl. Fukushima is the notorious capital of radioactivity. I feel that I must express a sincere and humble apology for this unbelievable and dishonorable fact.
Japanese people experienced the A-bomb attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Sankichi Toge, a Japanese poet and an A-bomb survivor of Hiroshima ended his poem "Flames" (Honoo) with these lines:
1945, Aug. 6
6 August 1945
midnight in high noon
a god was surely burnt at the stake
by men
this night
fires of Hiroshima
reflected on the bed of the human race
then the history
something like all the gods
(Sankichi Toge's Collected Poems about A-bomb, 2003, Japan)
This "something like all the gods" suggests the end of the world, at least as we previously understood it. Is it found also in Fukushima's burning nuclear fires? These invisible fires are now the rulers of Japan's continued history. I will dare to say that ambushing "something like all the gods" is Japan's stupidity that permitted the placement of nuclear reactors from the United States on its pure land even after twice experiencing the unspeakable horror of A-bomb attacks on our islands. In this case, Japan is both responsible and a victim, having forgotten its horrendous previous nuclear experiences. Oblivion lies at the heart of Japan's stupidity.
In addition to Japanese stupidity, I cannot exonerate the whole of humanity and its stupidity in relying on potentially uncontrollable nuclear reactor accidents and decisively on nuclear weapons.
What can a single man do in the face of this stupidity, this fearlessness in the face of the ferocious? As a haiku poet, I wrote this haiku as a response:
the tsunami towards
a monster on the seashore
(Ginyu No. 50, May 2011, Japan)
I wonder to myself whether not just the Japanese but are all human beings subject to stupidity? I can answer either yes or no, given the possibility of human wisdom.
In Japan right now, we are experiencing another form of stupidity and that involves Japanese television and newspapers. Japanese coverage of the disasters of March 2011, particularly the Fukushima nuclear reactor breakdown has indulged in misinforming the public. It may be the destiny of any mass media in any country, but since March 11, 2011, Japanese news' coverage has gone to been engaged in grave excesses to hide the truth, constantly reiterating that "there is no problem, no problem." This repeated lying to the populace is inexcusable and another example of stupidity.
The consequence of repeatedly lying to the people about the situation in Fukushima's nuclear reactor has been a complete loss of credibility in the news. People without truth are like ghosts, insubstantial. Contrary to the current situation, Japanese poetry has always believed in the strength and truth of words. At the beginning of the 10th century, a Japanese tanka poet, Tsurayuki Kino, opened his preface of a tanka anthology, compiled by Imperial command, "Kokin-waka-shu," with quite a confident and suggestive phrase about the nature of language:
The meaning in English of the above quote is that the human heart is the seed of Japanese tanka poetry, and from it sprouts out numerous leaves; every creature with life, why doesn't it compose a poem?
Tsurayuki Kino expresses here the poetics of animism quite similar in its way to the beliefs held in pre-Colombian South America. For the Japanese, animals, plants, and men were equally creative and vital poets since birth. Japanese poetry had been tightly connected to all of the vivifying powers of the natural world since its beginnings. Japanese poetry as the expression of the truth of the world was always considered one of the most important aspects of the cosmos.
The essence of Japanese poetry is haiku. It's greatest masterpiece was achieved in 1689 by Matsuo Basho; in the poem Basho sings a dynamic triangle of nature. Here is the poem:
Rough sea--
over Sado isle
extends the Milky Way
This poem is not a mere landscape. This short poem creates a verbal nebula composed of three elements: sea, isle, and Milky Way. Men reside on the isle. For Basho, the nature involving men is the source of poetical and vital power, even if nature shows man no hospitality. Basho was not a simple ecologist; he was an animist with a deep understanding of the unstable and dynamic cosmos.
It's very easy to say now that Japan's current stupidity came from a loss of the consciousness of its animistic background. This loss, which highlights human nature at the expense of nature itself, actually levels human activity and leaves it insubstantial and lacking relationship.
On the other hand, what is the main reason for the stupidity of the whole of humanity? Human ego-centrism? Human greed? Human jealousy? Mere ignorance?
After attending many international poetry festivals, I found that so-called human civilization and developed nations had lost the need for poetry and its power. Needless to say, I'm not coming to the defense of communism as an alternative, because it is so often related to suppression and deception.
But, in so-called civilized and developed "free" countries, people seem to be separated from the totality and plenitude of nature, both human and non-human.
On the occasion of guest lectures delivered at Meiji University in Tokyo in 2007, one of my best overseas' friends, one of the most excellent of Lithuanian poets, Kornelijus Platelis, mentioned a most interesting observation. He said that during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, poetry was everything for people who had to endure the occupation. Of course, poetry was many things to the people: it was poetry, it was journalism, it was joy, it was challenge, it was tearful. Books of poetry sold very well at that time.
After the independence of his country from Soviet domination, this independence that triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union, poetry has diminished in importance; it is viewed as it is in the West, in general.
The above example shows us that poetry is the essential core of a culture, and westernization and capitalism make poetry minor and secondary in culture.
Platelis wrote a haiku that is very instructive in this regard:
Miškas skendi savy,
tik po storu ledu
upokšnis be garso alma.
A forest has sunk into itself
while under a thick ice
a river trickles.
(Ginyu No. 31, July 2006, Japan)
Poetry, of course, including haiku, may be "a river" under "a thick ice." Our stupidities: personal, regional, international are the "thick ice." Poetry cannot resolve our stupidities, but poetry continues to live nonetheless.
Any poet of excellence might not escape from stupidities, but he or she can give birth to poetry like a groundwater. A groundwater might dry up, but it continues to stream, even if the ground becomes desert.
In my youth, when I had a promising future, I wrote the following haiku:
From the future
a wind arrives
that blows the waterfall apart
Desde el futuro
Llega un viento
Que desparrama la cascada
(Ban'ya Natsuishi, Métroplitique, 1985, Japan)
Poetry as a groundwater can become such a cosmogonic waterfall.
* International Poetry Festival Tokio´s Director.


text: Banaue (or alternatively spelled as Banawe) is a fourth class municipality in the province of Ifugao, Philippines. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 22,365 people. It is widely known as the site of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Batad Rice Terraces and Bangaan Rice Terraces.


