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In 2008, Karina Encarnacion, an eight year-old girl from Missouri, wrote to President-elect Barack Obama with some advice about what kind of dog he should get for his daughters. She also suggested that he enforce recycling and ban unnecessary wars. Obama wrote to thank her, and offered some advice of his own: "If you don't already know what it means, I want you to look up the word 'empathy' in the dictionary. I believe we don't have enough empathy in our world today, and it is up to your generation to change that."
This wasn't the first time Obama had spoken up for empathy. Two years earlier, in a commencement address at Xavier University, he discussed the importance of being able "to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us—the child who's hungry, the steelworker who's been laid off, the family who lost the entire life they built together when the storm came to town." He went on, "When you think like this—when you choose to broaden your ambit of concern and empathize with the plight of others, whether they are close friends or distant strangers—it becomes harder not to act, harder not to help."
The word "empathy"—a rendering of the German Einfühlung, "feeling into"—is only a century old, but people have been interested for a long time in the moral implications of feeling our way into the lives of others. In "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759), Adam Smith observed that sensory experience alone could not spur us toward sympathetic engagement with others: "Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers." For Smith, what made us moral beings was the imaginative capacity to "place ourselves in his situation . . . and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them."
In this sense, empathy is an instinctive mirroring of others' experience—James Bond gets his testicles mashed in "Casino Royale," and male moviegoers grimace and cross their legs. Smith talks of how "persons of delicate fibres" who notice a beggar's sores and ulcers "are apt to feel an itching or uneasy sensation in the correspondent part of their own bodies." There is now widespread support, in the social sciences, for what the psychologist C. Daniel Batson calls "the empathy-altruism hypothesis." Batson has found that simply instructing his subjects to take another's perspective made them more caring and more likely to help.
Empathy research is thriving these days, as cognitive neuroscience undergoes what some call an "affective revolution." There is increasing focus on the emotions, especially those involved in moral thought and action. We've learned, for instance, that some of the same neural systems that are active when we are in pain become engaged when we observe the suffering of others. Other researchers are exploring how empathy emerges in chimpanzee and other primates, how it flowers in young children, and the sort of circumstances that trigger it.
This interest isn't just theoretical. If we can figure out how empathy works, we might be able to produce more of it. Some individuals staunch their empathy through the deliberate endorsement of political or religious ideologies that promote cruelty toward their adversaries, while others are deficient because of bad genes, abusive parenting, brutal experience, or the usual unhappy goulash of all of the above. At an extreme lie the one per cent or so of people who are clinically described as psychopaths. A standard checklist for the condition includes "callousness; lack of empathy"; many other distinguishing psychopathic traits, like lack of guilt and pathological lying, surely stem from this fundamental deficit. Some blame the empathy-deficient for much of the suffering in the world. In "The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty" (Basic), Simon Baron-Cohen goes so far as to equate evil with "empathy erosion."
In a thoughtful new book on bullying, "Sticks and Stones" (Random House), Emily Bazelon writes, "The scariest aspect of bullying is the utter lack of empathy"—a diagnosis that she applies not only to the bullies but also to those who do nothing to help the victims. Few of those involved in bullying, she cautions, will turn into full-blown psychopaths. Rather, the empathy gap is situational: bullies have come to see their victims as worthless; they have chosen to shut down their empathetic responses. But most will outgrow—and perhaps regret—their terrible behavior. "The key is to remember that almost everyone has the capacity for empathy and decency—and to tend that seed as best as we possibly can," she maintains.
Two other recent books, "The Empathic Civilization" (Penguin), by Jeremy Rifkin, and "Humanity on a Tightrope" (Rowman & Littlefield), by Paul R. Ehrlich and Robert E. Ornstein, make the powerful argument that empathy has been the main driver of human progress, and that we need more of it if our species is to survive. Ehrlich and Ornstein want us "to emotionally join a global family." Rifkin calls for us to make the leap to "global empathic consciousness." He sees this as the last best hope for saving the world from environmental destruction, and concludes with the plaintive question "Can we reach biosphere consciousness and global empathy in time to avoid planetary collapse?" These are sophisticated books, which provide extensive and accessible reviews of the scholarly literature on empathy. And, as befits the spirit of the times, they enthusiastically champion an increase in empathy as a cure for humanity's ills.
This enthusiasm may be misplaced, however. Empathy has some unfortunate features—it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We're often at our best when we're smart enough not to rely on it.
In 1949, Kathy Fiscus, a three-year-old girl, fell into a well in San Marino, California, and the entire nation was captivated by concern. Four decades later, America was transfixed by the plight of Jessica McClure—Baby Jessica—the eighteen-month-old who fell into a narrow well in Texas, in October, 1987, triggering a fifty-eight-hour rescue operation. "Everybody in America became godmothers and godfathers of Jessica while this was going on," President Reagan remarked.
The immense power of empathy has been demonstrated again and again. It is why Americans were rivetted by the fate of Natalee Holloway, the teen-ager who went missing in Aruba, in 2005. It's why, in the wake of widely reported tragedies and disasters—the tsunami of 2004, Hurricane Katrina the year after, or Sandy last year—people gave time, money, and even blood. It's why, last December, when twenty children were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut, there was a widespread sense of grief, and an intense desire to help. Last month, of course, saw a similar outpouring of support for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.
Why do people respond to these misfortunes and not to others? The psychologist Paul Slovic points out that, when Holloway disappeared, the story of her plight took up far more television time than the concurrent genocide in Darfur. Each day, more than ten times the number of people who died in Hurricane Katrina die because of preventable diseases, and more than thirteen times as many perish from malnutrition.
There is, of course, the attention-getting power of new events. Just as we can come to ignore the hum of traffic, we become oblivious of problems that seem unrelenting, like the starvation of children in Africa—or homicide in the United States. In the past three decades, there were some sixty mass shootings, causing about five hundred deaths; that is, about one-tenth of one per cent of the homicides in America. But mass murders get splashed onto television screens, newspaper headlines, and the Web; the biggest ones settle into our collective memory—Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Sandy Hook. The 99.9 per cent of other homicides are, unless the victim is someone you've heard of, mere background noise.
The key to engaging empathy is what has been called "the identifiable victim effect." As the economist Thomas Schelling, writing forty-five years ago, mordantly observed, "Let a six-year-old girl with brown hair need thousands of dollars for an operation that will prolong her life until Christmas, and the post office will be swamped with nickels and dimes to save her. But let it be reported that without a sales tax the hospital facilities of Massachusetts will deteriorate and cause a barely perceptible increase in preventable deaths—not many will drop a tear or reach for their checkbooks."
You can see the effect in the lab. The psychologists Tehila Kogut and Ilana Ritov asked some subjects how much money they would give to help develop a drug that would save the life of one child, and asked others how much they would give to save eight children. The answers were about the same. But when Kogut and Ritov told a third group a child's name and age, and showed her picture, the donations shot up—now there were far more to the one than to the eight.
The number of victims hardly matters—there is little psychological difference between hearing about the suffering of five thousand and that of five hundred thousand. Imagine reading that two thousand people just died in an earthquake in a remote country, and then discovering that the actual number of deaths was twenty thousand. Do you now feel ten times worse? To the extent that we can recognize the numbers as significant, it's because of reason, not empathy.
In the broader context of humanitarianism, as critics like Linda Polman have pointed out, the empathetic reflex can lead us astray. When the perpetrators of violence profit from aid—as in the "taxes" that warlords often demand from international relief agencies—they are actually given an incentive to commit further atrocities. It is similar to the practice of some parents in India who mutilate their children at birth in order to make them more effective beggars. The children's debilities tug at our hearts, but a more dispassionate analysis of the situation is necessary if we are going to do anything meaningful to prevent them.
A "politics of empathy" doesn't provide much clarity in the public sphere, either. Typically, political disputes involve a disagreement over whom we should empathize with. Liberals argue for gun control, for example, by focussing on the victims of gun violence; conservatives point to the unarmed victims of crime, defenseless against the savagery of others. Liberals in favor of tightening federally enforced safety regulations invoke the employee struggling with work-related injuries; their conservative counterparts talk about the small businessman bankrupted by onerous requirements. So don't suppose that if your ideological opponents could only ramp up their empathy they would think just like you.
On many issues, empathy can pull us in the wrong direction. The outrage that comes from adopting the perspective of a victim can drive an appetite for retribution. (Think of those statutes named for dead children: Megan's Law, Jessica's Law, Caylee's Law.) But the appetite for retribution is typically indifferent to long-term consequences. In one study, conducted by Jonathan Baron and Ilana Ritov, people were asked how best to punish a company for producing a vaccine that caused the death of a child. Some were told that a higher fine would make the company work harder to manufacture a safer product; others were told that a higher fine would discourage the company from making the vaccine, and since there were no acceptable alternatives on the market the punishment would lead to more deaths. Most people didn't care; they wanted the company fined heavily, whatever the consequence.
This dynamic regularly plays out in the realm of criminal justice. In 1987, Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who had been released on furlough from the Northeastern Correctional Center, in Massachusetts, raped a woman after beating and tying up her fiancé. The furlough program came to be seen as a humiliating mistake on the part of Governor Michael Dukakis, and was used against him by his opponents during his run for President, the following year. Yet the program may have reduced the likelihood of such incidents. In fact, a 1987 report found that the recidivism rate in Massachusetts dropped in the eleven years after the program was introduced, and that convicts who were furloughed before being released were less likely to go on to commit a crime than those who were not. The trouble is that you can't point to individuals who weren't raped, assaulted, or killed as a result of the program, just as you can't point to a specific person whose life was spared because of vaccination.
There's a larger pattern here. Sensible policies often have benefits that are merely statistical but victims who have names and stories. Consider global warming—what Rifkin calls the "escalating entropy bill that now threatens catastrophic climate change and our very existence." As it happens, the limits of empathy are especially stark here. Opponents of restrictions on CO2 emissions are flush with identifiable victims—all those who will be harmed by increased costs, by business closures. The millions of people who at some unspecified future date will suffer the consequences of our current inaction are, by contrast, pale statistical abstractions.
The government's failure to enact prudent long-term policies is often attributed to the incentive system of democratic politics (which favors short-term fixes), and to the powerful influence of money. But the politics of empathy is also to blame. Too often, our concern for specific individuals today means neglecting crises that will harm countless people in the future.
Moral judgment entails more than putting oneself in another's shoes. As the philosopher Jesse Prinz points out, some acts that we easily recognize as wrong, such as shoplifting or tax evasion, have no identifiable victim. And plenty of good deeds—disciplining a child for dangerous behavior, enforcing a fair and impartial procedure for determining who should get an organ transplant, despite the suffering of those low on the list—require us to put our empathy to one side. Eight deaths are worse than one, even if you know the name of the one; humanitarian aid can, if poorly targeted, be counterproductive; the threat posed by climate change warrants the sacrifices entailed by efforts to ameliorate it. "The decline of violence may owe something to an expansion of empathy," the psychologist Steven Pinker has written, "but it also owes much to harder-boiled faculties like prudence, reason, fairness, self-control, norms and taboos, and conceptions of human rights." A reasoned, even counter-empathetic analysis of moral obligation and likely consequences is a better guide to planning for the future than the gut wrench of empathy.
Rifkin and others have argued, plausibly, that moral progress involves expanding our concern from the family and the tribe to humanity as a whole. Yet it is impossible to empathize with seven billion strangers, or to feel toward someone you've never met the degree of concern you feel for a child, a friend, or a lover. Our best hope for the future is not to get people to think of all humanity as family—that's impossible. It lies, instead, in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don't empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.
That's not a call for a world without empathy. A race of psychopaths might well be smart enough to invent the principles of solidarity and fairness. (Research suggests that criminal psychopaths are adept at making moral judgments.) The problem with those who are devoid of empathy is that, although they may recognize what's right, they have no motivation to act upon it. Some spark of fellow-feeling is needed to convert intelligence into action.
But a spark may be all that's needed. Putting aside the extremes of psychopathy, there is no evidence to suggest that the less empathetic are morally worse than the rest of us. Simon Baron-Cohen observes that some people with autism and Asperger's syndrome, though typically empathy-deficient, are highly moral, owing to a strong desire to follow rules and insure that they are applied fairly.
Where empathy really does matter is in our personal relationships. Nobody wants to live like Thomas Gradgrind—Charles Dickens's caricature utilitarian, who treats all interactions, including those with his children, in explicitly economic terms. Empathy is what makes us human; it's what makes us both subjects and objects of moral concern. Empathy betrays us only when we take it as a moral guide.
Newtown, in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, was inundated with so much charity that it became a burden. More than eight hundred volunteers were recruited to deal with the gifts that were sent to the city—all of which kept arriving despite earnest pleas from Newtown officials that charity be directed elsewhere. A vast warehouse was crammed with plush toys the townspeople had no use for; millions of dollars rolled in to this relatively affluent community. We felt their pain; we wanted to help. Meanwhile—just to begin a very long list—almost twenty million American children go to bed hungry each night, and the federal food-stamp program is facing budget cuts of almost twenty per cent. Many of the same kindly strangers who paid for Baby Jessica's medical needs support cuts to state Medicaid programs—cuts that will affect millions. Perhaps fifty million Americans will be stricken next year by food-borne illness, yet budget reductions mean that the F.D.A. will be conducting two thousand fewer safety inspections. Even more invisibly, next year the average American will release about twenty metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and many in Congress seek to loosen restrictions on greenhouse gases even further.
Such are the paradoxes of empathy. The power of this faculty has something to do with its ability to bring our moral concern into a laser pointer of focussed attention. If a planet of billions is to survive, however, we'll need to take into consideration the welfare of people not yet harmed—and, even more, of people not yet born. They have no names, faces, or stories to grip our conscience or stir our fellow-feeling. Their prospects call, rather, for deliberation and calculation. Our hearts will always go out to the baby in the well; it's a measure of our humanity. But empathy will have to yield to reason if humanity is to have a future. ♦


