text: A big part of Microsoft CIO Tony Scott's job in Redmond is to personally use all of Microsoft's technologies, including its cloud products. Microsoft types call this "eating your own dog food."Microsoft IT was an early test environment for cloud-based productivity suite, Office 365, and Windows Azure, the company's platform-as-a-service offering that is the basis for its cloud strategy.Research firm Gartner said at its Gartner Symposium recently that despite the complexity of Microsoft's cloud services, the company has "one of the most visionary and complete views of the cloud." Late last week at Microsoft's PDC (Professional Developers Conference) event in Redmond, the company stirred the Windows Azure pot by announcing new virtualization capabilities designed to entice developers.In an interview with CIO.com's Shane O'Neill, Microsoft's Scott discussed some best practices for CIOs that he's learned from "dogfooding" Windows Azure. He also shares his views on how the cloud will change the financing of business projects and how CIOs can prepare accordingly.CIO.com recently published a story about cloud adoption that cited a survey where the number one reason for not moving to the cloud was "Don't Understand Cloud Benefits." How is Microsoft cutting through the noise and confusion to clearly outline for CIOs how a cloud model will help their organization?Microsoft CIO Tony Scott.In my experience CIOs are practical folks, with a healthy level of skepticism about the "next big thing." Conceptually, they all get the benefits of the cloud. But there's a lot of uncertainty out there about how to get started. It can be a little bit intimidating. Our role at Microsoft IT is to dogfood all our own products, so we started by moving some basic apps to Azure. This was two years ago, before the product was released to the public. We were just getting our feet wet, and I saw some healthy skepticism at the time even in my own organization. But once you dip your toe in, the learning process begins. We saw an improvement in the quality of the apps we moved to Azure. One example is MS.com, which we moved to Azure and were able to scale the services based on demand versus based on peak capacity. We really saw the advantages of a standardized cloud platform versus fine-tuning every server to each application. A great example of this is our Microsoft Giving Campaign tool, which we use for internal fund-raising for non-profit organizations. That app gets most of its usage once a year in October during the Giving Campaign. The rest of the year it sits idle. That is a perfect application for the cloud. The new Giving Campaign tool was built on Azure and on the last two days of the campaign, where we often see the peak loads, it never slowed down and the results were phenomenal. We raised twice as much money as we had in any prior year.So CIOs just need to get started. That's the hardest part. But once they get in there and experience a cloud platform, it will boost their enthusiasm and willingness to move forward.\nSlideshow: Windows Phone 7: Visual Tour of 10 Upcoming WP7 SmartphonesSlideshow: Seven New Windows 7 Tablets: In PicturesSlideshow: Windows 7 Hardware in Pictures: The Latest and Greatest Laptops\nConceptually, we all understand the benefits. We've operated on what I call the double-double rule for years. Which is you figure out what capacity you need and double it and then double it again just for insurance. But that's frankly why you find that most apps running in production use only 20 percent of the resources. In a cloud platform you can improve utilization without penalty because you can expand capacity at will and only pay for what you need.When an enterprise starts moving applications to a cloud platform, what is tougher for IT groups: the change in technology or the internal politics that arise as the cloud forces traditional IT roles to change?I haven't seen much internal political conflict, to be honest. I think most on the business side like the idea of more reliability and paying for what you use. So from a business perspective I haven't seen a lot of resistance to the cloud. One thing I have seen both internally and externally, is that the cloud is changing how projects are approached. The shift has gone from capex [pay upfront] to opex [pay as you go]. We're used to the capex world where we buy a bunch of servers, which is very predictable financially. And predictability is a good thing in business. When you shift to opex with the cloud model, you can have peaks and valleys, and it's not predictable in the same way capex is. From a budgeting perspective, CIOs are saying to finance people: "The good news is that we're using our resources better. The bad news is that we're not sure what the actual costs are going to be."As for rolling up your sleeves and moving applications to the cloud, how should an organization get started? Do it piecemeal? E-mail first, and then grow from there?Yes, we're definitely seeing an incremental approach rather than a Big Bang. IT lends itself to trying something, seeing how it scales and then modifying it. The first apps to go are what I call "finished apps" like e-mail and CRM. With those apps it's kind of game over. There's very little uniqueness in how we use those apps, so they are the most ready to go to the cloud. In five or 10 years, we'll look back and say, 'why did we ever think about doing those ourselves.'Custom-built applications are different. There are regulatory issues around line of business apps that a company has built. Also, they were developed a generation ago and appropriate for the technology of the time. They need to be modified for the cloud.Internally at Microsoft, we have a complicated licensing application that manages volume licenses bought from Microsoft and supports our whole partner ecosystem. It has 100 components and lots of interfaces. It's not that we think it won't work in the cloud, but we must modernize it first. It was built 15 years ago. It's the kind of custom-built app that can't be taken as is and moved to the cloud. At the enterprise level, most organizations want a private cloud. In an already crowded market for private cloud offerings, what is Microsoft's advantage?A lot of it is portability. CIOs want to take advantage of the market, and you'll have private cloud offerings built on Microsoft technology available from us, from third parties, or you can build your own. Those are all indicators of our technology advantage. From a cost standpoint, those options will make a Microsoft cloud more available and less costly over time than models that have a narrower set of deployment and development tools.[ For complete coverage on Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system -- including hands-on reviews, video tutorials and advice on enterprise rollouts -- see CIO.com's Windows 7 Bible. ]Also, if you're already a .Net developer with .Net skills, it's a pretty fast transition from where you are today to a public or private cloud with Azure. There's no skill retooling needed.What are some factors that could prevent an organization from moving to Azure?I think the biggest barrier are applications a company has built that were not well architected for the cloud. So in that sense you can't move them to our cloud platform or anyone else's either. Those apps just need to be redone. On the commercial apps side, the big platform vendors that are supporting Microsoft today will likely continue supporting Microsoft. At the end of the day, I think Microsoft will offer the broadest set of choices across the broadest set of technologies, whether it's support for PHP or whatever programming environment you really like, it's more likely to run on Microsoft technologies than any others.What do you say to CIOs who still don't trust the security of a cloud model?Well, it's something we always should ask about, but there's great precedence in the outsourcing world. We've all moved our servers to other people's data centers over the years. The concept is not new. I do think there's a false sense of security when you're running your own data center. There's a lot security in having a contract in place that makes a third party responsible for security. My view is that it's similar to the outsourcing model in terms of the benefits, but you also have this contractual right to expect great security from your cloud provider, which is probably better in the long run than the old practice of running everything yourself.Shane O'Neill covers Microsoft, Windows, Operating Systems, Productivity Apps and Online Services for CIO.com. Follow Shane on Twitter @smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline. Email Shane at email@example.com.


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When telecommunications provider IDT decided to switch auditors from Ernst & Young to Grant Thornton in early 2008, the "driving force was to save money," says CFO Bill Pereira. It worked. Part of a companywide effort to reduce corporate overhead, the move cut IDT's $4.3 million audit bill almost in half. Although initially "we were fearful of leaving the Big Four," says Pereira, "in retrospect, we are really happy with the decision."
In fact, the switch went so smoothly that IDT declined to announce the renewal of Grant Thornton's contract in its most recent proxy — because IDT was open to switching again. "We knew there had been changes in the market and we wanted to evaluate where fees stood," says Pereira. "We didn't just make the automatic assumption that we'd stick with Grant Thornton. We felt it was our responsibility to do our homework." (IDT eventually did renew with Grant Thornton — and cut its bill by nearly another million dollars, to $1.42 million last year.)
Welcome to the new auditor-client relationship. In the wake of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, audit fees soared, auditors dumped risky clients by the hundreds, and "value-added" services all but vanished under the weight of new independence rules. Today, the reverse is true. Audit fees have been dropping across the board since 2007. In 2004, more than a third of auditor changes were the result of audit firms walking away from clients. Last year, 82% of auditor changes were because companies fired their auditors (among the Big Four, the number was 90%). And companies aren't just negotiating lower fees; they are also demanding more value — read "services" — covering everything from corporate-board education to competitive intelligence.