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Are the Fed's Honchos Simpletons, Or Are They Just Taking Orders? (November 1, 2010)
Without exception the Fed's policies are pernicious failures; either they are exceptionally thickheaded, or they are just taking orders.
At the risk of boring you with material you already know well, let's quickly cover the Fed's policies and stated goals since the Global Financial Meltdown of late 2008.
The Fed's supposed goal is "get the economy on its feet again" by stabilizing employment and prices. At the risk of sounding naive, we can paraphrase all the Fed's statements thusly: "We're trying to help everyone in the U.S. by fighting this recession."
Sounds noble enough, so let's look at what the Fed has actually done in the real world.
1. The Fed has injected "liquidity" into the banking sector, enabling banks to borrow essentially unlimited sums at essentially zero interest--the infamous ZIRP (zero-interest rate policy).
2. The Fed has pushed down mortgage rates by buying over 10% of all outstanding mortgages in the U.S.--all the toxic garbage loans which the banks were desperate to get off their crippled balance sheets.
3. The Fed has pushed down yields on U.S. Treasury bonds ("monetizing" this newly issued debt) by buying hundreds of billions of dollars of bonds itself.
Here is what each program was intended to do:
1. ZIRP and unlimited liquidity was intended to enable the banks to "earn their way back to solvency" by giving them free money which they could then loan out at much higher rates. The difference between zero (their cost) and the interest rate they charged borrowers (such as those wonderful 19% credit cards) was pure profit, courtesy of the Federal Reserve.
2. The purchase of $1.2 trillion in mortgage-backed securities was intended to stabilize housing and real estate proces at far above their "natural" level set by "organic" supply and demand; in essence, the goal was to stop market prices from "reverting to the mean," i.e. returning to historical trendlines which are roughly equivialent to pre-bubble valuations circa 1997-98.
This was intended to stop the implosion of banks' balance sheets as their assets--all those mortgage-backed securities and derivatives they own--kept falling in value.
It was also intended to stabilize real estate prices so banks could slowly sell off the millions of foreclosed (REO) and defaulted homes they hold in the "shadow inventory" at prices far above where organic supply and demand would let them settle.
As a side benefit, keeping home prices inflated far above their real value would also allow the Fed to dump its own portfolio of $1.2 trillion mortgage-backed securities without suffering catastrophic losses.
Lastly, the goal was to lower the cost of mortgages to such ridiculously low levels that otherwise prudent citizens might be seduced into buying a house "because rates are so low." (Never mind what happens if the house falls another 40% in value over the next few years.)
The idea was to encourage rampant home buying (for speculation or long-term ownership, it didn't matter) to prop up the market with "demand," even if that "demand" was driven by the low cost of borrowing rather than organic demand based on the need for shelter. (Please recall that there are 19 million vacant dwellings in the U.S. now.)
3. The outright purchase of U.S. Treasury bonds was intended to drop the yield on newly issued bonds to keep the cost of borrowing trillions of dollars for "fiscal stimulus" down so the potential future cost of all the trillions of dollars in new Federal debt would be masked from a credulous citizenry who care more about their entitlements than what happens to their kids and grandkids.
4. All the policies led to super-low yields on low-risk investments so that "cash is trash;" that created a powerful incentive to put capital into risk assets such as stocks, commodities and real estate. By explicitly pushing free money and zero-interest rates, the Fed made it impossible to earn any yield on low-risk assets; thus they have been explicitly pushing capital and borrowed money into the "risk trade": emerging markets, commodities, and stocks.
The goal here is to create a new "wealth effect": if another bubble is inflated in stocks and commodities, then owners of capital will feel wealthier and as a result, they will start spending more.
Are the Fed's honchos really such knuckleheads that they don't know most Americans have no financial assets to boost in a new bubble?
The top-earning 20 percent of Americans those making more than $100,000 each year received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by those below the poverty line.
U.S. median household income fell 3 percent in 2009 to $50,221, the second straight annual drop, the Census Bureau said.
One Year Later, No Sign of Improvement in America's Income Inequality Problem:
Income inequality has grown massively since 2000. According to Harvard Magazine, 66% of 2001-2007's income growth went to the top 1% of Americans, while the other 99% of the population got a measly 6% increase.
The Top 5 percent in income earners those households earning $210,000 or more account for about one-third of consumer outlays, including spending on goods and services, interest payments on consumer debt and cash gifts, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by Moodys Analytics.
The Fed's central idea was to create a "trickle down" of wealth as a new stock and commodity bubble increased the financial wealth of the top 10%. That idea has demonstrably failed; could the Fed's economic geniuses really be so stupid as to trust in the long-discredited "trickle down" theory that enriching the top tranch will actually benefit the bottom 90%?
5. All the policies were designed to flood the economy with new "free" money, thereby sparking inflation and a new round of consumption that would inject "growth" into the economy.
In other words, the "problem" is perceived as sagging asset prices (real estate and the worthless mortgages written on homes that have lost 50% of their value) which have impoverished homeowners and impaired banks' assets.
The Fed's "solution" is to reinflate the housing bubble (or stabilize its collapse) and push investors and speculators alike into risk assets, in the hopes that a new asset bubble somewhere will boost assets enough to create a "feel good" wealth effect which will trigger massive new consumer spending and repair banks' balance sheets with higher asset valuations.
Put another way, here are the Fed's goals stripped of niceties:
1. Revoke the business cycle--no recessions allowed. In the normal business cycle of classical Capitalism (as opposed to the crony Capitalism we have today), then expansion of credit/debt and rising assets leads to mal-investment and rampant speculation: overbuilding, overcapacity, over-indebtedness and leveraged bets that misprice risk.
Which is precisely what occurred in the 1995-2000 stock market bubble and the 2002-2007 housing/real estate bubble: mal-investment, over-indebtedness, overbuilding and mispricing of risk on a grand, unprecedented scale.
In the normal scheme of things, all this bad debt would be written off and the assets would be sold/liquidated. Holders of those assets and the debt based on those assets would both suffer losses or even be wiped out. All the overbuilt properties and overcapacity would be sold for pennies on the dollar, and the liabilities (debt) wiped off the balance sheet along with all the inflated assets.
There is no other way to clear the market for future growth. Yet the Fed has pursued a "solution" that violates all the principles of Capitalism: to reinflate asset bubbles or keep them artifically high by injecting more credit/debt into the system.
In other words, if you can't service your current debt and you're insolvent because your assets have declined, then the Fed's "solution" is to give you free money to roll over into a bigger debt load and boost the risk-asset trade so the assets on your books will rise again, "solving" your insolvency.
Does anyone at the Fed really believe this will work , or are they just thick? Or even worse, are they just lackeys taking orders from Wall Street and the Financial Power Elites?
You cannot eliminate the consequences of speculative bad bets and over-indebtedness with more debt and more speculation, yet that is precisely the intent of all the Fed's policies.
The Fed's unprecedented purchase of mortgages and Treasury debt have indeed reinflated the stock and housing bubbles to a limited degree, but most of that free money has flowed into emerging markets and commodities, which are now in their own massive bubbles.
In yet another pernicious consequence, the Fed's bumbling attempts to create inflation in the U.S. have failed--the inflation is raging in China. And as inflation rages there, then the cost of Chinese goods in the U.S. will rise.
Is there any possible way to fail more spectacularly that the Fed? Instead of sparking "good inflation" in the U.S. which they presumed (thickheadedly) would boost wages along with prices, thus enabling debt-serfs to pay down their debts with "cheaper" money, they have sparked runaway asset bubbles in commodities and "bad" inflation in China, which means the cost of goods the debt-serfs need to survive is skyrocketing while their wages and income stagnate.
In other words, the policies of the Fed have completely backfired in terms of "helping" 90% of the citizenry. The "wealth effect" of rising stock prices failed to boost the spirits and balance sheets of the bottom 90% who have essentially no financial capital, average incomes have declined in the recession and yet prices for commodities are climbing.
The Fed's policies have created the worst-case scenario for the average American household: stagnant income and rising prices of essentials. The problem is demand is falling along with net incomes, not the supply of new debt. By raising the costs of commodities, the Fed is actually reducing the net disposable income of households: the reverse of the "wealth effect."
Rather than allow the economy to clear out bad debt and re-set asset prices that would enable organic growth, the Fed has tried to inflate new asset bubbles to save the Financial Power Elites from suffering the losses resulting from the last two bubbles popping.
It's as if the fever the patient needs to wipe out a deadly infection has been suppressed by the Fed, creating the illusion of "health" even as the infection destroys the patient from within.
2. "Save" Wall Street, the banks, the nation's Financial Power Elites and the nation's homeowners by blowing new asset bubbles with massive injections of free money and the bogus "demand" created by the Fed's own purchases. The dynamic has already been explained above: cover the losses of the last bubble imploding by blowing an even bigger bubble now that boosts the asset side of balance sheets.
Do the Fed's honchos really think there is another end-game here other than the collapse of their latest ZIRP-QE2-driven asset bubbles? Could they really be so blind, so stupid, so misinformed, so ignorant of reality and history, as to believe their policies will actually work?
Are they so detached from reality that they fail to see their policies are backfiring, further impoverishing most of the citizenry as they set up the inevitable collapse of the banks they have tried so hard to save?
Are they really simpletons, or are they just taking orders from the Financial Elites who have the
most to lose when the whole sagging sandcastle finally collapses into the waves?
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Top 100
Best Car Transport in Bikaner
Car Transport is a tedious task. Moving put from a city and settling down to another is not an uncommon incident today. But getting a reliable and trusted movers and packers, especially in Bikaner, or any other big cities is bit tough. When we select any car tansport services, we often want our work to be done peacefully and smoothly. For this we definitely need a company that is trusted. If you are taking such service for the first time and you don't have any idea about how things to be done, then these following points can be helpful.
•In the era of digitization, you don't need to run from here to there to search for top car transport in Bikaner. You can easily search about them on internet. Also make sure to take the ratings and feedbacks of the companies for future reference.
•Once you are done with your research, check for their services they offer. Only Transport car from one place to another is not enough, taking care of your Car, other papers and such must be done completely so that you can get smooth service with these car transport company in Bikaner.
•After the amount of service, now it is time for price meter. Check their prices thoroughly. Compare one with another. Prices are considered to be low or high with respect to their services. Check for that too. Whether the best car Transport company in Bikaner is offering has the best price or not must be checked beforehand.
•Any service that is licensed and registered must be reliable. However there are frauds too. But most of the licensed and insured companies are trusted and reliable. Among hundreds of car bike transport in Bikaner, few of them carry proper license. Check for them before you jump to any decision.
• A fancy, premium website is not enough today. Though many of the companies have online query, online booking and online payment system facility still it is necessary to talk to them over phone or better to meet them in person at their office. These car transport services can have rosy promises but to make double sure, do visit their offices and verify their details.
•When you look for car Transport services Bikaner has many, but not all of them are registered with BBB. Those who are registered with BBB are the most reliable and trusted companies in Bikaner. So before you head towards any final deal, check for this registration too.