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Bench + Mixergy
You're a small business owner with lots to do. We're America's largest bookkeeping service with experience serving thousands of entrepreneurs.
Let us take bookkeeping off your hands, so you can focus on what matters most—growing your business.
As a Mixergy freedom fighter, you get 20% off your first 6 months of bookkeeping with Bench.
Here's what you get when you sign up with Bench
A team of bookkeepers, just for you
Real humans. Perfect books. Every month, your Bench bookkeeping team imports bank statements, categorizes transactions, and prepares financial statements.
Support when you need it
Got a question? Send your team a message. Bench bookkeepers work in-house, and they respond within one business day. You'll never lose an afternoon waiting on-hold again.
Data you can't do without
Monthly financial statements and expense overviews keep you in control of your money. Visual reports help you see the big picture and give you actionable insights to help you grow your business.
Tax season, minus the stress
A year end package with everything you need to file comes standard with Bench. We'll even work directly with your CPA.
Or, cross more off your to-do list with BenchTax. For a small fee, we'll connect you to a tax expert we trust. They'll handle your year end tax prep and filing for you—from start-to-finish.
Bench is more than simple accounting software. It's full-service online bookkeeping that will move your business forward.
Features of Bench
- Professional bookkeepers
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- Bench mobile app
- Automated statement imports
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We're helping thousands of business owners
Pricing designed to suit your needs
All plans include a dedicated bookkeeping team and intuitive software to monitor your financials.
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We show you around the Bench app and review your financial statements. Then, you decide if Bench is right for your business.
We have a team ready to take your bookkeeping off your hands, forever.
Sign up for a trial, and get full access to Bench. We'll do a month of your bookkeeping and prepare a set of financial statements for free.

