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Security experts consider the aging FTP and Telnet protocols unsafe, and HP has decided to clamp down on access to networked printers through the remote-access tools.
Some of HP's new business printers will, by default, be closed to remote access via protocols like FTP and Telnet. However, customers can activate remote printing access through those protocols if needed.
"HP has started the process of closing older, less-maintained interfaces including ports, protocols and cipher suites" identified by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as less than secure, the company said in a statement.
In addition, HP also announced firmware updates to existing business printers with improved password and encryption settings, so hackers can't easily break into the devices.
It's all part of HP's growing initiative to secure printers. As older protocols like Telnet and FTP go out of fashion, HP will make printers accessible using more secure and modern techniques.
Most of HP's printers are accessible wirelessly, and HP has been adding authentication to give the right users access to printers.
Many layers of security already exist in network printers, which in most cases are protected by firewalls. But some of HP's printer security initiatives haven't gone down well with users, like the company's recent firmware update that rejected third-party ink cartridges on some OfficeJet printers. That created customer backlash and prompted HP to change its stance, and it issued new firmware that supported third-party ink.
The new security details are an important part of HP's growing initiative to secure printing environments. Many companies are deploying managed print services, which help consolidate printing hardware and reduce paper and ink costs. Managed print services tie into a company's document workflow system to ensure only the right people have access to and can print documents.
HP announced new features and services in its Secure MPS program to secure hardware and protect documents. Essentially, it tries to keep hackers from breaking into printing environments and ensure documents are printed by authorized personnel.
As part of Secure MPS, HP will customize and implement security plans for managed print services and ensure compliance requirements are met. In addition, HP is providing new tools for reporting and remote management.


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An indisputable influence in the formation of Latin American Spanish, often overshadowed by discussion of the `Andalusian' contribution, is the Canary Islands. Beginning with the first voyage of Columbus, the Canary Islands were an obligatory way-station for Spanish ships sailing to the Americas, which often stayed in the islands for several weeks for refitting and boarding of provisions. Canary Islanders also participated actively in the settlement and development of Spanish America. The Canary Islands merit a bizarre entry in the history of European geography, since the islands were well known to ancient navigators, only to pass into oblivion by the Middle Ages. After the early descriptions of Pliny and other writers of the time, more than a thousand years were to pass before the Canary Islands were mentioned in European texts, although contact between the indigenous Guanches and the nearby north African coast continued uninterrupted. Spain colonized the Canary Islands beginning in 1483, and by the time of Columbus's voyages to the New World, the Canary Islands were firmly under Spanish control. The indigenous Guanche language disappeared shortly after the Spanish conquest of the islands, but left a legacy of scores of place names, and some regional words. From the outset, the Canaries were regarded as an outpost rather than a stable colony, and the islands' livlihood revolved around maritime trade. Although some islanders turned to farming, particularly in the fertile western islands, more turned to the sea, as fishermen and sailors. With Columbus's discoveries, the Canary Islands became obligatory stopover points en route to the New World, and much of the islands' production was dedicated to resupplying passing ships. Seville still held a monopoly on commerce, but an ever-growing Canarian merchant class began to challenge that domination. The islands were ideally situated for influencing trans-Atlantic trade, and Canarian merchants began to implement their own agenda, fitting ships to sail directly to the Americas. Many islanders signed on as sailors, joining hands with Andalusians, Galicians and Asturians in providing Spain with a trans-Atlantic seafaring class. The Canary Islands were also the site of the first Spanish-owned sugar plantations, and when sugar was introduced into the Antilles, it was from the Canary Islands, complete with Canarian experts in sugar cultivation. The flourishing Caribbean sugar industry overtook the originally prosperous Canary Island production, initiating the economic decline of the islands which would ultimately result in heavy emigration to the Americas. With the sugar industry already in disarray, islanders turned to winemaking, an activity which still continues. For more than a century, Canarian wines were in demand both in