No More Sticker Shock
In 2000, the Securities and Exchange Commission required that companies begin disclosing all payments made to their auditors. Prompted by the 1998 merger of Price Waterhouse and Coopers Lybrand, the rule was intended to shine a light on potential independence problems created by nonaudit work. But it also seemed likely that, in a normal market, such transparency would affect the price of audits.
Alas, the ensuing decade proved anything but normal. That Big Six merger was followed quickly by dramatic audit failures that culminated in the Enron and WorldCom debacles, the implosion of Arthur Andersen, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and its infamous Section 404, creating the most turbulent era in the history of auditing. "From 2000 to 2007, there was one shock after another, so there really wasn't normal pricing during that period," observes associate professor Scott Whisenant of the University of Houston, who studies audit fees.
It is still a bitter irony for finance executives that Sarbox — much of it aimed squarely at Arthur Andersen's failings as auditor to Enron and WorldCom — turned into a bonanza for surviving audit firms. Between 2004 and 2006, internal-control audits created intense auditor shortages, which rippled through the market, affecting companies not even required to comply with Section 404. The supply-versus-demand dilemma combined with new auditing requirements and auditor risk aversion drove costs skyward during those years.
That has now changed markedly. "We have seen price competition return in 2007 and 2008," observes Whisenant. Not only have fees been falling, but they have fallen for companies of all sizes, including those not directly affected by 404. Companies with revenues between $100 million and $250 million saw an average 8% drop in fees from 2007 to 2008, while those with revenues of $250 million to $500 million saw them drop 5%, according to a CFO analysis of data provided by Audit Analytics (see "Fees Fall Everywhere," below).
Chalk up much of that change to a long-delayed reaction to the fee transparency ushered in by the SEC's 2000 decree. When fee disclosure was first proposed, some experts theorized that it would actually result in higher fees, in that audit firms would no longer offer a discount in the early years of an engagement to win new clients. On the contrary, says Whisenant, "fee disclosure probably gave auditors more information to underbid existing audits."
But, he adds, it now appears that the larger impact of price transparency is its potential to help clients control their costs once an engagement is under way. "After the second or third year, when the fee starts to revert to a normal level, then the clients have the advantage, because they can start benchmarking."
In other words, clients are wising up to initial discounting and are leveraging the new transparency not only to help select a new auditor, but to rebuff fee increases in subsequent years.
While Sarbox may have been a windfall for auditors in its early days, it is actually driving fees down now for several reasons. Fee disclosure was intended to shed light on potential conflicts when auditors acted as consultants, but Sarbox went further and outlawed many types of auditor consulting altogether. It also emphasized a relatively straightforward "check-the-box" review of controls. Both aspects of the law make it harder for audit firms to differentiate their services.
"Let's face it," says Eric Davis, CFO of SunOpta, "auditing, especially within the Big Four, is a bit of a commodity right now, as long as you've got a firm that has the scale and scope to handle your needs."
Benchmarking Boom
SunOpta, a client of PricewaterhouseCoopers (and Coopers & Lybrand) since 1975, switched to Deloitte & Touche at the end of 2008. Davis says the natural and organic food company suspected the fees it was paying PwC were "really at the high end." The company initially asked PwC to provide a fee benchmark and then, based on the results, decided to take a harder, independent look at its fees. "That's when we realized that, hey, we are overpaying these guys for what we're getting and we should put it out to tender," Davis says.
Publicly traded companies alone spent $16 billion on audit and audit-related fees in 2008, with nearly 7,000 companies paying more than $100,000 each year, and 2,585 paying more than $1 million, according to CFO's analysis of data from Audit Analytics. Little surprise, then, that half of all CFOs now say they regularly (at least every two years) benchmark what their company pays its external auditor against what their peers pay, according to the latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey.
The practice seems only likely to grow in the current economy. "It wouldn't surprise me that audit firms are somehow ending up with lower realization rates in order to keep their clients," says IDT's Pereira. "There has been a lot of pressure over the last 18 months or so for companies to cut their costs, whether for audit firms or other service providers."
Like IDT, shipping company OSG decided to examine audit costs as part of a review of all of its professional-services contracts. The company switched to PwC in 2009 after 40 years as an Ernst & Young client, and saw its $2 million audit cost drop by a third. "We were looking at every line item of expense," explains CFO Myles Itkin, though when it comes to OSG's lengthy audit engagement, he adds drily, "after 40 years, everything should be put out to rebid." Itkin says the move was one of many cost-saving measures that helped drop OSG's SG&A from $144 million in 2008 to $120 million last year.
Itkin is quick to point out that savings were only part of the benefit for OSG, noting that "certain inefficiencies get built into the process" on both sides during such a long relationship. He estimates that roughly 10% of OSG's savings came from improvements in the way OSG uses its own internal-audit team to prepare for the audit. The degree to which auditors from PwC would rely on that work then became part of the overall negotiation.
IDT's Pereira, likewise, says the second fee reduction IDT negotiated with Grant Thornton depended in large part on IDT's own efforts to streamline and simplify its operations, which in turn allowed the company to argue that its audit had also become simpler.
SunOpta's Davis says fee negotiations — which now take place annually, if not continuously — focus less on the hourly rate charged than on how much Deloitte & Touche will rely on work done by the internal-audit department. "We try to make sure the controls and binder reviews are done preaudit," Davis explains, "so that when they do come in they are going through more of our work rather than trying to reinvent something."
That's a common refrain among CFOs, who still witness surprising variations in the way each firm audits specific finance processes. "There's no question auditors have gotten more comfortable with 404 and how to do it, which has allowed them to reduce the fee," says journeyman CFO Ken Goldman of Fortinet, who sits on several boards and is also former finance chief of such companies as Siebel Systems, Sybase, and Cypress Semiconductor. "Having said that, I've seen the different tendencies of different auditing firms, and how they price and charge, and I still think there's room for better cost efficiency in running audits overall."
Thanks again in part to Sarbox, audit committees are also paying attention to fees, both because many audit committee financial experts have day jobs as CFOs and because the audit relationship is the ultimate control check. "The audit committee has the responsibility to hire, fire, and evaluate the independent auditor," notes the most recent copy of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants's Audit Committee Toolkit.
Included in the Toolkit's checklist of questions audit committees should ask: "Was the fee fair and reasonable in relation to what audit committees know about fees charged to other companies, and in line with fee benchmarking data the audit committee might have available to it?"
How Low Should You Go?
Of course, neither CFOs nor audit committees should simply seek the lowest possible cost. While recent trends suggest that now is a good time to benchmark audit fees, that doesn't mean lowballing your auditor is a good idea. "You have to be careful that you don't put so much pressure on your auditors that they underaudit," notes the University of Houston's Whisenant.
Unusually low or high fees both can signal trouble: weak audits for the former and potential conflicts of interest for the latter. "Companies paying the highest fees [may do so to gain] more flexibility and aggression in accounting," says Whisenant. He has done studies that suggest that fees that are unexpectedly high or low "can both lead to conditions where the shareholders do not benefit."
Take, as an extreme case, Fannie Mae, which in 2003 paid a surprisingly low $2.7 million for its audit by KPMG. An accounting scandal the following year subsequently caused the company's audit bill to soar to $203 million (paid to Deloitte & Touche after KPMG was dismissed).
More recently, in building its case against David Friehling, auditor of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, the SEC charged him with raking in "substantial fees." But, in fact, the opposite is true: that Madoff's multi-billion-dollar fund paid the tiny audit firm of Friehling & Horowitz a mere $186,000 per year should have been a glaring red flag.
CFOs love to control costs, but when it comes to audits, they also want to make sure they are getting the most they can out of their auditor. Itkin says OSG's RFP was initially driven by a cost-reduction strategy, but proved "most effective" in securing more services.