subset: commoncrawl


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Porn, sexual exploitation and silencing of survivors: Danielle Strickland interviews MTR
PORN, Sexual Exploitation and why people are trying to silence the voice of survivors.
November 14, 2016 Danielle Strickland
I sat down with this global advocate and asked about her latest project, global prostitution, porn, the sex industry and why they hate her AND her latest book Prostitution Narratives… Melinda Tankard Reist is an author, speaker, media commentator, blogger and advocate for women and girls. She is best known for her work addressing sexualisation, objectification, harms of pornography, sexual exploitation, trafficking and violence against women.


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2 Christmas Books, 2 pen names, 1 Passion for Romance
on November 6, 2014
Writing under two pen names is challenging, but fun. I come fresh to every story, desperate to begin, and sad to say goodbye to each and every character. Susan Stephens stories feature exotic locations, hot dangerous men, and strong determined women, while Xandra King explores themes with a touch of the supernatural, or, as in… Read More


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The 160 HP super hatchback will slog it out with the likes of Volkswagen's Beetle and BMWs Mini Cooper in the niche luxury compact car segment in Indian auto market.
"We plan to launch Abarth 500 later this year in India. Initially we would import the car as a completely built unit (CBU) but later on we plan to locally assemble it at our Ranjangaon plant," Fiat Group Automobiles India President and Managing Director Nagesh Basavanhalli told PTI here.
The plan to locally assemble the Abarth 500 is to have a competitive pricing advantage, he added.
The company, which is present in the country through a wholly-owned subsidiary, is also adding new models in its product portfolio this year to rev-up its sales.
"By December this year, we will have a product line up of five vehicles. By 2016 we plan to have nine models in our Indian line up," Basavanhalli said.
The company plans to roll out four models till December this year. It will launch an updated version of its flagship model Linea next month.
"Apart from the Linea, we will also be launching new version of Punto, Avventura and Abarth 500 during this year," Basavanhalli said.
He added that the Linea Classic, which was launched last year, would cater to the low end of C-segment while the soon to be launched new Linea would cater to the high end of the segment.
When asked about the launch of sports utility vehicle Jeep in India, Basavanhalli said the model would be introduced as there is some revival of economic situation in the country.
"Jeep needs to be in this (Indian) market. So when the market comes back it will be here. It will be come as a CBU, so we need to take into consideration other factor like the foreign exchange fluctuations before launching it," he said.
The company's Ranjangaon plant near Pune has the capacity to produce two lakh cars and three lakh engines and transmissions annually.
Bullish about the compact SUV Avventura, he said: "This will be a global launch of a vehicle designed and developed for the Indian market. We are targeting aspiring Indian and that's why we are positioning it as CUV (compact urban vehicle)."
The company is also looking to export the Avventura from India and is currently studying the markets where all it could be exported. The vehicle is slated to be launched in the country later this year in both petrol and diesel variants.