Spain and in the Americas, but once again Peninsular winemaking overshadowed insular production, which was reduced to a cottage industry. The islands next turned to the harvest of dyestuffs, including orchilla, made from a lichen, and cochinilla or cochineal, made from an insect which infests cactus plants. By this time however, all possibilities for the Canary Islands to compete economically with Spanish America had disappeared, and in ever larger numbers the islanders turned to emigration, temporarily or permanently. Once the settlement of Spanish America was underway, Spain established administrative centers in the Canary Islands, in an attempt to halt the flagrant contraband and illicit commerce between the islands and the Americas. A Juzgado de Indias or judicial zone was established in the islands in 1566. This entity undertook, among other duties, the inspection of ships bound to and from the Americas, to assure compliance with Spanish laws. For most of the period of island trade, only Tenerife was authorized as a port of exportation; later, Puerto de La Luz near Las Palmas de Gran Canaria also became important. Islanders who ended up in the Americas were often from the two largest islands, whose speech has always showed more Andalusian traits and fewer archaic curiosities of the sort that abound in the more isolated islands. At the American end, trade with the Canary Islands was extremely limited at first, due to the strict Spanish monopolistic practices which limited official trade to a handful of Latin American ports. Beginning in the 18th century and continuing until colonial independence in the 1820's, Spain loosened its grip, forced by the growing discontent among colonists and merchants at home. Canarian ships regularly travelled to Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Santo Domingo, La Guaira, Cumaná, Chagres, Portobelo, Riohacha, Santa Marta, Cartagena, Veracruz, Campeche, Omoa, and several smaller ports. The climate of the Canary Islands is capricious. The easternmost islands receive hot winds off the Sahara Desert, and support only sparse vegetation and a few vegetable crops. The western islands are greener, but undergo periodic droughts which make stable agriculture risky. Canary Islanders repeatedly petitioned the Spanish government for relief, but the Spanish Crown was more concerned with extracting wealth from its American colonies, and the Canarian pleas fell on deaf ears. Since many islanders had already travelled to the Americas as sailors or in pursuit of island-based commercial activities, emigration to the New World was a logical next step. Emigration was not based only on economic necessity, for the Spanish government at times actively recruited islanders for various settlement plans. Emigration from the Canary Islands to the Americas began almost as soon as the latter region became settled, in small numbers and leaving no verifiable linguistic traces. It was not until the 18th century that any large-scale emigration began, following well-established trade routes to the Caribbean (Morales Padrón 1951, 1977). The Antilles and Venezuela were the preferred destinations, although Canary Islanders settled in other regions. In the last decade of the 18th century, Spain actively recruited Canary Islanders to settle areas of Louisiana, establishing a territorial presence against real or imagined French encroachment. These settlers were later abandoned following the transfer of Louisiana to French and then American ownership, and the descendents lived in relative isolation in central and extreme southeastern Louisiana. The latter group, the Isleños of St. Bernard Parish, still retains the Spanish language (Armistead 1992, Lipski 1990c, MacCurdy 1950), while descendents of the first group, known as Brulis (Armistead 1978, 1983, 1985, 1991, 1992; MacCurdy 1959; Holloway 1998) have lost the Spanish language. Canary Islanders were also settled in the western areas of Santo Domingo to counter the increasing French presence (Moya Pons 1980: 107-8, 127). To this day, the speech of this region bears great similarity with the rustic vernacular of the Canary Islands. With the coming of independence to most of Latin America in the early 19th century, Spanish trade with the New World diminished considerably. The Canary Islands increased their commercial traffic with the United States, and emigration concentrated on the two remaining Spanish-American colonies, Puerto Rico and particularly Cuba. Alvarez Nazario (1972a) has traced the successive waves of Canary Island immigration to Puerto Rico, where entire villages were formed of relocated islanders. In Cuba, the isleño became a well-known personage, characterized by a combination of industriousness and peasant superstition, and the speech and behavior of Canary Islanders figure prominently in Cuban literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Spain was always ambivalent about the Canary Islands and its inhabitants. Islanders were viewed as provisioners of passing ships, and as a ready source of cheap labor, military conscripts, and settlers for new colonies. During most of the colonial period, Canary Islanders were officially prohibited from travelling to the American continent except as soldiers. In practice, this