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Bertram's new battlewagon is suffused with the spirit of her ancestors.
Nothin' else like it in the world," I yelled as our Bertram 511 prototype swung a broad, gracefully banked, highly exhilarating turn. I snatched a couple of anticipatory breaths, tweaked the width of my stance, stabilized my butt against one of two, optional, high-gloss Murray Products helm chairs, and then, with the bow targeting a big condo looming amid the mists of Miami Beach, pegged the Palm Beach-style ZF throttles, unleashing a set of 1,360-mhp MAN V12-1360 diesels that were already wailing like banshees.
The feeling of raw, blistering power that ensued was flat-out indescribable. And the smooth, true-tracking precision with which the boat beelined across the washboardy two-to-three footers east of Miami's Government Cut, averaging a top end of 44 mph, was pure Bertram nostalgia. I was momentarily reminded of the lithe Bertram 43 Convertible that I'd fished in the Bahamas way back in 1988. And the rampageous 54 Convertible I'd sea trialed off the New Jersey coast not long after her interior had been redesigned in 1995.
Deep-V hull forms have always been the heart and soul of all things Bertram, and from what the company's engineering director Richard Lamarre had told me while we'd cruised down the Miami River from the builder's plant earlier that morning, our 511 sported a running surface that owed a lot to the guys who originally popularized the deep-V some 50 years ago: designer C. Raymond Hunt and yacht broker, accomplished ocean racer, and eventual Bertram Yacht founder, Richard Bertram.
Sure, our 511's transom deadrise was just 16 degrees—considerably less than the race-bred 24-degree configurations that characterized Bertram's early Moppies—but she sliced a dicey seaway with unruffled aplomb nevertheless. And thanks to some subtle deadrise modifications forward of the transom, as well as wide chine flats, an absence of prop pockets (for better buoyancy aft), and moderate bow flare, she produced a smooth, nicely balanced, confidence-inspiring, bone-dry ride while doing so.
Ergonomics were just as impressive. Sightlines from the flying bridge were unobstructed, even as I throttled the boat out of the hole. The mounting flat for electronics—part of an electrically actuated, weather-resistant, pop-up console that Bertram offers as an option—seemed of ample size and was tilted for comfortable viewing. The Teleflex SeaStar power-assisted steering system exhibited a satisfying level of resistance—just tight enough for fingertip-manageability—and the ZF SmartCommand engine-control panel to starboard of the wheel offered two especially nifty conveniences.
The first had surfaced as I'd backed the boat into a narrow fairway just south of the Bertram plant. I began with considerable enthusiasm for the reduced power inherent in SmartCommand's Easidock function, which imparted welcome delicacy and safety to the process. Moreover, according to Lamarre and others onboard, the oomph engendered during gear bumps could be adjusted to one of several power settings, depending on the owner's preference.
However, as I continued the exercise, I eventually discovered that by not using Easidock and simply bumping an engine into gear for the merest of moments, I could instantaneously take advantage of all of the MANs' low-end torque, a development that in league with a set of big, five-blade wheels and 1.75:1 gear ratio, made the 511 one of the most responsive, manageable vessels I've recently maneuvered dockside.
The second convenience surfaced shortly after I'd finished with the fairway. As we began purring down the river, the virtues of ZF SmartCommand's Autotroll mode became almost immediately apparent. By merely pushing a couple of buttons and then manipulating the two Palm Beach sticks, I could tweak the 511's twin-engine cruise speed to a fare-thee-well—4.7 knots seemed to be optimum for the extant conditions—and reduce her wake to a ripple. Easier than alternately bumping one engine into gear and then the other to achieve reasonable velocities mile after mile!
Once we finished our sea trial and made our way back up the river to the Bertram facility, I was able to form a solid opinion of the 511's interior amenities in fairly short order. The three-stateroom, two-head lower-deck configuration included flush-fit windows in both the port master and starboard guest staterooms. And a profusion of windows and windshield panels also circumscribed the saloon/galley/dinette area on the upper deck (our test boat lacked the optional lower helm station on the starboard side). All in all, the interior layout struck me as straightforward, simple, and cheerily bright.
Key features included easy-to-maintain Amtico flooring in the galley, large rod lockers in the saloon overhead, solid cherry joinery, and optional top-stitched UltraLeather upholstery topside. There was also a picture window in the saloon's aft bulkhead that at 5'7″ by 4'2″ is the largest, most panoramic expanse of window glass I've ever seen on a midrange battlewagon.
A straightforward, practical approach held sway elsewhere as well. The 511's all-white engine room, for example, is accessed via a mid-mezzanine companionway and then through a lazarette that's voluminous enough to hold an optional Eskimo ice machine, a couple of gensets (two optional 23-kW Kohlers), and a few other odds and sods. The ER itself offers workable, 5'2″ headroom and an easy-to-navigate two-foot-wide passageway between the mains. Except for a tough-to-get-at, outboard dipstick on the starboard ZF marine gear, filters and other maintenance points were all conveniently inboard. And a single, sight-glass-equipped molded fiberglass fuel tank lay all the way forward and athwartships, directly over the 511's center of buoyancy, an arrangement that typically obviates trim problems related to fuel load.
I finished up my dockside assessment by examining the 511's fish-fighting arsenal. In addition to a mezzanine that is both cushy and useful (thanks to several cool boxes, a freezer, and a baitwell under the seats and sole), the test vessel sported a 142-square-foot cockpit with optional Murray Products fighting chair, a three-foot-wide, outward-swinging transom door with gate, a big, removable fishbox (with macerator), comfortably padded inwales, and plenty of deckshoe-gripping nonskid. The Pipewelders hardtop and outriggers were optional.
"So whataya think?" Lamarre asked, stepping ashore. I considered the question for a moment and then synopsized Bertram's 511 rather succinctly (if I do say so myself), taking into account not only her heritage-driven, open-water performance and dockside mannerliness, but her straightforward, simple layout as well.
"A blast from the past, really," I opined, adding, "No doubt about it."
Dialed-In Lube Exchange
So I'm down in the lazarette of the Bertram 511 and notice an unusual gizmo on the forward bulkhead. It's an oil-exchange manifold hooked up to a heavy-duty Leeson electric pump that has an off/on switch alongside. But what's that clock-like device with the central pointer and numbered dial? A Bertram rep told me the company's been installing 'em for years. "Kinda low tech," he added, "but it works." Here's how: Let's say, using quick-connect fittings and hoses, you link one of your main engines to the manifold (and thus the gizmo) and then simultaneously link the gizmo to an appropriate container in your cockpit. Depending on whether you want to fill or empty your engine, you simply dial up the amount entailed and hit the Leeson's switch. Eventually the pointer (with the totalizer) will tell you when you've pumped enough. Works for both engine oil and transmission fluid! –B.P.


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An Analysis of the Transition from Postsecondary Education into the Workforce
Education Outcomes research is used to assist colleges in determining the effectiveness of their educational programming as it relates to the students' transition into the workforce.
Iowa Workforce Development provides wage record data from the state's unemployment insurance database, which is also used to answer questions regarding student employment rates, earning levels and industries of employment. Further analysis can be provided based on student characteristics indicated by the postsecondary institution including award type, major and demographics.
Follow this link to review the Education Outcomes Brochure.
The Iowa Community Colleges Education Outcomes: Diploma, Certificate and Associate Degree Programs report, in part, analyzes employment and earnings as they relate to education and training. This report is a collaboration between the Iowa Department of Education Division of Community Colleges and Workforce Preparation and Iowa Workforce Development's Research & Analysis Bureau.
Follow this link to review the Statewide Report AY 2013 to AY 2017.
Quick Looks are Education Outcomes research publications providing an overview of employment and wages among Iowa's community college students. Follow the links below to review the most recent Quick Look publications.