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Main features
- Knit with glossy thread
- Dimensions: 29*62 cm
Made in: China
Product code: 6G0BD52U7_7T3
50% Acrylic 50% Nylon
Clothing care
- Hand wash only. Maximum temperature: 40°
- Do not bleach
- Do not tumble dry
- Line dry in shade
- Delicate iron at maximum temperature of 110°C. without steam, which could damage the garment
- Do not dry clean


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After the tragic shooting in Newtown, Conn., Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., promised to introduce a ban on the type of semiautomatic weapons frequently used in mass murders.
In 2004, Congress failed to renew an old ban on certain semiautomatic weapons, which can be fired quickly because each round automatically reloads.
The ban's opponents argue that it was so riddled with loopholes that it did little to keep so-called assault weapons off the streets. For example, the old law banned weapons with two or more "military-style characteristics," so gun makers would simply remove these cosmetic features and remarket the assault rifles.
In response to criticism over the arguably flawed semiautomatic weapons law, Feinstein is introducing what The New York Times called in an editorial today "a tougher assault weapons ban."
Here are some key ways Feinstein says her ban would be tougher than the old one:
- While the old law banned 18 specific types of weapons by name, Feinstein's law would ban 120 specifically-named firearms.
- Unlike the old law, Feinstein's proposal would ban semiautomatic weapons and handguns with fixed magazines that can accept more than 10 rounds of ammunition, effectively making it tougher for gunmen to shoot at large groups of people quickly.
- While Feinstein's bill would "grandfather" in semiautomatic weapons made before the ban, people who have those weapons would have to undergo background checks. Currently, private sellers aren't required to check backgrounds of people buying guns.
While Feinstein announced the proposed law right after the Newtown shootings, she said she and her staff have been working on the legislation for more than a year.
SEE ALSO: Mass Shootings Got Deadlier After The Assault Weapons Ban Expired >


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Power rankings. You hate them. They're so arbitrary and pointless, especially when they include all 32 NFL teams. All you want to know after a good week of NFL action is who the bestest team in the NFL right now, and which one is the absolute barrel-scraping worst. That's why we have TOP AND BOTTOM OF THE NFL, where we go to great lengths to tell you who's the top dog in football right now, this very minute. LET'S GO!
THE TOP: Green Bay Packers
You know, if Sean Payton had been a better goal line play-caller in the very first game of the season, the road to the Super Bowl through the NFC easily could have gone through New Orleans. Remember: Drew Brees drove the Saints all the way to the one-yard-line in the season opener against the Packers. Then Payton took the ball out of Brees' hands on the final play, the Saints got stoned at the goal line, and the Packers won by eight points.
If the Saints had scored, gotten the 2-point conversion, and then won in overtime, these team would have identical records. That's how close the Saints and Packers are right now. For the good of football, I really don't want any other matchup in the NFC title game. I can't imagine Niners-Packers or Giants-Saints being as compelling as a second showdown between Brees and Aaron Rodgers. That would be a game on par with the old Aikman/Young showdowns of the early 1990s. I can't wait.
THE BOTTOM: St. Louis Rams
Look at all these teams out there that are NOT sucking for Andrew Luck. You've got the Colts winning two in a row. You've got the Vikings winning on the road in Washington. You've got the Dolphins rebounding from 0-7. I am personally DISGUSTED with these outright displays of professionalism. Whatever happened to mailing it in? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?!
Anyway, it's not difficult to imagine the Colts beating the Jags this weekend, with the Rams losing to San Fran and finishing with the league's worst record. And that, my friends, would put the Rams in something of a pickle. You can't just trade away Sam Bradford after throwing down $50 million on him, can you? Can you? Hoo boy, this is gonna be fun. Someone's feelings are gonna get hurt.


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Thousands of Bees Found in Utah Couple's Bedroom Wall
The beehive featured prominently on the state flag of Utah does not hold a candle to the one found inside the bedroom wall of a family that calls the state home.
Tyler Judd of Provo, Utah, called a beekeeper last week after he saw a few bees buzzing around the home he and his wife, Haley, moved into just four months ago.
When the beekeeper, Al Chubak, arrived Friday evening for what he thought would be a routine call, he instead found an infestation of bees inside the couple's bedroom wall, inches from where they sleep.
"We found maybe a bee or two in our house but nothing else," Judd, 27, told ABCNews.com. "I didn't even hear them in the wall at first."
Though quiet, the bees had built a virtual village behind the Judd's bedroom wall, totaling between 70,000 and 80,000 in number, according to Chubak's estimate.
After the initial discovery Friday, Chubak came back the next day and spent about seven hours ridding the Judd's home of their unwanted guests.
"Once he opened the wall, he got out his vacuum and started sucking up the bees," Judd said. "Then he took the honeycomb out and cleaned everything out and sealed it off."
The Judds temporarily relocated to a guest bedroom in their home but are now back in their master bedroom. They remain, however, shocked at what was hiding in their walls.
""I know it happens to other people but I didn't think it was that big," Judd said of the beehive. "It was kind of unbelievable and kind of crazy that there were so many bees right behind our bed."