prohibition was seldom respected. As traffic with the Caribbean grew, so did the number of Canary Islanders residing in the Americas. Given the preferred trade routes, the majority ended up in Venezuela, with a large number also reaching the Antilles. Some representative figures hint at the magnitude and linguistic importance of the Canarian presence in Latin America. In 1714, for example, the governor of Caracas observed that half the white population of the city was composed of Canary Islanders (Béthencourt Massieu 1981: 18). Following the wars of colonial independence and until 1853, official Spanish policy allowed islanders to emigrate only to the remaining Spanish possessions: Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Few took the last option, but emigration to Cuba grew steadily during the remainder of the 19th century. In 1853, a royal decree permitted emigration to all American territories, whether Spanish colonies or free nations. This increased Canary emigration to other Latin American areas, especially Argentina and Uruguay, as well as providing more immigrants for Venezuela, but the majority continued to head for Cuba. Accurate figures for immigrants during the 19th century do not exist, but an approximate picture can be reconstructed (Hernández García 1981). In the 20-year period from 1818-1838 for example, more than 18,000 islanders emigrated to the Americas, most to Cuba and proportionately fewer to Venezuela and Puerto Rico. This represents a significant proportion of the islands' population, and given the relative size of cities in Latin America in the early 19th century, a not inconsiderable shift in the linguistic balance of such places as Caracas, Havana and Santiago de Cuba. In the half century from 1840 to 1890, as many as 40,000 Canary Islanders emigrated to Venezuela alone. In the period from 1835-1850, more than 16,000 islanders emigrated to Cuba, a rate of approximately 1000 per year. In the 1860's, Canary emigration to the Americas took place at the rate of over 2000 per year, at a time when the total islands' population was perhaps 240,000. In the 2-year period 1885-6, more than 4500 Canarians emigrated to Spanish possessions (including the Philippines and Fernando Poo), of which almost 4100 went to Cuba and 150 to Puerto Rico. During the same time period, some 760 Canary Islanders emigrated to Latin American republics, with 550 going to Argentina/Uruguay and more than 100 to Venezuela. By the period 1891-1895, Canary emigration to Argentina/Uruguay was slighly more than 400, to Puerto Rico was 600, immigrants arriving in Venezuela numbered more than 2000, and to Cuba more than 17,000. By comparison, in the same half century or so, emigration to Cuba from other regions of Spain included: 14,000 from Barcelona, 18,000 from Asturias and more then 57,000 from Galicia. During the same period more than 18,000 Galicians arrived in Argentina/Uruguay, but only a handful arrived in Venezuela. These are only official figures; when clandestine emigration is taken into account, the numbers would be much larger. For example, Guerrero Balfagón (1960) has documented the illegal but significant immigration of Canary Islanders to Argentina and Uruguay in the first half of the 19th century. Following the Spanish-American War of 1898, Cuba and Puerto Rico were no longer Spanish territories, but Canary immigration to the Americas continued. Until the Spanish Civil War of 1936, most islanders arrived in Cuba, and it is difficult to find a Canary Island family today in which some family member did not go to Cuba during the early decades of the 20th century. In some of the poorer regions, entire villages were left virtually without a young male population. Many islanders returned after a few years, although some made several trips to Cuba or remained indefinitely, thus increasing the lingusitic cross-fertilization between the two regions. Following the Spanish Civil War, which created even more severe economic hardships in the Canary Islands, islanders once more turned to Venezuela as the preferred area of emigration, a trend which continued until the early 1960's. Contemporary Venezuela still harbors a large Canary-born population, which retains much of the vocabulary, traditions and speech forms of the Canary Islands, more so than in any other region of Latin America. In 19th century Cuba and Puerto Rico, Canary Islanders worked principally in agriculture, particularly the sugar industry, and to a lesser extent in urban areas. In the 20th century, islanders in Cuba and Venezuela found more employment in cities, although some moved to rural areas in search of permanent homesteads. The linguistic contributions of Canary Islanders are difficult to separate from those of Andalusia, given considerable similarities as well as the close linguistic and cultural contacts between Andalusia and the Canaries. Few exclusively Canary lexical items penetrated Latin American Spanish, so the fact that a given term is used in the Canary Islands and also in Latin America does not automatically entail direct transfer. Sometimes the choice of competing variants can be influenced by migratory trends. Thus, for example, Laguarda Trías (1982: 50) suggests that the preference for durazno instead of