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THE STUDY "Oxytocin Increases Generosity in Humans," by Paul Zak et al., published in the November 2007 issue of PLoS ONE.
THE QUESTION What drives us to be charitable to strangers when it is costly to ourselves? Researchers investigated the role that the hormone oxytocin plays in regulating our generous behavior.
THE METHOD Produced naturally during sexual arousal and childbirth, oxytocin has long been linked to social behaviors. By binding to brain regions associated with emotion, the hormone helps parents bond with children and increases trust. Adding a twist to this story, neuroeconomist Paul Zak of Claremont Graduate University proposed that oxytocin might also play a role in material generosity by promoting the ability to empathize with others.
To test his hypothesis, Zak focused on monetary transfers. He rounded up 68 male participants (women were excluded because oxytocin increases the risk of miscarriage) and administered oxytocin to half of them through a nasal inhaler. The other half inhaled only salt water. Then participants were paired randomly and identified only by a number via computer, a setup that prevented them from identifying each other or talking at all.
In a first round of trials, subjects were told that one of each pair would receive $10 but would need to offer his partner a share. If the partner accepted the offer, they would divide the money as proposed by the other partner. But if the subject rejected the offer—which might happen if the offer seemed too stingy—neither person would get anything. Prior to learning which role he would assume (giver or receiver), each participant was asked to decide on personal courses of action—if doling out the money, how much would he give, and if receiving, what was the minimum offer he would accept? "We used this strategy to force people to take another's perspective," Zak explains. The money was real, and players received cash at the end in accordance with these rules.
In a second round, the same people were paired, but this time the receiving partner had no say over the offer: He had to accept it, no matter what it was.
THE RESULTS In the first part of the study, oxytocin made no difference whatsoever in the minimum offer a partner was willing to accept: It was $2.97, on average, regardless of whether he received the hormone or a placebo.
But when it came to the actual generosity of giving, oxytocin mattered a lot. Those inhaling the hormone offered an average of $4.86 compared with $4.03 for those who inhaled saline. In fact, those who received oxytocin were so giving that they actually left the lab with about 5 percent less money than their placebo counterparts.
Results were different in the second trial, where recipients had to accept the offer no matter what. With no possibility of rejection, offers were lower overall ($3.68 on average), and there was no statistical difference between the oxytocin and placebo groups. In other words, oxytocin had no effect.
THE MEANING Since oxytocin increased the level of giving only in the first transaction—in which the partner's response mattered—Zak concludes that the hormone's effect is specific, altering generosity only when we have to think about others' feelings. "When something drives us emotionally, when we feel connected to other people, that's when we open our wallets," he says.
Should you worry about casinos or charities spritzing this stuff in the air to make you spend or give more? "The answer is no," Zak says. "You have to get a lot in your nose to get it into your brain. You would know you were getting it up your nose." The larger danger is manipulation of our empathy and generosity through heart-wrenching images or narratives that cause the natural release of oxytocin to the brain.
Part of the motivation behind investigations like this one, Zak says, is that "as we become aware of these unconscious processes, we have better control over them." But we would not want to override oxytocin's effects. By increasing empathy, he says, oxytocin "makes us bind together as a species. All kinds of daily transactions require that people spend just a little bit of their time and resources to help someone out. I think society as we know it couldn't exist without that."
Stats Behind the study • Donors in the United States gave $295 billion to charities in 2006. • Nearly $223 billion of that came from individuals. • Who got the money? A third went to religious congregations, and 14 percent went to education. Foundations and human services organizations received more than 10 percent each. Cultural organizations and international affairs groups received 4 percent each. • The average person in the United States gave away 2.2 percent of after-tax income in 2005. • That same year, 65 million Americans donated time to charities. • 96 percent of volunteers said "feeling compassion toward other people" motivated them to give their time. • Previous research by Zak and his colleagues suggests that because estrogen increases the number of oxytocin receptors, in countries where people consume larger amounts of plant-based estrogens (found in foods such as nuts, soy products, and legumes), average trust levels are higher.


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Spacentrepreneur Elon Musk thinks we'll eventually need a basic universal income because of "automation."
"People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things," he told CNBC. "Certainly more leisure time. And then we gotta figure how we integrate with a world and future with a vast AI."
"Ultimately, I think there has to be some improved symbiosis with digital super intelligence," the Tesla CEO said.
What will happen if robots steal our jobs? It's a question that's been on the minds of both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie since the advent of artificial intelligence. Robots have already eliminated some factory jobs, but even so-called "creative" work is now threatened, with media companies using AI to generate news stories.
"There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that," Musk reasoned.
Regardless of whether automation replaces human labor, the benefits of a basic universal income would be incredible. The idea that everyone would receive enough resources to be able to survive without working would solve the problem of homelessness and poverty and also pivot our cultural and economic identity. In a world with guaranteed income, we would be just as defined by our leisure as our labor.
But alas, that democratic socialist paradise is, at this point, a fantasy. Robots would have to come for our jobs at an exponential rate to generate an economic crisis that would lead to public acceptance of a society where every receives government assistance. Technofuturists like Murray Shanahan and Google's Ray Kurzweil believe that technology is developing on an exponential curve, meaning we are fast approaching a moment where our tech will outsmart us, or at least render us obsolete. Kurzweil believes this will happen in our lifetime—the year 2045—but other experts disagree.
Even as technology develops, I'm skeptical of the capitalist West's ability to undergo such a vast cultural change. Sure, jobs will become obsolete, but we can utilize the technology we invent to create new jobs. Especially in the United States, we define ourselves by our labor; your labor and its fruits determine every aspect of your identity.
In Guy DeBord's landmark 1967 piece of mass media criticism, Society of the Spectacle, the Marxist philosopher argues that automation, the epitome of modern industry, "confronts the world of commodity with a contradiction: ... the same technical infrastructure that is capable of abolishing labor must at the same time preserve labor as ... the sole generator of commodities." DeBord believes that when mechanisms increase productivity, "new forms of employment have to be created" before labor-time falls to an "unacceptably low level." What the French theorist then suggests is that as a culture, we so thoroughly define ourselves by work that we keep inventing new jobs as our old ones become automated. Case in point: I'm a blogger. Our society didn't always have a need for hot takes, but here we are.
Musk believes basic universal income is inevitable, but who knows what the weird jobs of the future hold? If Musk's right, capitalism's ruthless grip on the world might loosen a little. If only.


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--Main Features-- This product is a Network Camera Management System with the following features: ■ IPv6 CompatibleThis product is compatible with IPv6, the next generation of Internet protocol. There are a number ofmerits to this, such as, abundant global addresses and security improvement through using IPsec. ■ Camera Privacy Protection with VPNThis product is compatible with PPTP (IPv4) and IPsec (IPv4/IPv6) for VPN. Security is ensured byencrypting all camera and PC data connected to this product before it is sent. ■ High speed wireless LAN for IEEE 802.11b/g802.11g has 2 modes: 1. the 802.11g only mode, and 2. the 802.11g and 802.11b simultaneous mode.Also, the wireless LAN function can be suspended. ■ High speed throughputMaximum WAN - LAN wired connection speeds of 98 Mbps (IPv4/SmartBits), 98 Mbps (IPv6/SmartBits), and 16 Mbps (FTP[PPTP]). ■ Automatic SetupBy using this product with Panasonic's network camera (Customer-provided), the camera's automaticregistration function can automatically set up wireless security (encryption WEP setup etc.) andcamera network related settings. (port forwarding setup etc.) ■ Camera PortalBy using this product with Panasonic's network camera (Customer-provided), the camera portal canlist up to 16 camera names and their still images on a monitoring screen. Also, the camera portal pageis set up automatically. ■ Cell Phone Camera PortalCreate a portal page to access your cameras easily from a cell phone. Cameras on location can beadded automatically, and remote cameras can also be added. ■ Camera Status NotificationThis product can send an E-mail to your PC or mobile phone, if a camera disconnection is detected.
SPECIFICATIONS Weight 0.7 lbs Type Drivers & Utilities Network / Transport Protocol IPSec PPPoE PPTP Connector Type RJ-45 RJ-45 Type None Data Transfer Rate 54 Mbps Data Link Protocol Ethernet Fast Ethernet IEEE 802.11b IEEE 802.11g Connectivity Technology Wired wireless Remote Management Protocol HTTP Compliant Standards IEEE 802.11b IEEE 802.11g IEEE 802.3 IEEE 802.3u Features DHCP support IP address filtering IPv6 support MAC address filtering NAT support Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) VPN support firewall protection