Among the services Itkin says he negotiated were international tax planning, director education for both the audit committee and the board as a whole, and access to PwC's industry specialists. "The relationship has become so much more interactive," he says, with OSG receiving "on a consistent and frequent basis the insights [the firm] has into changes in accounting policy, major accounting issues impacting our industry or likely to impact our industry, perception as to where the SEC is moving, and a clearer awareness of SEC comment letters [sent to our competitors.]"
And what about the perennial CFO complaint that audits too often consist of recent college graduates camping out in a conference room where they learn to "tick and tie" on their client's dime? Itkin says OSG has two partners and a senior manager on the account, "each of whom has material industry experience and is [frequently] present here. To us, the commitment and availability of that resource was an important criteria in the selection."
In the end, says Itkin, "I was interested in securing the same level of service at a lower cost, and we ultimately achieved a higher level of service and a lower cost."
Auditing your auditor, it seems, is an engagement well worth undertaking.
Tim Reason is editorial director of CFO.
Do you know how your audit fees compare with those of companies like yours? A new online application from the editorial team of CFO provides a fast and accurate way to benchmark your audit fees against what your peers paid, over a three-year period.
Type in your company name (or industry and revenue size) to generate a peer group and, for a fee, the CFO Audit Fee Report will generate a customized, downloadable analysis. The CFO Audit Fee Report automatically identifies outliers that can skew results and are normally hidden among multiple filings, including restatements, management- or auditor-reported control failures, and auditor changes.
The report allows you to view the full list of companies and auditors in your peer group before you finalize your purchase. The final report includes the following:
Provides an immediate benchmark of what your company pays and how it compares with your selected peer group
Adjustments for Outliers
Analyzes how outlier events affect audit fees within your industry and peer group; provides a summary of outliers within your peer group; and allows you to exclude or include outliers from your overall analysis
Auditor Analysis
Analyzes what each auditor charges the companies in your peer group and how much those fees varied; estimates what each firm hypothetically would charge your company; and shows you each auditor's market share within your peer group
Complete Data
Provides a complete list of the companies in your peer group, their individual audit firms, fees, and additional data used in the report analysis. CFO sources its data from Audit Analytics, a leading provider of audit-fee information.
To generate your report, or view a sample, click here.

subset: commoncrawl


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Mine is here!
Post your links, so we can all see the latest from eachother:)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BusyYoungSingleMomSanity
Blog: http://www.singlemommasanity.blogspot.com
Views: 171
Hi, today I posted about trying to get back into a regular exercise routine : http://simplyathomemom.com/?p=99
My blog is here: http://ourmoderndayfairytale.blogspot.com/
Can't wait to check out everyone else's :)
Just read your latest post and commented on your blog. Great pictures. I'm your newest follower!
Please stop by and visit me at http://greenmomsandkids.wordpress.com. Hope you'll be a follower as well.
{blogged} The Mid Atlantic in Pictures http://www.henatayeb.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-mid-atlantic-in-pictu...
Such amazing pictures. I mean - absolutely stunning. So jealous!! LOL
Penny Roach
Today I blogged about my new crock pot that I received for Christmas! Stop by http://simplyathomemom.com/?p=131
Here's mine: http://www.princessandtherock.com/2013/01/i-wont-look-pretty.html
I'm new here and I'm so glad to have found this support network!
Really enjoyed your blog post today. She sounds like a very precious little girl!!
Penny (Green Mom)
Today, I posted about nasal allergies, OTC medicines and natural alternatives. You may see it here:
Thanks everybody!!
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WindyCityLeanandGreen (Green Moms and Kids)
Twitter Handle: @WindyCityLean
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/greenmomsnkids


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What exactly does the term debt ceiling mean, anyway?
While lawmakers struggled on Wednesday to button up an eleventh-hour bipartisan deal to end the government shutdown and avert a default on the nation's debts, here is some clarification:
What is the debt ceiling?
It's another word for the debt limit. The debt ceiling is the amount of gross debt the federal government can have. The current limit is $16.7 trillion, which the government actually surpassed earlier this year: Its total outstanding debt is $16.75 trillion.
Since then, the Treasury has been using complicated bookkeeping maneuvers, or extraordinary measures, to acquire funds to meet its existing obligations without breaching the legal debt limit. Those obligations include Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, interest on the national debt and more. But these extraordinary measures are merely to bide time.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned that the extraordinary measures would only last until Thursday, October 17, when the government needed to raise its debt ceiling to meet obligations. If Friday, Oct. 18, rolled around without a deal in place, a default could have potentially put the country back into recession, rattled the markets and reverberated throughout the global economy.
Treasury would still have had roughly $30 billion to continue paying some of its financial obligations – but if it missed bondholder payments in the coming weeks, that's when things would have gotten truly difficult.
How is the debt ceiling actually raised?
The debt limit is written into law. Any increases must be codified in new legislation by Congress and signed by the president.
What if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling?
If the debt ceiling isn't raised by the time extraordinary measures are exhausted, the nation would be unable to borrow any more money to pay for its existing financial commitments, which were already agreed to by Congress and the president.
What if the government defaults?
A default occurs when the government does not have enough funds to meet its legally mandated fiscal obligations. A default could potentially wreck the government's credit rating, lower demand for U.S. assets, deprive federal workers of their salaries and deny Social Security benefits to retirees, among other things. There are actually three times in the past when the U.S. could be seen to have defaulted on its obligations, in 1790, 1933 and 1971.
How many times has the debt ceiling been raised before?
So many times it's hard to keep track. The government first enacted the limit in 1917 in order to issue bonds during WWI. Since 1960, Congress has voted 78 separate times to raise, temporarily extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit – 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents. The new deal on Wednesday - which would keep the government afloat until Feb. 7 - would make that 79 times.
Does raising the debt ceiling actually increase our debt?
No, it does not increase our debt.
At a press conference earlier this month, President Obama said, "It [raising the debt ceiling] does not grow our deficits. It does not allow for a single dime of increased spending. All it does is allow the Treasury Department to pay for what Congress has already spent."
Is it really as simple as that?
No, it isn't. PolitiFact.com, in an effort to provide further context on the issue, added this clarification to what the president said:
"Obama is correct that the debt ceiling addresses debt, not spending – at least not directly. Raising the debt ceiling allows the United States government to borrow funds that cover the obligations the government has already incurred. It doesn't by itself prompt any new spending: Congress and the president must separately sign off on any new federal spending commitments. Put simply, the United States has chosen to divorce spending and financing decisions.
The part where Obama is somewhat misleading is when he says that raising the debt ceiling "does not allow for a single dime of increased spending." (We asked the White House for comment but didn't hear back.)
In fact, raising the debt ceiling is a necessary condition for eventually raising spending without a default. Spending can only be raised in the future if the debt ceiling is raised (or if progress is made on paying down the existing debt, something that's rarely happened in recent decades). Without a debt ceiling hike, Congress and the president would find their hands tied if they ever wanted to make any new financial commitments.
So, contrary to what Obama said, if the debt ceiling is raised high enough, it does, in fact, "allow" for additional spending. It just doesn't demand it.
This article was updated on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013, at 4:30 p.m.


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INTERACTIVISM: A Manisfesto
Mark H. Bickhard email@example.com
Interactivism: A Manifesto Mark H. Bickhard
Why a manifesto? Interactivism is a complex philosophical and theoretical system; its focus is on the mind and person, but it also extends beyond those domains. The assumptions underlying and framing this system differ strongly from those that dominate contemporary studies of the mind and person ? across philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and other related disciplines. The point of a manifesto is to outline and argue for such a framework of assumptions. If they are correct, as I and others contend, then much of the work in these areas is fundamentally misguided and in error. Conversely, what is required is not just a new, better model or theory, but a basic shift in those deeper assumptions. That is what I wish to urge upon the reader.