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I am using the cmotion script which works well and looks great.
However, I now wish to add a slider bar to control the motion. I have found some slider code which can provide a number between 0 and 100 depending on where the slider has been moved to. From this I can deduce the direction of movement as well.
The problem I am having, though, is linking this to the cmotion javascript code in order the make the gallery move but the code in here is beyond my skill. Has anyone tried this and found a way to get it working?
Many thanks


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Puzzle Levels
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Download a FREE Solution for your puzzles!
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Marble Canoe Puzzle
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|Move the two balls to each side
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|8 in x 2 in x 2 in / 20.3 cm x 50.1 cm x 5.1 cm
Product Description
There are 2 marbles enclosed in the puzzle on a curved ramp. Can you get a marble in each of the two holes on either end?
Amazing puzzle in that people will spend hours trying to solve it, yet when you know the "secret" you can solve it almost instantly.
Great fun and an excellent desk or coffee table type of item. Unique in this format from our shop. This is an especially nice version of this classic puzzle.
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Pedestrian struck and killed on Highway 50
An unidentified man was pronounced dead at the scene of a traffic collision on Highway 50 in South Lake Tahoe after he was struck by an SUV around 8 p.m. on New Year's Day.
Police officers and medics arrived to find the victim lying in the driveway of the Town and Country shopping center, located at 2660 Lake Tahoe Blvd.
The man appeared to be in his 40s and was wearing dark clothing. He had no identification on his person and no one matching his description has yet been reported missing, according to South Lake Tahoe Police Lt. Brian Williams.
According to Williams, the investigation thus far has revealed the 19-year-old driver of the SUV, Uriel Ortiz, was not under the influence of any substance and appeared to be driving at or under the posted speed limit as he traveled eastbound on Lake Tahoe Boulevard at the time of the collision.
There is no crosswalk permitting pedestrian crossing of Lake Tahoe Boulevard in the immediate area of the collision, Williams said.
No arrests or citations have been generated in this case. The incident remains under investigation and officers are trying to confirm which direction the man was walking before he was struck.
Witnesses are asked to call Detective Doug Sentell at 530-542-6100 in reference to case number 1401-0106.


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Today we began using our new company logo and updated the look and feel of our website. You can do a quick comparison of the logo change below. We hope you like it.
For most of the people in the Couchbase community, a logo change like this might not generate much interest or reaction. We think its important though because a lot has changed since the merger that created Couchbase and we feel a change to our logo and look and feel will help reinforce these changes.
Our main objective for the new logo was that we wanted it to reflect that Couchbase has evolved to become something significantly different while also having it reflect strong ties to our past. The most significant change took place in December, when we delivered the most important release to date associated with the Couchbase open source project, Couchbase 2.0. The release extended Couchbase's capabilities from a pure-key-value database to a document database that supports full indexing and querying. We wanted the logo to subtly reflect this significant evolution of the technology.
At the same time, we also wanted the logo to reflect strong ties to our past. While Couchbase is a completely separate open source project that is not directly related to Apache CouchDB, Couchbase 2.0 does leverage CouchDB technology for its indexing and querying features and shares many common characteristics. We wanted the logo to reflect this heritage while also looking distinctly different from anything associated with Apache CouchDB.
The community will be the ultimate judge of whether the new logo helps reinforce the changes in Couchbase. We think it's a more modern, vibrant look that better represents the community and technology. And, when you look at the u-shaped symbol, you might see a couch – and we like that. We're all for giving a nod to our roots in Apache CouchDB. But you might also see a more abstract "container" which we hope symbolizes what we are today – an independent, thriving NoSQL database project.
As always, we'd love to hear from you – let us know what you think.


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Infinite position power recline means that you can find the position that best suits you, whether you need to soothe back pain or relax and watch TV. This gentle motion is suitable for all levels of mobility, and is as easy to use as a single touch.
Providing better comfort than the 2 or 3 piece leg rests, this pad over chaise seating gives you better support and comfort. The 1 piece cushion is also safer for children and pets, preventing fingers and toys from getting stuck.
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The 147 Casual Power Reclining Console Loveseat with Full Chaise Cushion by HomeStretch at Story & Lee Furniture in the Leoma, Lawrenceburg TN and Florence, Athens, Decatur, Huntsville AL area. Product availability may vary. Contact us for the most current availability on this product.
The 147 recliner collection offers satisfying comfort that will make everyday use enjoyable. Each piece has a casual design that will fit in with your current decor. Accented by double-needle stitching, cushions are plush and will wrap you in comfort. The pad-over chaise cushions create complete leg support that you'll love and cover a hardwood seat box that ensures its durability. Available in manual and power reclining.
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text:
I am looking forward to make an android game, something angrybirds style. I've already made my own engine and now have to decide what kind of graphics should I make.
It could be either realistic, like that
or a doodle-style like this
Right now the first one looks more appealing to me... on the other hand, doodle-graphics are very easy to draw and their transparency doesn't seem to slow down the engine much.
What do you think?