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COVID-19 crisis causes 17 percent drop in global carbon emissions: Study
New York/IBNS: The COVID-19 global lockdown has had an "extreme" effect on daily carbon emissions, but it is unlikely to last - according to a new analysis by an international team of scientists.
The study published in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that daily emissions decreased by 17% – or 17 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – globally during the peak of the confinement measures in early April compared to mean daily levels in 2019, dropping to levels last observed in 2006.
Emissions from surface transport, such as car journeys, account for almost half (43%) of the decrease in global emissions during peak confinement on April 7. Emissions from industry and from power together account for a further 43% of the decrease in daily global emissions.
Aviation is the economic sector most impacted by the lockdown, but it only accounts for 3% of global emissions, or 10% of the decrease in emissions during the pandemic.
The increase in the use of residential buildings from people working at home only marginally offset the drop in emissions from other sectors.
In individual countries, emissions decreased by 26% on average at the peak of their confinement.
The analysis also shows that social responses alone, without increases in wellbeing and/or supporting infrastructure, will not drive the deep and sustained reductions needed to reach net zero emissions.
Prof Corinne Le Quéré of the University of East Anglia led the analysis. She said: "Population confinement has led to drastic changes in energy use and CO2 emissions. These extreme decreases are likely to be temporary though, as they do not reflect structural changes in the economic, transport, or energy systems.
"The extent to which world leaders consider climate change when planning their economic responses post COVID-19 will influence the global CO2 emissions paths for decades to come.
"Opportunities exist to make real, durable, changes and be more resilient to future crises, by implementing economic stimulus packages that also help meet climate targets, especially for mobility, which accounts for half the decrease in emissions during confinement.
"For example in cities and suburbs, supporting walking and cycling, and the uptake of electric bikes, is far cheaper and better for wellbeing and air quality than building roads, and it preserves social distancing."
The team analysed government policies on confinement for 69 countries responsible for 97% of global CO2 emissions. At the peak of the confinement, regions responsible for 89% of global CO2 emissions were under some level of restriction. Data on activities indicative of how much each economic sector was affected by the pandemic was then used to estimate the change in fossil CO2 emissions for each day and country from January to April 2020.
The estimated total change in emissions from the pandemic amounts to 1048 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) until the end of April. Of this, the changes are largest in China where the confinement started, with a decrease of 242 MtCO2, then in the US (207 MtCO2), Europe (123 MtCO2), and India (98 MtCO2). The total change in the UK for January-April 2020 is an estimated 18 MtCO2.
The impact of confinement on 2020 annual emissions is projected to be around 4% to 7% compared to 2019, depending on the duration of the lockdown and the extent of the recovery. If pre-pandemic conditions of mobility and economic activity return by mid-June, the decline would be around 4%. If some restrictions remain worldwide until the end of the year, it would be around 7%.
This annual drop is comparable to the amount of annual emission reductions needed year-on-year across decades to achieve the climate objectives of UN Paris Agreement.
Prof Rob Jackson of Stanford University and Chair of the Global Carbon Project who co-authored the analysis, added: "The drop in emissions is substantial but illustrates the challenge of reaching our Paris climate commitments. We need systemic change through green energy and electric cars, not temporary reductions from enforced behavior."
The authors warn that the rush for economic stimulus packages must not make future emissions higher by delaying New Green Deals or weakening emissions standards.
'Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced confinement', Corinne Le Quéré, Robert B. Jackson, Matthew W. Jones, Adam J. P. Smith, Sam Abernethy, Robbie M. Andrew, Anthony J. De-Gol, David R. Willis, Yuli Shan, Josep G. Canadell, Pierre Friedlingstein, Felix Creutzig, Glen P. Peters, is published in Nature Climate Change on May 19.
The research received support from the Royal Society, the European Commission projects 4C, VERIFY and CHE, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Australian National Environmental Science Program.


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Comparisons between Israel's control over the Palestinians and apartheid South Africa can yield crucial clues on how to move towards the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
How legitimate are comparisons of Israel's control over the Palestinians and apartheid South Africa's treatment of blacks? As Israeli Apartheid Week sweeps through university campuses across the world, renewed attention is drawn to the parallels in the policies of both countries. This year, the frenzy generated by Israeli Apartheid Week is that much more intense due to recent conferences at two American Ivy League universities concerning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Naturally, both conferences drew heavily on the history of apartheid South Africa by claiming that Israel is on its way to or has already become an apartheid state. The argument goes that Israel is a country based on ethnic privilege and a large number of people under its control, i.e. the Palestinians in the West Bank, are deprived citizenship and are oppressed, which amounts to a fundamental condition of apartheid. This is not to mention the institutionalised discrimination which Palestinian citizens of Israel face in virtually all aspects of civil life.
Reactionary self-described 'Pro-Israel' groups and individuals have been quick to keep this rhetoric at bay. Israel is guilty of many things including racism, the standard line goes, but it is not apartheid South Africa. This engrained and expected position has taken on an incredibly ironic tone given the repeated comments by former Israeli prime ministers who have publicly warned that the gulf between the two countries is not as wide as we might think, and the publication of 'The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa'.
Yet there are many Israelis that agree that their country has no choice but to implement a programme of separation in order to protect the Jewish character of the state. With a heavy dose of cognitive dissonance, arguments are often put forth that there is no inherent problem with Israel as a 'Jewish and democratic state' and the state harbours no choice but to grant privilege on the basis of ethnicity.
At a time when the standoff between Iran and Israel seems more and more like a manufactured crisis designed to keep the Palestinian issue off the radar, Palestinian activists and their supporters are doubling down on efforts to reformulate the narrative of the conflict. The desire is to highlight the deprivation of Palestinian human rights, as opposed to the carefully managed narrative of security, which has become commonplace in the Western understanding of the conflict.
This rights-based discussion necessitates a review of the methods which Israel employees to safeguard its unique programme of enforced separation between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, both inside the occupied territories and inside Israel. It is here that the comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa can be of constructive use.
Perhaps the best way to fully understand and learn from the similarities between apartheid South Africa and Israel is to simply read the daily news coming out of Israel. For example, the recent mainstream news cycle has devoted unusually high attention to Israel's controversial use of administrative detention because of a non-violent Palestinian protest. Khader Adnan, a 33-year-old father of two and spokesman for the militant Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, launched a 66 day hunger strike – the longest in Palestinian history – against his administrative detention which began last December after Israeli soldiers raided his northern West Bank home in the middle of the night.
At issue in Adnan's case was not his involvement in the extremist group Islamic Jihad, but rather his detention without trial. Prominent American pundits unravelled Israeli administrative detention by comparing it to recent American legal provisions driving the 'War on Terror', but few noticed the obvious and shocking parallel between administrative detention and apartheid South Africa's detention without trial. I wrote about the two in last Friday's Mail & Guardian:
'The main goal of apartheid detention without trial was to control the non-white population by creating a façade of justice. Using the language of pre-emptive security, apartheid South Africa created legal provisions that served the regime's efforts to crush any protest. There is a growing body of evidence that Israel's military-legal system in the West Bank serves a similar purpose.'
At a time when Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its institutionalised discrimination of Palestinians seem to be reaching fever pitch, revisiting the structures of apartheid South Africa and their similarities to Israel's current governing procedures is greatly needed. Comparing Israel and apartheid South Africa is not about singling Israel out for undue condemnation. Rather, comparisons can yield important historical lessons which can be implemented to improve the situation on the ground in Israel and Palestine. Such treatment will likely unveil painful comparisons but also crucial clues on how to move towards the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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- Science
- Not Exactly Rocket Science
Attack of the killer mice – introduced rodents eat seabird chicks alive
As Charles Darwin learned several centuries ago, islands are havens for evolution. Newcomers to these isolated worlds find themselves unshackled from the predators that dogged them on the mainland. They celebrate their freedom by diversifying into a great variety of species. But predators still have ways of tracking them down, and following the footsteps of sailors is one of them. By killing adults and eating eggs, introduced predators such as rats, cats and stoats are responsible for nine in ten of the bird extinctions since 1600.
Now, conservation agencies are getting serious about introduced predators. As an example, they have spent increasingly large budgets in recent years on the eradication of rats from troubled islands. Smaller stowaways like mice typically escape the conservationists' wrath, and between 2001 and 2005, twenty-five times less money was spent on dealing with them. After all, mice are smaller and less opportunistic than rats and pose very little threat to seabirds.
Or at least that was what scientists used to think. In 2005, Ross Wanless, Peter Ryan and colleagues from the University of Cape Town found that on Gough Island in the south Atlantic, mice had developed sinister appetites. They were eating the chicks of local seabirds alive (see image below).
House mice were introduced to Gough Island, now a World Heritage Site, in 1888 and are the only introduced mammals there. They share the island with large seabird colonies including many endangered species, and the last breeding populations of the Tristan albatross and the Atlantic petrel.
The mice seemed to be co-existing peacefully until the turn of the millennium, when some of the seabirds started experiencing massive breeding losses. Wanless investigated and by watching about 300 nests, he found video evidence that the mice have developed a taste for albatross, petrel and shearwater chicks. They were attacking and eating chicks up to 300 times their weight, and often en masse.
Albatross chicks are not defenceless and will often ward off much larger avian hunters like the sub-Antarctic skua or the southern giant petrel. But they have also been spoilt through an evolutionary history free of mammalian dangers. The chicks have no idea how to react to mice, let alone defend themselves – hapless and helpless.
In fact, Wanless describes the mice as parasites rather than predators. They often don't kill the chicks outright but slowly feed from open wounds over the course of days.
Typically, 60-75% of Tristan albatross young survive their first year. But thanks to the voracious mice, only 27% now do so on Gough Island. As a result, the population of this already vulnerable bird has crashed by over a quarter since the 1960s.
The birds of Gough Island will clearly need some assistance. Meanwhile, Wanless is sounding the alarm for other islands where introduced mice roam free. On islands where they are not alone, larger introduced predators like cats or rats may be helping to keep their numbers down. The danger then, is that when conservationists get rid of these larger problems, they may unwittingly unleash a smaller foe on the native animals.
This very situation seems to be playing out on Marion Island in the South Indian Ocean. In the 1990s introduced cats were finally eradicated from the island, leaving mice as the only mammal aliens around. And sure enough, Ryan has found that several wandering albatross chicks have died of wounds consistent with mouse attacks. These attacks could be much more widespread than we had realised.
The message is clear – eradication programmes for introduced animals should target all potential predators, whether big or small. As in the case of sharks and scallops dealt with elsewhere in this blog, the removal of top predators can often doom animals at the bottom of the food chain by releasing hunters in the middle tier.
Reference: Wanless, Angel, Cuthbert, Hilton & Ryan. 2007. Can predation by invasive mice drive seabird extinctions? Biology Letters doi:10.1098/rsbl.2007.0120
More on introduced/displaced predators:
- Effects of invading island rats ripple across land and sea
- The fox and the island: an Aleutian fable
- Shark-hunting harms animals at bottom of the food chain