Interactivism, however, did not begin with such scope, nor did it begin with any such intentions. Instead, it has grown through a process of coherence- and consistencyseeking relative to the underlying assumptions in its relatively narrow first beginnings ? so much of the study of minds and persons is dominated by assumptions that are inconsistent with those that I began with that the choice I kept encountering was either to give up what I had developed, or to diagnose, critique, and replace the offending interfacing work. The choice was forced: models of narrower processes must ultimately interface and integrate with related phenomena, but, if the available models of those related phenomena could not be integrated with the model that I already had developed (because of those inconsistent underlying assumptions), then the goal and desideratum of such integration had to count as a potential refutation against one or the other of the offending theories. Because I am persuaded that the assumptions framing the interactive model are correct, and have only become more so over the decades of its development, my choice has been to continue extending the model into new phenomena in ways that are consistent.
So, What is Interactivism?
The interactive model has a number of levels, ranging from the metaphysical to particular theoretical models for particular phenomena. At the broadest level, interactivism involves a commitment to a strict naturalism. By naturalism is meant (roughly) a regulative assumption that reality is integrated; that there are no isolatable and independent grounds of reality, such as would be the case if the world were made of Cartesian substances; that there is no ultimate barrier to further questioning and potential understanding, such as would be the case if the world were made of Empedoclean earth, air, fire, and water. In such a case, for example, (as well as for the Cartesian version of a substance metaphysics) it would not make sense to ask Where does earth come from? or Why is water stable? Such basic substances are the limits of understanding. The grounds for naturalism are at least two-fold: 1) the history of science seems to show that there are no such barriers to further understanding ? we now have naturalistic understandings of, for example, fire, heat, life, magnetism, and so on ? and 2) the assumption of any such barriers at this point would itself be without warrant and a pointless obstruction to investigation.
Closely related to this naturalism is a process metaphysics: the fundamental nature of the world is organizations of process. Again, there are several grounds for this: 1) the history of science involves a progressive replacement of substance models with process models ? e.g., phlogiston with combustion, caloric with thermal heat, vital fluid with self maintaining and self reproducing organizations of process, and so on ?
2) our best science tells us that there are no particles, only the processes of quantum fields,
3) there are serious conceptual flaws with a strict particle metaphysics, and
4) emergence is only possible within a process metaphysics, and
a) emergence has clearly occurred, and
b) only by taking emergence seriously can we account for such emergent phenomena as life and mind (and representation) (Bickhard, 2000; Campbell & Bickhard, in preparation).
The name interactivism derives from the model for representation that developed within this framework. Roughly, representation emerges in the presuppositions of anticipatory interactive processes in (natural or artificial) agents. The first dubbing of the model as Interactivist was by Rita Vuyk who called the model ?Radical Interactivism? in Vuyk (1981), and I decided that the term captured the spirit of the model well. The general interactivist model also includes models of virtually all other mental and some social phenomena, such as learning, emotions, consciousness, language, perception, memory, motivation, neural realizations of mental phenomena, the nature and emergence of social reality, the nature and emergence of human sociality and the social ontology of the person, development, personality and psychopathology, rationality, and so on. It also addresses phenomena such as normative biological functionality, the rationality of realism, truth, progressiveness, and ?induction? in science, the emergent evolution of the biosphere, and so on. (See Bickhard, 1978, 1980b, 1992c, 1992d, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2000b, 2000c, 2001, 2002, in press-d, in preparation; Bickhard & Campbell, 1996; Bickhard & Christopher, 1994; Bickhard & Terveen, 1995; Campbell & Bickhard, 1992b; Campbell, Christopher, Bickhard, in press; Christensen & Bickhard, 2002; Levine & Bickhard, 1999.)
This architecture of metaphysical commitments and models is not a deductive system; you cannot begin with the metaphysics and deduce the models. Instead, it is a nested hierarchy or lattice of constraints, beginning with the metaphysical and reaching deep into the theoretical, within which ever more specific modeling and constraint discovery can take place. Explorations into the social or biological, for a slightly different example, proceed by adopting the broadest possible set of constraints that apply, and exploring for their implications and for any further constraints that might be found. The model of the nature of language does not pose relevant strong constraints for exploring the nature of evolutionary species, for example, but the model of emergence does. The general approach, then, can be extended horizontally (e.g., into the biological or social) as well as vertically (e.g., deeper into the mental).
What are the Relationships between Interactivism and Other Theories?
Interactivism shares with Piaget?s genetic epistemology a pragmatist commitment to process and action as the proper framework for modeling mental phenomena. It shares the entailment from an action base to a constructivism ? the only way that action systems can be created is by construction; action systems cannot be created by passive processes such as transduction or induction. But interactivism differs strongly from Piaget in giving a central (though far from exclusive) importance to processes of variational construction and selection. Interactivism borrows freely from Piaget for some particular models, e.g., of manipulable objects. Interactivism is broader than Piaget?s model, addressing, for example, emotions, language, biological normative function, and a number of other phenomena that Piaget did not address with explicit models. The interactive model diverges from Piaget in a number of particular and general ways. Perhaps most important is a rejection of the widespread notion of figurative knowledge in Piaget, particularly, though far from exclusively, in perception. This notion has introduced a vestigial encodingist conception of representation into Piaget?s models at several points (Campbell & Bickhard, 1986; Bickhard & Campbell, 1989; Bickhard, 1992). The interactive model of representation is different from Piaget?s, as is the model of the epistemology of logical and mathematical necessity, and so on. The developmental model within interactivism has been called neo-neo-Piagetian, and I suppose that is not inaccurate in some respects, though it does not convey the breadth of the model or the divergences from Piaget?s work. It also suggests that the interactive model emerged out of genetic epistemology, but that is historically inaccurate. More broadly, the interactive model is pragmatist in its process and action framework, in its criticisms of encodingism (e.g., spectator models, as the pragmatists sometimes called them), in its focus on consequences in action and interaction. It differs in its explicit model of representation, among other places: Peirce?s model of representation most resembles external representation rather than mental representation, in this view. The interactive model of representation is more akin to Peirce?s model of meaning. Dewey?s discussions of language sometimes sound very much like the interactive model of language, but he had no real details, and interactivism would not join with Dewey in rendering truth as warranted assertability. The interactive model of perception is much like Gibson?s theory, but some careful work separating Gibson?s theory from his metatheory has to be done before that comment will hold, and even then there are still some differences (Bickhard & Richie, 1983). Many models of language have focused on action and pragmatic aspects of language, including context dependencies, but they all retain an encoding model of representation, usually of propositions (Bickhard, 1980, 1987; Bickhard & Campbell, 1992; Campbell & Bickhard, 1992). And so on: there are many partial convergences with and borrowings from the literature into the interactive model, but fundamental differences also exist in each case.
How does Interactivism Connect with Data?
The warrants for many of the broader, metaphysical, commitments of interactivism are not empirical in any direct way, but rather derive from the fact that these positions make possible models and understandings that are impossible within alternative frameworks. These commitments avoid fatal problems that alternative frameworks and approaches and models cannot avoid. The millennia old problem of encodingism as a framework for modeling representation, for example, if the critique is correct, has never before been dissolved or solved. The interactive model of representation claims to do exactly that for the very large family of fatal problems that are associated with encodingist assumptions (no matter how deeply implicit).
Turning now to some empirical explanations and predictions: The interactivist model of perception predicts that people have no problem estimating relative temporal durations or accelerations, something that is impossible on standard snapshot models of perception. Piaget was among the few who realized that this was a problem, including for his own model, but, if perception is an ongoing temporal process, rather than a file of snapshots, then such estimations are no problem at all, and that is in fact what we find (Richie & Bickhard, 1988; Ramalho, 1990). With respect to perception, the interactive model is closer to Gibson than to Piaget.