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A decade of fantastic Jazz! The world's biggest jazz festival: the Jakarta International Java Jazz Festival, - more popularly known as Java Jazz Festival, - will highlight the capital city Jakarta with the grandest celebration of music from 28th February to 2nd March 2014, to be held at the Jakarta International Exhibition Center, Kemayoran.
A milestone in the history of grand scale international music festivals in Indonesia, the Java Jazz Festival 2014 will not only bring a multitude of the world's most renowned musicians to Jakarta but also a different ambience to the show. A thick nuance of Latin jazz fused with modern jazz grooves is what will indulge jazz enthusiasts and music lovers in the three days fiesta. The festival will also feature special Wayang, Batik, and other traditional Javanese art designs to celebrate the 10th Java Jazz Festival.
Among the names confirmed appearing are: India Arie, Jamie Cullum, Natalie Cole, Tania Maria Incognito, Ivan Lins, Snarky Puppy, Dave Koz, Roy Ayers, Sadao Watanabe, Earth Wind and Fire Experience, Magnus Lindgren, Allen Stone, Norman Brown, Nils Petter Molvaer, Lonnie Liston Smith, Jonathan Butler, Gerald Albright, James Taylor Quartet, Soren Bebe, Mindi Abair,Robert Glasper Experiment, Timo Lassy, Rick Braun, Richard Elliot, Jeff Lorber, Cristina Morrison, and over 1,000 Indonesian musicians.
Paul Dankmeyer, Program Director of Java Festival Production, said in the official press release that the line up is still expanding with more international artists confirming their attendance in due course. Java Jazz Festival 2014 has also gained support from embassies from the Scandinavian countries including from Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, as well as from Australia and Brazil.
Reverberating the hype of the show and spreading the "virus" the Java Jazz 2014, Java Jazz on the Move programs will also be held in several cities in Indonesia starting January.
Java Jazz Festival was first staged in 2005 with 11 performance stages. Over time, the show grew to such magnitude so that eventually in 2010 it was acknowledged by the Indonesian Museum of Records as the biggest Jazz Festival in the world with 19 performance stages featuring 232 shows by a total of over 1,500 musicians. In 2013, the show also recorded the highest number of audience attendance with 107,372 Java Jazz goers.
Carrying the spirit of "Bringing the World to Indonesia" from its first edition, the Java Jazz festival series has not only played a significant part in Jazz music, but also contributed to the tourism promotion of the country. Through the event, international musicians and audiences came to witness of the beauty of Wonderful Indonesia. Worldwide publications of the show through various media have also put Indonesia in the spotlight of the world. To show its magnitude in 2013, Youtube ranked the Java Jazz Festival as the 4th biggest live event streaming hit broadcast.
So, mark your calendar! You definitely do not want to miss this special musical fiesta milestone!
More information available at: http://www.javajazzfestival.com