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United Bank of Africa HERBERT MACAULAY WAY Branch Map
United Bank of Africa HERBERT MACAULAY WAY Branch Direction
UBA's has more than 65 years of providing uninterrupted banking operations dating back to 1948 when the British and French Bank Limited ("BFBâ€) commenced business in Nigeria. BFB was a subsidiary of Banque Nationale de Crédit (BNCI), Paris, which transformed its London branch into a separate subsidiary called the British and French Bank, with shares held by Banque Nationale de Crédit and two British investment firms, S.G. Warburg and Company and Robert Benson and Company. A year later, BFB opened its offices in Nigeria to break the monopoly of the two existing British owned banks in Nigeria then. Following Nigeria's independence from Britain, UBA was incorporated on 23, February 1961 to take over the business of BFB. UBA eventually listed its shares on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), in 1970 and became the first Nigerian bank to subsequently undertake an Initial Public Offering (IPO). UBA became the first sub-Saharan bank to take its banking business to North America when it opened its New York Office (USA) in 1984 to offer banking services to Africans in Diaspora. Today's UBA emerged from the merger of then dynamic and fast growing Standard Trust Bank, incorporated in 1990 and UBA, one of the biggest and oldest banks in Nigeria. The merger was consummated on August 1, 2005, one of the biggest mergers done on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). Following the merger, UBA subsequently went ahead to acquire Continental Trust Bank in the same year, further expanding the UBA brand. UBA subsequently acquired Trade Bank in 2006 which was under liquidation by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). UBA had another successful combined public offering and rights issue in 2007 and made further banking acquisitions of three liquidated banks namely: City Express Bank, Metropolitan bank, and African Express Bank. The bank also acquired Afrinvest UK, rebranding it UBA Capital, UK. Visit their website to read more
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When is buying a certified pre-owned car the right thing for you? To decide, you first need to understand the differences among used cars.
Older cars that are traded in when a new one is purchased become part of a dealer's used-car fleet and, as a rule, the dealer keeps the good ones and disposes of the bad ones.
For decades, used cars were seen by many consumers as piles of junk looking for a home. To them, "used" meant "abused." Then along came a wise marketing type who sought to change that image by calling used cars "pre-driven" or "pre-owned."
The change made it considerably easier to sell the cars, as dealers went from selling someone else's trouble to selling someone else's treasure.
The pre-owned car got an even greater image boost when Mercedes-Benz began selling "certified" pre-owned luxury cars in the late '80s. For years, consumers had suggested car dealers inspect trade-ins for damage and make repairs before putting them on used-car lots. Dealers, however, said that would be too costly and time-consuming.
Then manufacturers decided the time had come, and automakers came up with the idea of having dealers inspect and repair trade-ins before re-selling them, but with an added bonus that made the venture worthwhile: Dealers would inspect and repair the cars out of their own pocket, and the factory would then offer a warranty on these "certified" pre-owned cars.
There are differences among certified used cars. There are certified pre-owned factory-backed programs and certified pre-owned dealer-backed programs. The biggest difference is that factory-backed programs offer a warranty that's backed by the factory at no cost to you, while with dealer-certified programs you usually have to buy an extended warranty from the dealer to ensure coverage.
"'Factory-backed' also means they are warrantied at any dealership selling the same brand anywhere in the country," said Art Spinella, general manger of CNW Marketing Research. "Dealer-certified means they usually have to be brought back to the selling dealership."
So why should you consider a certified pre-owned car? "Because it gives you another option when buying a car," said Rob Gentile, director of web product management for Consumer Reports.
"The average price of a new vehicle today is almost $30,000, but a certified pre-owned car gives you an alternative option to buying a new vehicle an affordable way to save money by buying a car that's been inspected, repaired and warranted."
The key to certified pre-owned vehicles is that, unlike other used cars, they have been inspected, repaired and given a factory-backed warranty. The price of the car rises to defray the cost of those perks, but the higher price is offset by the consumer's peace of mind.
Auto industry experts estimate that up to 1.6 million of the 17 million used cars sold by dealers each year are factory-certified, and that 20 percent of shoppers who are happy with their used car will buy the same brand when they choose to buy a new car.
"Factory-certified has become very popular," said Jerry Cizek, president of the Chicago Automobile Trade Association, which represents more than 500 new- and used-car dealers in the Chicago area.
"One reason for offering certified pre-owned cars is that it's a way for automakers to keep you in their family," Cizek said. "If they attract you into a pre-owned car and you're happy, you eventually will buy the same brand when you purchase new, and they are hoping for repeat new-car sales."