The developmental model predicts that there will be an initial domain general, relatively age synchronous stage shift, which is empirically found to occur at about age 3.5-4, followed by non-domain-general and non-synchronous further stage developments. It is the only model to make such a prediction; it made it as early as the early 1970s; and it appears so far to be what we find (in spite of the general refusal to consider domain general changes) (Bickhard, 1992b).
Associated with that change, there should be a neural maturation, probably a myelinization, in substrate neural architecture. At least one part of that architecture is likely to involve a pre-frontal to head-of-caudate to reticular nuclei of the thalamus projection. The caudate to thalamic projection, in particular, is a good candidate. This has not been empirically explored.
The rationality model and the associated philosophy of science model explain a number of phenomena in science, such as the progressivity of science, the rational role of truth and realism in science, and the rationality of apparent induction, that are seriously problematic on standard approaches. The rationality model makes predictions about what sorts of educational and curriculum designs should work best, a prediction confirmed in at least one study (Wu, 1993).
The model explains the developmental sequence of, in modified Tulving terms, enactive, semantic, episodic, and autobiographical memory (Bickhard, 1992b) ? a sequence that makes no sense from standard encoding perspectives. And so on. In general, the model makes contact with the empirical world in many places, though only a few have been empirically tested. (For another, one that initiated a family of research [sorry for the pun], see Wedemeyer, Bickhard, Cooper, 1989.)
What?s Wrong with Dominant Assumptions?
The study of the mind is the last major holdout against the historical abandonment of substance models for process models. Phlogiston (fire), caloric (heat), magnetic fluid (magnetism), vital fluid (life) are all recognized as not only false models for their respective phenomena, but the wrong kind of model. Neither fire nor heat nor magnetism nor life are phenomena of particular substances. Instead, each is a kind of process. Furthermore, our best contemporary science tells us that there are no substances. Fundamental physics models all of reality in terms of quantum fields, not substances ? and not particles (Aitchison, 1985; Bickhard, 2000; Brown & Harr鬠1988; Cao, 1999; Davies, 1984; Halverson & Clifton, 2002; Kaku, 1993; Nakahara, 1992; Ryder, 1985; Saunders & Brown, 1991; Weinberg, 1977, 1996, 1997, 2000). Particle models partially fit because of the quantization of the field processes, but that quantization is akin to the integer number of vibrational waves in a guitar string, and there are no more physical particles than there are guitar sound particles. So, a substance approach to understanding mental phenomena can at best be heuristic ? there is no ground in underlying physics ? and is conceptually dangerous even as a heuristic.
For example, substances, and structures made out of substances, are inherently stable. They change if something makes them change, but otherwise do not. If we are attempting to model psychopathology, and are using a substance/structural framework, we will inherently model pathological phenomena as stable. Unlearning or changing such structures will require specific intervention. But, if mind is process, intrinsically self-organizing, then the deep problematic of psychopathology is precisely why it remains stable. Why don?t we all ?just? unlearn such pathologies? A substance framework, then, even as heuristic, puts the most basic questions of stability and change beyond examination: stability is presupposed, and therefore is not a phenomenon requiring explanation.
Still further, a substance metaphysics makes emergence impossible ? Empedocles? earth, air, fire, and water cannot support the emergence of a new kind of substance, nor of new earth, air, fire, or water. But virtually everything in the universe has emerged since the Big Bang, and substance approaches cannot account for that. In particular, a substance metaphysics makes normative emergence impossible ? substances are not themselves inherently normative, and Hume?s argument concludes that norms cannot be derived from, or emergent from, facts such as about substances. But almost nothing about mind or the person can be understood without taking normativity into account. Representation is normative: it can be true or false. Learning is normative: it can succeed or fail. Rationality, psychopathology, social interaction, forms of language, as well as ethics, are all normative. Substance frameworks have nothing to say about the central normative aspects of these and related phenomena, and, therefore, little to say about the mind or person.
Process and emergence, and the emergence of normativity in particular, must be addressed and understood in order to adequately model the mind and person. So long as we continue within a framework of substance metaphysical presuppositions, we will remain in a position akin to someone attempting to model fire with a more successful substance account than phlogiston. It is not just the particular model in terms of phlogiston that must be rejected and overcome, it is the entire substance framework out of which the notion of phlogiston is proposed. Substitute representation, cognition, language, psychopathology, emotions, memory, development, sociality, and so on for phlogiston, and you have the state of contemporary studies of the mind and person. Representation. I will make these points more specific with respect to part of the original core of the interactive model: representation. Consider a paradigm of a substance model of representation, Plato and Aristotle?s analogy between perception and the impression of a signet ring into wax. One of the central problems that this example illustrates is the problem of the normativity of representation. There are a number of relationships between the form in the wax and the form of the ring, and several of them have been ? and still are ? taken to constitute the crucial representational relationship. Suppose that it is the causal relationship between the pressing of the ring and the impression in the wax that is taken to be constitutive of representation. Then here are some of the problems that emerge:
? If the causal relationship exists, then the representation exists; if the causal relationship does not exist, then the representation does not exist. These are the only two possibilities, and this leaves no way in which the case of ?a representation exists but is false about what it is representing? can be modeled. There are only two possibilities in the modeling resources, but three distinction representation conditions must be modeled: exists and is correct, exists and is incorrect, and does not exist.
? Within the strictly factual realm of the causal relationship, there are myriads of causal relationships throughout the universe ? every instance of causally paired events ? and almost none of them is representational. What is special about those that allegedly are representational? ? Causality is transitive, so if the causal relationship exists with the ring, it also exists with the quantum activities in the ring, with whatever is pressing the ring, with the ring a second ago, with the ring a year ago, with the materials out of which the ring is constructed, with the stellar processes that constructed those materials, and so on. In the case of vision, relationships with the light similarly proliferate. Which of these is to be the crucial representational relationship? And how does the perceiver ?know? what that special relationship is (supposed to be) with? Note that this last question is the representational question all over again: the entire account contains a circularity at its core.
All of these problems recur regardless of which relationship between the ring and the wax is selected as the constitutive one: causal, nomological, informational, or iso- or homo-morphic. And they recur if we substitute the latest technological analogy for signet rings and wax: ?transduction? of light in the retina and learning as ?induction?. There is no resource for capturing the normativity of representational content.
Focusing on the content aspect of this problem, we find, for example, arguments that, because we have no model of the origin of representation in learning, it must all be innate (Fodor, 1975, 1981).1 But, within these frameworks, evolution cannot solve the normativity problem anymore than can learning or development. And if it is presumed that evolution somehow can solve this problem, then there is no argument available about why learning and development could not avail themselves of the same kinds of processes. Piaget pointed out a version of this issue: if representation of the world were in some sense a copy of the world, then we would have to already know the world in order to construct our copy of it (Piaget, 1970). Once again, the issue of content remains unmodeled. Any presumption that it is modeled is circular because there is simply no way to model the origin of normative representational content within a substance
1 But see Fodor: ?the argument has to be wrong, … a nativism pushed to that point becomes unsupportable, … something important must have been left aside. What I think it shows is really not so much an a priori argument for nativism as that there must be some notion of learning that is so incredibly different from the one we have imagined that we don?t even know what it would be like as things now stand? (Piattelli-Palmarini, 1980, p. 269) framework: substances are factual, not normative, and substances do not permit emergence, certainly not normative emergence.