melocotón `peach' in the Southern Cone may reveal a Canary influence. Cubans and Venezuelans know the word gofio, although the word no longer designates the same mixture of ground toasted grains as in the Canary Islands. The word was once used in Argentina and Uruguay, especially by the canarios, a term coming to mean all rural dwellers regardless of origin (Guarnieri 1978: 32-3). The term guagua is used in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea and Puerto Rico to refer to a city bus. At the turn of the 20th century, the term referred to a horse-drawn wagon, and viajar de guagua meant `to ride for free.' The same term is found in the Canary Islands, with identical meaning, and is used even in the most remote regions, on all seven islands. Most analyses of Canary Spanish attribute this term to Cuban influence, brought back by returning islanders who had lived in Cuba. The use of guagua in Equatorial Guinea (formerly Fernando Poo) has also been attributed to the Cuban exile and slave population which was sent to the island in the mid 1800's (González Echegaray 1959: 64). The form, however, bears the characterstic shape of Guanche words, and the existence of this word among the Isleños of Louisiana, whose ancestors left the Canary Islands in the late 1700's, suggests the opposite route of transfer. The general absence of the word in the Spanish of Venezuela, where the Canary Island presence was also strong, adds to the confusion concerning the origins of guagua. Several syntactic patterns found in the Caribbean region may be of Canary origin, or may have been reinforced by the arrival of large numbers of Canary Islanders (Gutiérrez Araus 1991). One such case is the combination más nada `nothing else,' más nunca `never again,' más nadie `no one else,' used very frequently in Caribbean and Canary dialects. Other Spanish dialects prefer the reverse word order, although combinations beginning with más are occasionally found in Andalusia and elsewhere in Latin America. These combinations bear a close resemblance to Galician-Portuguese constructions, and in view of the documented Portuguese/Galician influence in the Canary Islands, may be part of the Galician/Portuguese contribution. In Cuba and Venezuela, the Canary influence cannot be entirely separated from the direct influence of Galician Spanish speakers. Non-inverted questions of the sort ¿qué tú quieres? `what do you want?' are usual in Cuban, Puerto Rican and Dominican Spanish, somewhat less so in Venezuelan and Panamanian Spanish, and quite uncommon in the remainder of Latin America, as well as being extremely rare in the Iberian Peninsula. In the Canary Islands, non-inverted questions are not as common as in the Caribbean, but among older speakers in rural regions, the frequency rises appreciably, indicating a higher rate of usage in the past, when the Canary influence on Caribbean Spanish was strongest. Galician/Portuguese also employs non-inverted questions, but not due to the cliticization of subjects but rather to the general lack of subject-verb inversion. The tight concentration of non-inverted questions in Latin American Spanish, limited to the Antilles and a few coastal Caribbean regions, correlates neatly with Canary Island influence, and also with recent Galician arrivals. Found throughout the Caribbean are combinations in which an infinitive is preceded by an overt subject, usually following a preposition, with para being the most common preposition: para yo salir `in order for me to leave,' para ellos entender `for them to understand,' antes de yo venir `before I came,' etc. Unlike noninverted questions or the word guagua, preposed subjects of infinitives are not limited to the Antilles or the Caribbean, although they are most common in that area. On the other side of the Atlantic, such constructions are usual in the Canary Islands. In peninsular Spain, infinitives with preposed subjects are not unknown in Andalusia, although never common. In Galicia, such combinations occur in Spanish as translations of Galician patterns. In Latin America, the Canary/Galician contribution converged most strongly in the Caribbean, which is where infinitives with preposed subjects are most frequent. This distribution provides circumstantial evidence in favor of a Canarian contribution in the Caribbean zone (cf. Lipski 1991). Phonologically, Canary Island Spanish could easily be confused with Cuban, Panamanian or Venezuelan Spanish by the casual observer (cf. Almeida 1989a, 1989b, 1990; Alvar 1959, Catalán 1960, 1964; Lorenzo Ramos 1976; Samper Padilla 1990). Even members of these speech communities are not always able to distinguish between a Canary Islander and a speaker of Caribbean Spanish. Although some have seen a direct Canary Island influence in Caribbean Spanish pronunciation (e.g. Alvarez Nazario 1972a), this cannot be objectively verified. The phonological patterns of the Canary Islands continue the patterns of consonantal weakening found throughout southern Spain, but do not differ qualitatively from Andalusian and Extremaduran dialects. Canary Island immigration to the Caribbean added to phonetic tendencies which were already well-developed, but the overall Canarian contribution is largely supportive rather than innovative.