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AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas said Wednesday it has agreed to pay former coach Mack Brown $2.75 million that would have been owed him if he had been fired, and place him in a one-year, $500,000 job as a special assistant to the president for athletics.
Both options had been part of Brown's original contract in separate clauses in case of termination or resignation. Brown announced on Dec. 14 that he would step down after Texas' bowl game and called it a "mutual" decision between himself, school President Bill Powers and athletic director Steve Patterson. He has been replaced by Charlie Strong.
Brown had reportedly been negotiating for more money. Texas agreeing to pay Brown his severance buyout and give him the job raised the question whether he was fired or resigned and why he would get both options.
"He resigned," Texas spokesman Nick Voinis said. "This is what was agreed to. We're honoring his contract."
If Brown stays on with the university beyond the one-year deal, future compensation would be discussed then, a source told ESPN's Joe Schad.
Brown's attorney, Joe Jamail, did not immediately return telephone messages seeking comment. The University of Texas System Board of Regents, which approved Brown's contract and most recently approved an extension in 2012, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Brown was under contract through 2020 and was one of the highest-paid coaches in the country at more than $5.4 million per year. But the coach who won the 2005 national championship and played for another in 2009 left after a four-year run that saw the Longhorns lose at least four games every season.
The contract included language that allowed Brown to move to "another significant position within the university" at a minimum of $500,000 per year if he "voluntarily relinquishes his duties" as coach.
Brown's new job will concentrate on fundraising for the nation's wealthiest athletic department.
The contract also had the $2.75 million termination payment if he was fired before Dec. 31, 2014, to be paid in four equal annual installments. The same section said that if Brown were fired, left for another program or become otherwise unable to do his job, "all obligations" under the contract "shall cease."
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.


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Before Night Falls
Episodic look at the life of Cuban poet and novelist, Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990), from his childhood in Oriente province to his death in New York City. He joins Castro's rebels. By 1964, he is in Havana. He meets the wealthy Pepe, an early lover; a love-hate relationship lasts for years. Openly gay behavior is a way to spite the government. His writing and homosexuality get him into trouble: he spends two years in prison, writing letters for other inmates and smuggling out a novel. He befriends Lázaro Gomes Garriles, with whom he lives stateless and in poverty in Manhattan after leaving Cuba in the Mariel boat-lift. When asked why he writes, he replies cheerfully, "Revenge."
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Heinz CEO William Johnson is eligible for a $212.6 million golden parachute after the close of a buyout deal announced last month.
In a filing late Monday, Heinz (HNZ) disclosed that if Johnson leaves the company after the purchase he will get just under $56 million in cash, stock and other benefits. In addition, he has vested stock, options and other deferred compensation worth $156.7 million.
The filing says that Johnson owned 2.1 million shares of Heinz stock as of Feb. 28. The stock values in the filing assume the $72.50 sales price agreed to by the company, less the price he paid to exercise the option.
"The payments reflect Johnson's success in creating billions of dollars in shareholder value over his successful 15-year tenure as President and CEO," said company spokesman Michael Mullen. "This compensation consists of equity that Johnson accumulated over his 30-year career with Heinz and existing equity awards and contractual rights that were in place well before the announcement of the proposed merger."
Heinz announced a $28 billion deal on Feb. 14 with a joint venture by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) and private equity firm 3G Capital.
Related: Teresa Heinz not a big winner in Buffett deal
Johnson joined the company in 1982 and worked his way up through a number of management posts until he was named CEO in 1998. The company's share price languished for most of his first eight years in the top job, rising only 11% through early 2006, when activist investor Nelson Peltz launched a proxy fight for positions on the company's board of directors.
Peltz won two spots on the company's board and Heinz agreed to adopt a number of his turnaround measures, including cutting administrative costs. The stock finally started to rise.
On the day the deal with Berkshire and 3G was announced Johnson said he does not plan to retire, but that he couldn't say whether or not he will stay with the company.
He said his 15 years as CEO of Heinz makes him the longest-serving chief executive in the food industry. Alex Behring, managing partner of 3G, also said there have not yet been discussions about post-merger leadership of the company.


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Team Bulgaria won Group All-Around
Rhythmic gymnastics groups fought for medals during the last 2 days at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships in Izmir (Turkey). And there was a great sensation – Team Russia lost! It even didn't come to the final in clubs routines, this fact deprived it the right to get the medals in this qualification too.
To be fair Russia put herself together and won gold in the last day performing with balls and ribbons. However, knowing the maximalism of this team and its head coach Irina Viner-Usmanova, such result is just a poor consolation and a reason for accurate postfight analysis inside the Team.
The winner in Group All-Around is Team Bulgaria, it became a champion with silver medals for 3 balls and 5 ribbons. Team Italy is at the second place. Team Russia was the 1st in routine with balls and ribbons, Team Spain was the best with clubs. Team Belarus got 3 bronzes in all the qualifications. Israeli gymnasts took home silver medals for 10 clubs routine.
- Competitions are soon? You may buy gymnastics leotards in stock online.
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Austin Mahone + Pitbull Get Futuristic in 'MMM Yeah' Music Video
Mahomies, the wait is over! The official music video for Austin Mahone's 'MMM Yeah' Feat. Pitbull is here -- and psst, he's looking absolutely adorable.
The 17-year-old cutie gets some help from Pitbull on the song (and in the vid) as the two smoothly slide across a moving floor in a sleek, color-changing, futuristic-looking room. As Mahone effortlessly glides across the dance floor, he uses his sweet charm and good looks to entice the sexy female dancers, who are all over the young singer.
While Mahone takes the ladies -- and the dancing -- seriously, he still shows off his goofy side with Pitbull, lip synching as the Miami rapper spits his rhyme and making silly faces to the camera.
Check out the video above!


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Weather Pummels TNF 50 Championships
Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app.
Muddy conditions cause course change but runners undaunted
By Whitney Dreier
Photo by Brett Rivers/San Francisco Running Co.
Historically, December is San Francisco's wettest month, but the rain came a few days early this year. In fact, a series of heavy storms at the end of November prompted a last-minute course change for the North Face Endurance Challenge 50-Mile Championships, held in Golden Gate National Recreation Area, just north of the city in the Marin Headlands. California State Parks opted not to have hundreds of runners slopping along exposed, higher altitude trails, so runners were directed to complete two 23.4-mile laps on National Park Service lands (those good at math will realize the course was shortened to 46.8 miles).
But reroutes, strong winds, deep mud, deeper puddles and, yes, even more rain did not deter 247 runners (194 men and 53 women) from finishing the December 1 race. The average time through the messy course was 8:54:25:55.
The field was comprised of world-class runners from all over the globe; in the end Spain's Miguel Heras (5:33:16) and Sweden's Emile Forsberg (6:39:18) were crowned men's and women's champions, each taking home $10,000—the largest first-place purse in ultramarathon trail racing. Second-place finishers François d-Haene of France (5:46:42) and Stephanie Howe of Bend, Oregon (6:41:36), earned $4000, and $1000 was awarded to the third-place contestants, Cameron Clayton of Boulder, Colorado (5:47:14), and Maud Gobert of France (6:46:13).
Although Heras (who also won in 2010) thrived on the muddy course, the precip caused a number of DNFs, including Trail Runner's Ashley Arnold, who slipped around mile 5 and ended the day with seven stitches in her right palm and a swollen ankle. Likewise, Megan Kimmel, who was eighth at mile 36.3, dropped after "dead calves & then the cold," according to iRunFar. Kimmel was recently named 2012 USATF Trail Runner of the Year and the female USATF Trail Series Champion.
However, Kimmel's U.S. Mountain Running Team member Brandy Erholtz placed seventh in her ultra debut. The Evergreen, Colorado resident ran a 7:14:50.
In addition to the weather, the day's other snafu involved a group of runners who went off course about one-third of the way into the race—Sage Canaday, Adam Campbell, Jason Wolfe, Timmy Parr and Mike Foote, to name a few. "Lots of mistakes out there," Canaday tweeted after the event. "Got lost early on (cut the course) and didn't even know it." The Boulder, Colorado-based runner dropped at mile 41.
Perhaps fourth-place female Caitlin Smith (7:05:00) sums up the day best on her blog: "I gave all of what I could yesterday at the North Face 50. I've never wanted to give up so bad and yet still make it close to another 24 miles. … I was thrilled to reconnect with folks from the ultra community and it was really amazing to run with an impressive field of women. I'd like to be doing more races with mud (maybe a touch less than yesterday), hills, and singletracks."
The top 10 men and women are listed below. For a complete list of results, click here. For mile-by-mile updates, check out iRunFar's live coverage.
- Miguel Heras – 5:33:16
- François d'Haene – 5:46:42
- Cameron Clayton – 5:47:14
- Adam Campbell – 5:53:35
- Alex Nichols (Inov-8) – 5:55:20
- Jason Wolfe – 6:01:50
- Dylan Bowman – 6:02:56
- Sylvain Court – 6:05:47
- Gary Gellin – 6:06:41
- Shaun Martin – 6:07:17
- Emelie Forsberg – 6:39:18
- Stephanie Howe – 6:41:36
- Maud Gobert – 6:46:13
- Caitlin Smith – 7:05:00
- Silvia Serafini – 7:12:02
- Tina Lewis – 7:13:30
- Brandy Erholtz – 7:14:50
- Krissy Moehl – 7:19:27
- Bethany Lewis – 7:20:02
- Lizzy Hawker – 7:26:44