This circularity with respect to content is often manifested as a source of such normativity within the alleged model of normative representation itself. This can be implicit, as when there is one or more hidden homunculus interpreters that provide and translate representations, or explicit, as when representation is ?modeled?, but only from the perspective of some observer of, or commentator on, the overall situation who then becomes the source of judgement that some ?representation? is correct or incorrect. Representation must ultimately be modeled as emergent within cognitive systems themselves: it presumably emerged in that way during the course of evolution. Another perspective on this point concerning content derives from a kind of correspondence relationship that is a representational relationship: genuine encodings. ??? encodes ?S? in Morse code, for example, or neutrino counts ?encode? properties of fusion processes in the sun. These are unproblematic relationships in themselves, but encoding cannot be a foundational form of representation because in all cases of genuine encodings, both ends of the encoding relationship ? e.g., ??? and ?S? ? as well as the relationship itself, must be already known, already represented, in some agent?s mind in order for the encoding relationship to exist at all. Encodings make use of representation; encodings transform the form of representation ? ??? can be sent over telegraph wires while ?S? cannot. Encodings do not generate emergent new representations, do not provide basic representations.
Encodings are derivative forms of representation. ??? borrows its content from ?S?. The significance of the neutrino counts is in terms of already known and represented models and parameters concerning fusion in the sun. An encoding can be defined in terms of other encodings, and perhaps those in terms of still others, but in some finite number of steps a base of representations must be available that serves as the foundation out of which all other ?encoding? representations can be defined. It is this base that Fodor argues must be innate because we have no models of how any such foundational representation could emerge. Consider an element of such a basic set: how does it receive its representational content? If it is defined in terms of other representations, then it is not foundational, contrary to assumption. But that leaves only that element itself, ?X? say, as the source of representational content. But ??X? represents X? does not suffice to provide any content at all, and thus does not suffice to constitute ?X? as a representation at all. The assumption, whether implicit or explicit, that all representation is of the form of encodings ? encodingism ? encounters this basic incoherence at its roots.
A substance metaphysical framework forces representation to be modeled as some sort of factual relationship that somehow represents, encodes, whatever is to be represented. But encoding is a normative concept, and substance models cannot make good on it. The assumption that all representation is some form of encoding cannot work, and must finally be abandoned (Bickhard, 1993, in press, in press-b; in press-c; Bickhard & Terveen, 1995).
This raises the obvious promissory note for a model of representation that can address these issues. But, before outlining such a model, I would like to point out that the difficulties and impossibilities illustrated for substance frameworks attempting to model representation all turn on the inability of substance metaphysics to handle emergence, and especially normative emergence. As such, versions of these problems recur for every normative phenomenon that we might wish to address. With respect to mind and the person, that includes virtually every phenomenon of any relevance. Substance metaphysics render minds and persons impossible to model and impossible to understand. A massive elimination of these approaches is needed, though that is not to be easily accomplished: substance presuppositions can be subtle and ubiquitous. They are not necessarily obvious, and the problems that they produce are not necessarily obvious either.
The Interactive Model of Representation
Normativity involves an asymmetric distinction between normative good and bad. In the case of representation, this normative asymmetry is between true and false. Making distinctions is easy in the factual world ? any differential response will accomplish that ? but modeling the normative asymmetry of the distinction is far more problematic. This is particularly so since most of the laws of physics are inherently symmetric ? but not all of them. I propose to derive normative asymmetry from an asymmetry in thermodynamics. In particular, a system that is at thermodynamic equilibrium will stay at equilibrium without any additional intervention. A system that is far from equilibrium, in contrast, must have ongoing interactions and exchanges with its environment in order to stay far from equilibrium. A far from equilibrium system that is isolated will cease to exist as it goes to equilibrium. This is the basic generative asymmetry out of which normative asymmetry emerges.
Most far from equilibrium systems are maintained in their far from equilibrium condition by external processes. A set of pumps may pump chemicals from various reservoirs into a chemical bath, thus maintaining the bath at a far from equilibrium condition. Such systems can exhibit many important phenomena, such as selforganization. More important for my purposes, however, are far from equilibrium systems that make their own contributions to the maintenance of their far from equilibrium condition. A candle flame is a canonical example. It maintains above threshold combustion temperature, vaporizes wax into fuel, and, in standard gravitational and atmospheric conditions, induces convection, which brings in fresh oxygen and gets rid of waste products. I call such systems self-maintenant. A recursively self-maintenant system, in turn, is one that can maintain its condition of being self-maintenant in response to various changes in environmental conditions. A candle flame cannot adopt any new methods to maintain itself when it is running out of candle. A bacterium, however, may be able to swim so long as it is swimming up a sugar gradient, but tumble for a moment if it finds itself swimming down a sugar gradient (Campbell, D., 1974, 1990). Swimming is self-maintenant if pointed toward higher concentrations of sugar, but it is dysfunctional if pointed toward lower sugar concentrations.2 Similarly, tumbling is a contribution to the maintenance of far from equilibrium conditions if the bacterium is pointed toward lower sugar concentrations, but not if pointed in the opposite orientation. Recursive selfmaintenance, then, requires sensitivity to the environment, and appropriate switching between or among available interactions with the world in order to select an interaction that maintains the condition of being self-maintenant in the face of differing conditions. 2 I do model normative function in these terms, but will not develop that model here (Bickhard, 1993, 1998b, 2000c, in press; Christensen & Bickhard, 2002).
The key property here for current purposes is that such selection of interactions involve dynamic presuppositions about the environment. Swimming is only appropriate in certain kinds of environmental conditions and relations, and is inappropriate otherwise. In that sense, swimming presupposes that this environment is one of those environments in which swimming is appropriate. But such presuppositions can be wrong; they can be false. The bacterium may swim up a saccharin gradient as well as a sugar gradient, and that does not contribute to the maintenance of its far from equilibrium condition. Here, I claim, is the fundamental emergence of representational normativity. Much more needs to be elaborated for this to address issues of representation across multiple levels of kind and complexity ? How could such a model handle representations of objects? How could it address representations of abstractions, such as of electrons or numbers? How could it model system detection of representational error, as in error guided behavior and learning?3 What about memory, perception, learning, imagery, concepts, language, and so on and on. All these are addressed elsewhere, and I will not recap the specialized models here (Bickhard, 1980, 1992c, 1992d, 1993, 1995, 1998, 1998b, 1999, 2000b, 2001, 2001, in preparation, in press, in press-d; Bickhard & Campbell, 1992, 1996; Bickhard & Christopher, 1994; Bickhard & Richie, 1983; Bickhard & Terveen, 1995; Campbell & Bickhard, 1986, 1992b; Campbell, Christopher, Bickhard, in press; Christensen & Bickhard, 2002). Suffice it for current purposes to have offered an account of the emergence of representational normative content, however much in a primitive form, within a process rather than a substance framework. The aporia of substance frameworks can be left behind.
Phenomena of mind and person are normative phenomena, emergent normative phenomena. Substance metaphysics are false and misleading about the physical, chemical, and biological world, and they make any account of genuine emergence impossible. They especially preclude accounting for normative phenomena because 3 This is actually easy for the interactive model (Bickhard, 1999, 2000b, in press; Levine & Bickhard, 1999), but is impossible for any other model in the literature, and, in fact, is not even addressed by any other model in the literature. substances are not themselves normative and they block an emergence account of normativity.
Substance metaphysics have been abandoned in physics, chemistry, and mostly in biology. They retain a dominance in studies of minds and persons. This is likely at least in part due to the particular difficulties that substance frameworks impose on any attempt to address normative phenomena: substance frameworks are not only false, they preclude emergence, and yet they make emergence the only naturalistic option for normativity because substances themselves are not normative. It is long past time to transcend these perplexities, to abandon the frameworks and assumptions that produce them. A process metaphysical naturalism for mind and person is possible, has been developing for some decades, and extends in multiple directions. It originated with an interactive model of representation, and, consequently, the entire model has been dubbed interactivism. Interactivism not only offers particular models for many phenomena of mind and person, it also offers a demonstration that a ?process naturalistic emergence? approach can be carried out, and with fruitful results. That is, interactivism offers particular models for particular phenomena, and a demonstration of possibility and particular guidance for further theoretical and empirical development within such a process framework.