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BACKGROUND IMAGE: iSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
- FeatureNAS on a grand scale
- FeatureDown-to-earth HBAs
- FeatureExchange and NAS On Again
- FeatureHospital Washes Hands of Backup
- TipRFPs create savings
- FeatureDeals Abound for High-End Storage
- FeatureArchive Storage is More than Cheap Disk
- FeatureChoose wisely when handing off e-mail
- FeatureJust what is persistent binding anyway?
- FeatureSANMelody Tunes Up SMB Storage
- FeatureEase into Archiving through Backup
- FeatureWindows Backup Application Stumbles
- FeatureStorage on demand
- FeatureContinuous protection
- FeatureDisaster recovery planning: Ensuring success
- FeatureFive rules to help you build a storage strategy
- FeatureGive startups a chance.
- FeatureSnapshot: Virtual servers and storage
- FeatureAnd now for something new
iSTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
Continuous protection
Do you want to rid yourself of a backup window or two? Continuous backup--also know as continuous data protection--is changing the rules by backing up in real time, or close to it.
- James Damoulakis, GlassHouse Technologies
|RPO and RTO
The recovery of critical data in an environment is measured by two key parameters: recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). RPO measures the maximum acceptable age of data at the time of an outage. RTO is the maximum acceptable length of time to resume operation following an outage.
Source: Revivio
Continuous backup or more accurately, continuous data protection (CDP), changes the rules by using disk technology to continuously capture updates to data in real time or near real time. The result: Backup windows become irrelevant because backup is occurring all the time.
But the main benefit of this technology is not on the backup side of the equation. Rather than the single point-in-time access to data that traditional products provide, this technology promises any point-in-time continuous access. Reducing the time to recovery to near zero will be the real driver for adopting CDP products. As with any new technology, it is important to understand what it does, how it works and where it fits within an overall data management and protection strategy.
Approaching instant restore
The recovery of critical data in an environment is measured by two key parameters: recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). These concepts are critical to an understanding of CDP.
- RPO measures the maximum acceptable age of data at the time of an outage. A backup performed nightly would represent an RPO of approximately 24 hours because the worst-case scenario would be an outage during the backup.
- RTO is the maximum acceptable length of time to resume operations following an outage. This includes the time to restore from the backup media plus all additional time required for data integrity validation, system or application preparation, rolling forward data and so on (see "RPO and RTO"). So for example, a database outage that requires four hours to restore plus two hours of analysis and validation, plus one hour to roll-forward logs results in a seven-hour recovery time. If your RTO is four hours, then you've missed your objective by three hours.
Tolerance for such an outage varies substantially, depending on the nature of the business and the criticality of the data within that business. For most data, the traditional backup approach may be sufficient, but there are key applications and critical data that warrant special consideration. Much time and effort has been invested to ensure that split mirroring techniques provide this additional degree of protection.
|CDP recovery
Continuous Data Protection (CDP) lets you recover a volume almost instantly, dramatically reducing both RPO and RTO.
Source: Revivio
What happens if a shorter RPO is required? Our four-hour scenario requires a two- to six-fold increase in storage, depending on the number of fall-back split mirror copies desired. A two-hour scenario could potentially require up to a 12-fold increase (assuming a full 24-hour history is maintained), and may not even be achievable, given the required recovery activities and management complexity involved. This is where CDP can help.
CDP to the rescue
CDP adds the dimension of time to storage mirroring. Conceptually, a CDP solution comprises a base-level image or mirror of an existing volume augmented by a time-stamped log of each subsequent write operation. To be technically accurate, in most solutions the mirror is updated with each write transaction and the log maintains a history of the data blocks that have been modified, similar to the copy-on-write technique used during a snapshot. In any case, most CDP products have the ability to present a virtualized volume representing the contents as they existed--I/O by I/O--at any point in time from the beginning of the log.
The effect is to provide a much finer degree of granularity than traditional split mirror or snapshot technology. It's possible to view a volume as it existed minutes, or even seconds, earlier and to recover that volume almost instantly, dramatically reducing both RPO and RTO (see "CDP recovery"). To make this even more compelling, the disk requirement for this approach is also far less than traditional split mirroring. Instead of the six times the capacity needed for our four-hour split mirror with the ability to rollback 24 hours, a continuous backup solution requires a base mirror, plus enough space to maintain the log, typically resulting in a less than two times the requirement within a 24-hour period. Additionally, adopters of this technology may choose to retain the log information to allow rollback for greater periods of time, up to several days or possibly even weeks, depending on the rate of change.
|Revivio CPS appliance logical architecture
The Revivio Continuous Protection System (CPS), a SAN-based appliance, creates an additional set of mirrored volumes that can be restored back to any point in time.
CDP solutions
CDP products target different company needs. Some products are software-based, while others are appliances; solutions may operate at the application, file system or volume level; some are agentless, while others require host-based agents and/or drivers. The degree of recovery granularity can vary significantly among the products as well (see "CDP products"). Here are some examples of companies with CDP products:
Revivio Inc. The Revivio Continuous Protection System (CPS) is a storage area network (SAN)-based appliance designed to operate in parallel with an application's primary data storage. Designed to meet enterprise-class data requirements, it incorporates high levels of fault-tolerance, including redundant, hot-swappable components and fault tolerant cache. It also doesn't require software applications, agents or drivers to be installed on host servers. Instead, the Revivio appliance presents storage LUNs to host servers and leverages the (presumably) already existing host-based volume management software--such as Veritas Volume Manager--to operate as an additional set of mirrored volumes for an application (see "Revivio CPS appliance logical architecture").
Optimized to support a high I/O transaction rate, the Revivio CPS appears to the host as an additional write-only mirrored volume. However, as data is subsequently written to the CPS, the data that is replaced is maintained in a time-stamped log. The appliance then provides the ability to present to any host a virtual view, or TimeImage, of any set of protected volumes exactly as they appeared at a specific point in time. The disk storage that actually holds this data can be any SAN-based storage available in the environment. Depending on desired data protection policies, it can range from mirrored EMC Symmetrix volumes to low-cost JBOD.
In the event of data loss or corruption, recovery consists of "dialing back" in time to identify the point in time immediately prior to the loss, verifying the validity of the data and presenting this TimeImage volume back to the host.
The result is a solution that provides a level of protection similar to split mirror technology, but typically requires less storage while providing far more granularity and faster recovery times. Revivio is best suited for enterprise-class applications running on databases that have significant RPO and RTO restrictions.
FilesX Inc. FilesX Xpress Restore and Xchange Restore are two software products that address a different portion of the market. Technically, these could be considered next-generation snapshot products, rather than continuous backup, but they share many CDP-type characteristics.
Built upon snapshot technology, FilesX doesn't capture every change that takes place, but instead performs regularly scheduled snapshots sending changed data to a central repository. The granularity of these snapshots can range from a few minutes to hours, according to Jacob Herbst, CEO of FilesX, with the sweet spot being one to two hours. While FilesX is not a true continuous backup solution when compared to the other products, it offers a significantly improved level of granularity for Microsoft Exchange and Windows file server environments than is achieved by traditional backup means.
The real value is to be found in the product's recovery capability. FilesX captures block-level changes, transfers them to a repository and then can map those changes to a file-level view. This provides multiple generations of virtual images similar to a CDP application. Imagine being able to open an Explorer-like window showing one or more generations of Exchange Information Stores, and being able to quickly navigate through mailboxes and messages, select those to be recovered and drag and drop them to the current active information store. Or imagine an e-mail virus attack, where you are able to view the history of snapshots, locate the most recent prior to the attack and then right-click and restore the information store.
|CDP products
FilesX offers the same recovery capabilities for file system data as well. In addition, it offers an interesting capability for system-level recovery. A significant problem in disaster recovery scenarios is bare metal restore. Maintaining system images that are current with security patches, drivers, application changes, etc., is an enormous effort. With FilesX, system disks can be regularly snapshot along with other file systems. To recover, boot from a CD, connect to the FilesX repository and re-paint your system disk as it appeared at the point of the last snapshot.