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The only answer anyone ever seems to be able to offer to that question these days is, "Because the Democrats are worse." However, the problem with being the lesser of two evils is that you're still an evil.
Well, what about the GOP's principles?
What about them?
Name something that the Republican Party stands for today.
Low taxes? We've won that battle so thoroughly that 47% of Americans don't pay income taxes even though we have a trillion dollar deficit. Meanwhile, many of the richest Americans are comfortable enough with what they're paying to the government that they're supporting Democrats who are pledging to raise their taxes. In other words, we're a victim of our own success.
Law and order? Americans in bad neighborhoods who are suffering terribly because of gangs and drugs are apparently of no interest whatsoever to any Republicans in charge of anything judging by the amount of time they spend discussing this issue — which is close to zero. Additionally, the biggest law and order issue on the table today is illegal immigration, where the Republican Party is working hand and glove with the Democrats to reward 11 million people who are here illegally with amnesty.
A strong defense? What good is being strong without being smart? Most of our military "allies" are nearly useless in a fight, we're giving hundreds of millions of dollars to nations that hate our guts, and the Bush Administration put us a in a terrible situation in Iraq by invading without having the slightest idea that our troops would end up policing the country for nearly a decade. Most Republicans in D.C. seem unfazed by those problems.
Small government? If we really believe in small government, why does it keep getting bigger even when we're in charge? It certainly did under George W. Bush, who brought us Medicare Part D and TARP while doing nothing of significance to reduce the size of government.
We're the competent, responsible adult party? Compared to the Democrats, yes. Compared to the Republican Party of the Reagan or Gingrich era, no, we're not. When's the last time we pushed term limits, SERIOUS anti-corruption legislation, or tried to force members of Congress to obey the same rules the rest of us have to live under? We just ran a "Mr. Fix-It" candidate whose get-out-the-vote software crashed nationwide on election day for God's sake. It doesn't get much more incompetent than that.
Social conservatism? Most of the Republicans in D.C. act like they're embarrassed by Christians and social conservatives, even on issues where the public is on their side. Then, after the GOP puts up candidates who run away from social conservatism at every opportunity, it's the Christian conservatives who are blamed for the loss. Here's a thought: If you can't turn social conservatism into a winner in a nation that's 73% Christian when you're up against the party that defends the behavior of Jesse Jackson, Jr., Bill Clinton, and Bob Menendez, you're doing something wrong.
How do we distinguish ourselves from the Democrats when no one ultimately believes that we mean what we say? It has gotten so bad that Republicans like Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Pat Toomey, Jeff Sessions and Rand Paul are problematic for the D.C. GOP not because they're radical, but because they actually believe in all the things the other Republicans say, but don't mean on the campaign trail. Worse yet, the establishment Republicans have the nerve to cluck at conservatives for complaining about the situation as if the problem isn't their lies, condescension, and unprincipled behavior, but the people who are saying it's unacceptable.
To a lot of the Republicans in D.C., politics is like a football game. The only thing that matters is if your team "wins," but they've defined "winning" down to little more than getting good press, moving poll numbers, or just "doing something." Unfortunately, you can win a hundred of those "victories" and still lose the war. That's why conservatives in "flyover country" define winning as enacting conservative legislation, repealing bad legislation or moving the country to the right.
Meaningful victories of that sort have been in short supply in DC and yet, this doesn't seem to trouble the Republican establishment. In fact, not only are they content to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, they seem genuinely hostile to conservatives who actually expect them to produce results. Again and again we're told that they have superior insight and a magic formula for victory, but they never seem to have anything to offer beyond the same old, tired excuses for their failures.
If they're so smart, why don't they get it?
Of course, black and Hispanic Americans won't vote for us. Democrats have been telling them for decades that we hate them and the GOP treats them like they have cooties. We do almost no minority outreach of consequence as a party. We don't tailor our message specifically to appeal to single women, young Americans, or people who live in cities either. We're behind on technology, we don't support new media, we don't do much to build conservative grassroots organizations, we don't help groups trying to reach out to new constituencies, we don't aid churches, and we've given up on impacting the mainstream media, the education system, and Hollywood.
We're like a football team that keeps running the same plays that don't work, no matter how many times they fail. Someone says, "Gee, we've run the ball 58 straight times; can we try passing it?" Then the response is, "Gosh, no, that's too risky and dangerous. Besides, the consultants who are getting filthy rich off of these losing tactics assure us that they'll pay off if we stick with them a little bit longer."
Well, here's an alternate strategy for the Republican Party: How about we actually govern like we campaign on law and order, a strong defense, small government, social conservatism and on being the responsible, honest adult party? We should also start with the same premise the Democrats do — which is, first keep the base happy, then try to reach out to the middle. Next, instead of campaigning on the leftovers of Reagan's 25 year old agenda, we could start with the question, "How can we make people's lives better today with conservative principles?" Instead of waiting for each group to come to us, we could actually go to it with a tailor made explanation of how our conservatism could make life better for it just like the Democrats do. Additionally, in lieu of putting all of our money into American Crossroads' new conservative candidate-killing venture, could we perhaps try funding conservatives in the new media, get out the vote technology, groups that do minority outreach, or maybe even some conservative leaning women's magazines or gossip blogs to reach those low information voters? Rather than being the party that talks tough to begin with, but then caves and gives the Democrats 90% of what they want so that we get the worst of both worlds, maybe we could refuse to deal unless we get at least 60% of what we want. It would also help to replace failures like Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Reince Priebus with leaders who have the strategic vision and charisma to sell our viewpoint to the American people.
Our principles don't have to change, but it's time to accept that our strategy, our tactics, and our "leaders" aren't getting the job done. We're not going to beat people whose entire agenda is giving away "free" stuff with our current strategy, which seems to be to give away half as much while we continually stay on defense and whine that we're not the ogres that they're making us out to be. Until we accept that doing it like we've always done it for the last decade is going to get us what we've always gotten, we're going to keep getting our teeth knocked in by the worst gang of cranky misfits, rabid socialists, and degenerate loons ever to hold office in this country.


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Who doesn't love stickers? Stick them on your car, your laptop, your water bottle...the possibilities are endless! Inspired by some of our most popular designs, these stickers are durable, weatherproof and dishwasher safe so you don't have to worry about rain, sunlight fading or scratching.
Limitless Sticker Dimensions: 3.5" x 2.8"


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DNA replicationxantox, 3 July 2007 in Gallery
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Using computer animation1 based on molecular research2 it is possible to see how DNA is actually copied in living cells. This animation shows the "assembly line" of biochemical machines which pull apart the DNA double helix and output a copy of each strand. The DNA to be copied enters the whirling blue molecular machine, called helicase, which spins it as fast as a jet engine as it unwinds the double helix into two strands. One strand is copied continuously, and can be seen spooling off on the other side. Things are not so simple for the other strand, because it must be copied backwards, so it is drawn out repeatedly in loops and copied one section at a time. The end result is two new DNA molecules.
- Drew Berry, "DNA animation", The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia (courtesy of the author). © 2007 Howard Hughes Medical Institute [↩]
- T. A. Baker, S. P. Bell, "Polymerases and the Replisome: Machines within Machines", Cell, 92:295-305 (1998); K. P. Lemon, A. D. Grossman, "Movement of Replicating DNA through a Stationary Replisome", Molecular Cell, 6, 6:1321-1330 (2000); M. R. Singleton, M. R. Sawaua, T. Ellenberger, D. B. Wigley, "Crystal structure of T7 gene 4 ring helicase indicates a mechanism for sequential hydrolysis of nucleotides", Cell 101:589-600 (2000); D. S. Johnson, L. Bai, B. Y. Smith, S. S. Patel, M. D. Wang, "Single-Molecule Studies Reveal Dynamics of DNA Unwinding by the Ring-Shaped T7 Helicase", Cell 129, 7:1299-1309 (2007). [↩]
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