All theories are ultimately found wanting. It would be inconsistent to argue for the detailed truth of the interactive model: the model forces an epistemological fallibilism. But progress in science proceeds as much by the discovery of new errors to be avoided and new ways to avoid them as it does by the accumulation of timeless truths: Aristotle?s physics involved laws that changed from one place to another; Newton introduced a criterion of place invariance, and that rejected Aristotle; Special Relativity introduced a criterion of velocity invariance, and that rejected Newton; General Relativity introduced a criterion of acceleration invariance, and that forced a shift from Minkowski space-time to Reimannian geometry. It is already historically obvious that substance approaches must be replaced with process approaches. Interactivism demonstrates that this holds for mind and person just as much as it does for fire, heat, and life. False assumptions doom science to ultimate failure and often to irrelevance: witness phlogiston, caloric, associationistic behaviorism, and two-layer perceptrons. Interactivism is at the forefront of the exploration of process naturalism with respect to the normative phenomena of minds and persons. Interactivism is the entry into the future.
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Wu, P. (1993). The Rationality Model and Students? Misconceptions. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, Department of Educational Psychology.


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Learn About the Law
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Maximum price regulation No. 133 applied to sale at auction of farm type gasoline tractor by Idaho county, so that bid in excess of ceiling price was enforceable only as to amount within ceiling price. Code Idaho 1932, 30-708; Emergency Price Control Act of 1942, 1 et seq., as amended, 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix, 901 et seq.
Mr.Robert L. Stern, of Washington, D.C., for petitioners.
Mr. Everett M. Sweeley, of Twin Falls, Idaho, for respondent. [327 U.S. 103, 104]
Mr. Justice BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.
The petitioner Hulbert bid $1,050 for a used farm-type gasoline tractor which Twin Falls County, Idaho, offered for sale at an auction. His was the highest bid. Upon being informed by the Office of Price Administration that the amount bid was above the ceiling price of $723.56, Petitioner refused to pay the full amount. He tendered $723.56 which the County refused to accept. Thereupon the County sued the Petitioner in the State District Court for $1,050. Petitioner tendered $1,050 to be disposed of according to the outcome of the case. He defended on the ground that he had been advised by the Office of Price Administration that the regulation setting a ceiling price was applicable and stated that he was willing to pay any sum up to $1,050 which was not prohibited by this regulation. The Administrator intervened, alleging that the bid price exceeded the ceiling price fixed by Maximum Price Regulation 1331 and that the regulation was applicable to the sale of a tractor by the County. The County stated that prior to the sale it had been advised by the County Prosecuting Attorney that the sale would be controlled by Sec. 30-708 of the Idaho Code, Ann., and that the Office of Price Administration Regulations were inapplicable. The Idaho District Court held the sale subject to the Emergency Price Control Act, 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix 901 et seq., and to Reg lation No. 133. The Court gave judgment for the County for the ceiling price of $723.56, holding that the sale as to the amount above that ceiling price was void. The Supreme Court of Idaho reversed. 156 P.2d 319. We granted certiorari because the Supreme Court's decision conflicted with that of the Circuit Court for the Ninth Circuit in Bowles v. Case, 9 Cir., 149 F.2d 777.
The only question properly before us is whether Maximum Price Regulation No. 133 applies to sales of tractors [327 U.S. 103, 105] by a county. In defining the term 'person' the Regulation uses the same language as Section 302(h) of the Emergency Price Control Act. In Case v. Bowles, 327 U.S. 92 , 66 S.Ct. 438, decided this day, we held that that language makes the Act applicable to sales by states and their subdivisions such as this one. For the reasons set out in that opinion, this language as employed in Regulation No. 133 makes that Regulation applicable to the sale of the tractor by the County.
Mr. Justice JACKSON took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, dissenting.
I think Judge Givens, writing for the Supreme Court of Idaho (156 P. 2d 319), has shown that it is at least doubtful if Congress meant to include the States as sellers under this Act. 1 I think there is little to add to his analysis except to say that the doubt for me is increased when the whole scheme of regulation is considered. While 302(h) would relieve the States from the criminal sanctions of the Act,2 they would be subject to the treble damage provisions of 205(e), where are remedial, not punitive, in nature. Bowles v. American Stores, 78 U.S.App.D.C. 238, 139 F. 2d 377, 379. And the Administrator would have the power under 205(f)(1) to require a State to get a license from him in order to sell its commodities-a license which would be subject to suspension. 205(f)(2). These are sub- [327 U.S. 103, 106] stantial intrusions on the sovereignty of the States, involving matters of great delicacy. And they raise for me serious constitutional questions. Cf. State of New York v. United States, 326 U.S. 572 , 66 S.Ct. 310, dissenting opinion. Since the Act is at best ambiguous, I would choose the construction3 which avoided the constitutional issue. Only in the event that the language of the Act was explicit would I assume that Congress intended even in days of war to interfere with the traditional sovereignty of the States to the extent indicated.
[ Footnote 1 ] 7 F.R. 3185, 6936, 7599; 8 F.R. 234.
[ Footnote 1 ] Sec. 302(h) defines the term "person" as including "an individual, corporation, partnership, association, or any other organized group of persons, or legal successor or representative of any of the foregoing, and includes the United States or any agency thereof, or any other government, or any of its political subdivisions, or any agency of any of the foregoing: Provided, That no punishment provided by this Act shall apply to the United States, or to any such government, political subdivision, or agency."
[ Footnote 2 ] See note 1, supra.
[ Footnote 3 ] A permissible construction is that the phrase "the United States ... or any other government" means the United States or other comparable national sovereignties, i.e., foreign governments.
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Most people who visit regular will know that (Karl ) is Tinkerbell2's hubby. He has always been a good drawer and has a lot
of attention to detail when he does his paintings. He's self taught, so it's all work in progress...:elf3:
This painting is called ' Christmas Feeling'. The house is aglow with the anticipation of Christmas Morning.
It's 18"x16" Oil on Canvas. There is only 1 painting.
This for sale if anyone is interested. It can be purchased for £20 plus P+P ($32 ) but I will not be able to give a full price until a destination is known.
Please feel free to PM if anyone is interested.


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Gabby Giffords Takes on NRA, Announces Push for Gun Control
Almost amonth since the unimaginably tragic shooting in Newtown Connecticut and on the anniversary of the massacre that left her fighting for her own life, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is stepping up with her own lobbying group that will counter the NRA and push for what she bills as common-sense gun control solutions to the epidemic of American gun violence.
With her husband, the astronaut Mark Kelley, Giffords will appear tonight on a prime-time interview with Diane Sawyer and co-wrote a frank op-ed in USA Today that had some harsh words for the gun lobby as representing a fringe position, while positioning the couple as responsible gun owners themselves:
Special interests purporting to represent gun owners but really advancing the interests of an ideological fringe have used big money and influence to cow Congress into submission. Rather than working to find the balance between our rights and the regulation of a dangerous product, these groups have cast simple protections for our communities as existential threats to individual liberties. Rather than conducting a dialogue, they threaten those who divert from their orthodoxy with political extinction.
As a result, we are more vulnerable to gun violence. Weapons designed for the battlefield have a home in our streets. Criminals and the mentally ill can easily purchase guns by avoiding background checks. Firearm accessories designed for killing at a high rate are legal and widely available. And gun owners are less responsible for the misuse of their weapons than they are for their automobiles.
Forget the boogeyman of big, bad government coming to dispossess you of your firearms. As a Western woman and a Persian Gulf War combat veteran who have exercised our Second Amendment rights, we don't want to take away your guns any more than we want to give up the two guns we have locked in a safe at home. What we do want is what the majority of NRA members and other Americans want: responsible changes in our laws to require responsible gun ownership and reduce gun violence.
We saw from the NRA leadership's defiant and unsympathetic response to the Newtown, Conn., massacre that winning even the most common-sense reforms will require a fight. But whether it has been in campaigns or in Congress, in combat or in space, fighting for what we believe in has always been what we do.