XOsoft Inc. XOsoft's Data Rewinder is another example of a software-based continuous backup product. At the core of Data Rewinder is a filtering file system layer, known as XOFS, that sits directly above the standard OS file system in the data stack. All file system writes pass through XOFS. As data passes through to the file system and to primary storage, Data Rewinder simultaneously creates a "counter event," which is essentially an "undo" command that's sequentially written to a journal, presumably located on separate storage volumes.
If data corruption occurs, an administrator can view the journal and select a point in time to "rewind" the data. This is accomplished by sequentially executing the undo operations to return the data to its exact state at that point in time. The time to perform these operations will vary, depending on how far back in time you need to go, but it will be much quicker than restoring an entire image from a backup.
Unlike the other products discussed here, Data Rewinder resides on the host system it's protecting. This is because much of the functionality in Data Rewinder is derived from XOsoft's data replication product, WANsync, and the products are intended to complement one another. One of the key features of the product is support for specific applications, including Exchange, SQL Server and Oracle. Also, Data Rewinder restores the original volume to a specific point in time, so the product can't be used to restore individual files or e-mail messages.
Mendocino Software. Mendocino is one of the newest and one of the oldest entrants into the continuous data protection arena. Mendocino acquired the technology assets of Vyant, including their CDP software product RealTime, which has been shipping since early last year. RealTime is architected for an application host server to be paired with a dedicated backup server, making it most appropriate for environments where a fixed number of selected servers require CDP-class protection.
On the host side, an Intercept Agent continuously captures write operations on a server to a serial buffer, and then transmits them asynchronously via TCP/IP to the backup server. On the backup server, a backup agent maintains a "nearly current" replica of the primary storage while an archive agent maintains forward and reverse incremental journals that enable quick movement forward and back through time to view and access data. This is accomplished via a "time slider" interface that can quickly present virtual volumes at any point in time based on the capacity of the backup server.
If data loss or corruption occurs, an administrator can slide to any desired point in time and mount a virtual image. A copy of the production application would be run on the backup server, and testing would determine if the corruption was still present. This can be repeated until the optimal point is determined, then the image can then be committed to primary storage via a restore agent. Virtual images can also be used for other purposes such as nightly backups and problem analysis.
TimeSpring Software Corp. TimeSpring Protector is a software-based CDP product that will be introduced later this year. Focused on Windows environments, Protector operates at the file level.
According to Sunil Bagai, VP of product management for TimeSpring, file-level data capture provides some benefits not available from block-level protection products, including the ability to better select which data to protect and more flexibility in assigning policies to this data. The initial product focus will be on providing application protection for SQL Server as well as for general file system data.
TimeSpring employs a client-server architecture with an agent installed on each protected server that--similar to XOsoft--sits above the file system and selectively captures write operations, based on desired protection policies. The captured data is then transferred to a Continuous Protection Server where the data is stored in a journal while related metadata is stored within a relational database. Data recovery is performed in one of two ways: First, a read-only virtual shared volume can be presented to a server to mount and access data; alternatively, a recovery wizard can be launched through the management console to perform a guided recovery. Recovery is done at the file level. To further protect data, TimeSpring will also be offering the ability to perform asynchronous replication of the Continuous Protection Server across the WAN.
Alacritus Software. Another CDP product on the horizon is Chronospan from Alacritus. The initial Chronospan offering is an appliance-based product. However, Alacritus recently demonstrated the product running on intelligent switch platforms from Cisco and Brocade, offering an alternative for deploying the product. In some ways, Alacritus breaks the mold of the CDP market. Rather than focusing solely on short-term data protection and recovery, Chronospan takes a holistic approach to data protection, addressing both short- and long-term requirements and completely eliminating the need for traditional backup.
As a non-host-based solution, Chronospan depends on a host-based volume manager to provide an additional mirror or possibly a switch-level mirroring facility to provide block-level data to Chronospan. Although data is being captured at the block level, Alacritus says that Chronospan is content-aware and can intelligently map and present file system contents for easy file-level recovery through an Explorer-like interface. This enables instant retrieval of data at any point in time. Additionally, for longer term policy management of data, Chronospan can prune its retention granularity as data ages. For example, a policy could be established to keep every block of data for one week, maintain hourly granularity from one week to one month, then daily for the next six months, and so on. Also included in the product is an image-cloning capability for data protection, and built-in replication is in the works.
Chronospan differs architecturally from most other CDP products because it doesn't maintain a physical mirror image of data and doesn't utilize copy-on-write block replacement. Instead, each block is streamed to a serial write log, and a map of the current view of the data is always maintained. For point-in-time images, the map is manipulated to point to appropriate data blocks in the log. Alacritus claims this approach ensures that the appliance will not become a bottleneck to production applications.
|Where to deploy CDP today
Where does continuous backup fit in an overall storage strategy? Consider this scenario:
A data center with a centralized backup application, using some combination of tape and disk, provides the foundation for near-term data protection. This is supplemented by several other solutions. Microsoft Exchange e-mail is protected by an Exchange-specific CDP application that provides the ability to recover messages, mailboxes and information stores. It also provides point-in-time images of the information store for nightly backup. Key production database applications might be protected by a CDP appliance to provide instant recovery and also virtual images for backup and other purposes. File and print servers may be protected via snapshot software to provide appropriate levels of recoverability for that data.
Is CDP a good fit?
The thought of eliminating backup windows and providing nearly instant restores sounds great, but where does CDP fit within an overall strategy? Of course, not every product will fulfill all data production needs, and some storage environments may need to deploy a combination of products to achieve the preferred level of protection. (See "Major categories of data protection.")
To determine if CDP is an appropriate tool for your storage environment, some basic questions must be answered:
- What problems can it solve today?
- What tools or technology does it enhance or replace?
- What is the value proposition?
Also, most CDP products by themselves don't address disaster recovery, meaning they do not provide protection in the event of the loss of a site. To address this need, CDP can be supplemented either by replication or by traditional backup with off-site tape production. Many CDP vendors plan to add replication functionality to their products, but it's not available today.
At this time, the area that CDP best addresses is the backup and recovery of data associated with a particular set of applications. The characteristics of these applications are:
- They usually run continuously
- Their data changes frequently
- Their data is stored in large containers making activities like backup difficult and time-consuming
- There is a significant impact to the organization when they go down
|Major categories of data protection
CDP provides many of the same benefits as split mirroring and snapshot technologies. Can it replace these solutions? In many cases the answer is yes, particularly if the requirement exists for improved RPO over what those technologies can practically provide. When evaluating a CDP solution vs. a disk mirroring or snapshot product, it's necessary to consider which features of each product are most important for your needs (see "Where to deploy CDP today"). Split-mirror and snapshot technologies--while often requiring some level of application integration--are for the most part application-agnostic, while a number of the CDP products are application specific. Also, technologies such as storage-based mirroring can be used by multiple servers accessing the storage system. Many of the CDP products are designed around protecting an individual host or application.
Ultimately, the question of value will determine if a CDP tool makes sense. The cost and benefits of the CDP products and their storage requirements must be evaluated against alternatives. Potentially, the most compelling cost comparison for CDP is against storage-based split-mirror solutions. In our original example of an environment that requires a four-hour RPO with the ability to retain 24 hours online, the disk requirement for a traditional split-mirror technology would be six times primary disk or greater, depending on the level of data protection required for those disks. The CDP disk requirement would be approximately one and a half to two times the primary storage, depending on rate of change (number of write transactions) and level of protection. While this is a substantial difference, it should be further noted that most split-mirror solutions require the use of the same high-cost storage as the primary volumes. CDP can, if desired, take advantage of lower-cost secondary disk storage.
Continuous data protection will continue to evolve to provide stronger integration with data intensive applications. As replication technologies are adopted or built into products, CDP solutions should be able to provide robust and cost-effective disaster recovery scenarios, as well. Who knows? Maybe someday we'll look back at the idea of nightly backups, scratch our heads and wonder why anyone would ever have done that.