So how will these two, who position themselves as political moderates, take on the NRA? They want to use their position to raise a lot of money, basically, launching a lobbying group called Americans for Responsible Solutions. They write "Until now, the gun lobby's political contributions, advertising and lobbying have dwarfed spending from anti-gun violence groups. No longer."
They are fighting an uphill battle but they are extremely important advocates to have on the side of gun control.


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Our Verdict
The same explosive growth that's seen the App Store swell to a barely manageable size has also been felt among fantasy football apps. Last year, the iPhone or iPod touch user looking for a mobile tool to help them settle the haunting questions of Draft Day — Peyton Manning or Tom Brady? Larry Johnson or LaDainian Tomlinson? And what of tight ends? Won't somebody think of the tight ends? — had just a handful of apps geared toward fantasy football drafts. These days? Type the words "fantasy football" into any reputable App Store search tool, and you've got nearly three dozen apps vying for your consideration.
Where can a would-be architect of a football juggernaut turn to for Draft Day guidance? I tested five fantasy football draft guides in my yearly (and so far, futile) attempt to maintain dignity in my assorted fantasy leagues. If you've still got a fantasy football draft looming in the next few weeks—and you don't mind springing for an app that, let's face it, has limited post-Draft Day appeal—I can recommend a pair of apps that can help you manage player wish lists, figure out who's selected and who's available, and tell the difference between Chris Johnson and Calvin Johnson. (The former is a running back on a professional football team; the latter is a Detroit Lion.) Two other fantasy football apps certainly have their strong points, but ultimately suffered from flaws that made me toss them aside. And one of the apps I tested is simply dreadful.
Read more…
Let's get the cellar dweller out of the way first, swiftly and painlessly. ESPN Fantasy Football 2009 Draft Kit comes from a seemingly impeccable source— ESPN, which, in addition to its self-proclaimed status as the Worldwide Leader in Sports, has established itself as a major player in the world of online fantasy sports. Indeed, its Fantasy Football 2009 Draft Kit draws on that expertise. The app's strong point are thumbnail profiles for many players—in addition to last season's stats, you also get a paragraph of analysis from ESPN's fantasy experts.
So what's the problem? Getting to that information and putting it to use is too much of a challenge, especially under the unforgiving time pressure of a fantasy football draft. ESPN's 2009 Draft Kit is a horror to navigate. An intro screen the appears each time you launch the app—and whenever you inadvertently navigate back to the main menu—provides unclear options for creating and viewing draft lists. Menu icons are confusing—ESPN's icon for jumping back to the Draft Lists screen is three horizontal lines, which usually means you want to order a list. Icons are also about the size of a fingernail, making them difficult for this flabby-fingered fantasy player to tap. The app is also buggy—on one wish list I created, certain players' names appeared twice, with no way to delete the extraneous listing—and occasionally crashes. ESPN's Draft Kit may be free, but it was little help to me in prepping for my draft.
Cheatsheet: Fantasy Football '09 and iDraft Fantasy Football Cheatsheet '09 are better choices, though they both have notable flaws. In the case of FanStar's CheatSheet, you're given the choice at launch of viewing player rankings or setting the rankings to your liking. Picking the latter option gives you a list of 479 players that you can drag up and down the list to your heart's content. One downside: the Set Rankings screen doesn't let you filter by position, so if you've got a lower-ranked sleeper pick you want to move higher up the list, you've got some scrolling to do.
Once you jump over to view the rankings in Cheatsheet: Fantasy Football '09, you'll see a list a fairly common data set of data for fantasy football apps—the player's name, his real team, position, and, perhaps most importantly for fantasy football purposes, his real team's bye week. From this screen, you can sort by position. You can also put a player on your wish list, mark that you've drafted him, or designate him swiped by some other team; you have the ability to sort the player rankings by these views as well as view the remaining available players. Cheatsheet: Fantasy Football places an X next to players you've drafted and an O next to the ones who've landed on other teams. It's a nice visual cue, though other apps use different colors, which I find to stand out more than Xs and Os. The app includes injury reports, so you don't inadvertently draft a player who left his knee back in training camp, though I'm not sure how frequently Cheatsheet updates this info—as I type this, the injury listings seem a week out of date.
iDraft from Ace Technology Consultants fancies itself less of a guide for your own draft and more of a way to track your entire league's draft. In this era of online leagues hosted by Yahoo, ESPN, and others, I'm not sure why you'd want to spend your fantasy league draft meticulously tapping out who picked what running back, but to each their own. I was able to set up an eight-team league in iDraft without too many hassles. It'd be nice if the app let you set a draft order, so that you wouldn't need to remember who was picking when, but that's a relatively minor complaint.
More significantly problems are that when a player's been picked, he'll still appear in the All view of your player rankings. To see who's still on the board, you've got to toggle over to the Available screen. iDraft should include a way for noting players who've been drafted in the All view if it's to be taken seriously as a draft manager. Also, you can only reorder player rankings in the All view—there's no way to, say, re-rank just tight ends or wide receivers.
On the plus side, iDraft does include rankings for individual defensive players, a category that more leagues (including Macworld's masochistic in-house league) are including. The app also features a visually-appealing color-coded system for identifying players you covet and those you want to avoid—the former appear in green, while the latter are stained with red. (One downside: there's a single button for iDraft's love hate feature, so you have to tap twice to downgrade a player. Two separate buttons, please.)
Really, fantasy football players looking for mobile draft apps on the iPhone have two choices—Studs & Duds Fantasy Football Draft Kit '09 from FSJ Development and Fantasy Football Cheatsheet '09 by 290 Design. Both apps give you the basic information you need to prepare for your draft—sortable wish lists, chiefly—along with some nice design features that let you track down what you're looking for in an instant—a necessity when you find yourself on the Draft Day clock.
Studs & Duds, for example, has an excellent search feature. Most apps feature a search field where you type in a name, getting results as you type. So does Studs & Duds—but the app also features a scrollable list of players and an A-to-Z search bar running down the right side of its Search screen. The app makes it really easy to track down that wide receiver in Buffalo you've had your eye on.
Studs & Duds also features a number of clever visual cues. If a player's been selected, he's grayed out on the screen; in addition, the app assigns red "other team" and green "my team" logos to drafted players as a further visual indicator of who's gone where. Additional logos tell you if a player is a stud (a blue thumb's up), a dud (a red thumb's down), a sleeper (a black button with Zzzs), or a value pick (a green dollar sign). It's very handy.
You can track multiple drafts with separate wish lists in Studs & Duds. The app also lets you enter in the scoring system for the league you play in, which will further customize player rankings—a feature that I happily admit goes above and beyond my obsession with fantasy sports.
That said, I prefer Fantasy Football Cheatsheet '09, an app I generally liked a year ago that has improved substantially in the ensuing 12 months. Both of my major complaints about the 2008 edition Fantasy Football Cheatsheet—you couldn't reorder players on your wish list to your liking and you couldn't get updated injury info—appear to have been remedied. Not only can you re-order players on your wish list, you can also re-rank them by position. And a red cross lets you know if the object of your desire might be a little gimpy on Draft Day.
You can manage multiple teams in multiple drafts using Fantasy Football Cheatsheet, keeping separate wish lists for each draft. And the app pulls player news from RotoWorld as well as draft rankings from MyFantasyLeague.com for added authority.
These changes have certainly improved Fantasy Football Cheatsheet's standing. Whereas last year, it was a solid-if-unspectacular choice, the 2009 version of the app is a definite first-round pick-up.
ESPN Fantasy Football 2009 Draft Kit, Cheatsheet: Fantasy Football '09, iDraft Fantasy Football Cheatsheet '09, and Studs & Duds Fantasy Football Draft Kit '09 are compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone 3.0 software update. Fantasy Football Cheatsheet '09 runs on the iPhone 2.1 software update.
[Macworld.com executive editor Philip Michaels is the Matt Millen of fantasy football general managers.]