The Portuguese presence in the Canary Islands began in the 15th century, and continued for several centuries thereafter. As a result, Canary Island Spanish has absorbed numerous Portuguese/Galician lexical items, and possibly some grammatical constructions. The Canary Islands were known to the ancients of the Mediterranean region, only to be collectively forgotten during the Dark Ages. The development of the compass, the rudder, and the availability of more accurate maps spurred exploration of the near Atlantic beginning in the 13th century, and Genoese, Moroccans, and possibly even Castilians had visited the Canary Islands by the end of the century. In 1336 the Genoan sailor Lancelotto Malocello arrived on the island of Lanzarote, whose name is derived from that of the Italian navigator. The first known map of the Canary Islands was drawn in Mallorca, in 1339. In 1341 the king of Portugal sent a military expedition to the islands, under the command of Niccoloso da Recco; Florentines, Genoese, Portuguese, and Castilians were included in the force. Four indigenous Canarians were captured and taken as slaves; the soldiers also obtained samples of gofio, the staple food made from toasted grains, Canary millo or millet, and several cultural artefacts. During the following years the king of Mallorca and the Avignon Pope Clement VI authorized settlements, and by 1352 a Catalan- Aragonese expedition, headed by Arnau Roger, left for the islands with the intent of establishing a colony and converting the native Guanche population to Christianity. The shipwreck of a Castilian vessel in 1382 briefly brought a Castilian presence to the islands, and by 1402 the newly arrived French conquerors described the activities of previously-established Castilian and Aragonese pirates. By this time, hundreds of Guanches had been sold as slaves in Morocco and Andalusia, while European diseases had decimated the Guanche population remaining on the islands. The definitive European colonization of the Canary Islands began with the French invasions of 1402 and the succeeding years. The Guanches resisted tenaciously, but the French prevailed along coastal areas, and a few years later the `Kingdom of the Canaries' was proclaimed. Indigenous uprisings and resistance did not cease until the final decades of the 15th century, and at best the European colonies were no more than fortified coastal enclaves surrounded by hostile natives. By 1424 the ships of Portuguese Prince Henry `the Navigator' attempted to take possession of the Canary Islands. These initial skirmishes were followed by full-scale Portuguese invasions in 1446 and 1468, although the Portuguese never wrested control of the islands from the French. By the end of the 15th century the Canary Islands already contained a considerable Portuguese population, thus beginning the linguistic cross-fertilization that was to shape the emerging Canary Spanish dialect. With the death of King Henry IV of Portugal in 1474 a fierce war between Portugal and Castile broke out. The Catholic Kings Ferdinand and Isabella claimed the `Guinea Coast' (the Senegambia region and the Windward coast to the south), in an attempt to slow the Portuguese expansion in West Africa. The Portuguese responded by stepping up their agression against the Canary Islands. A peace treaty signed in Alcáçovas in 1479 resulted in Castile's desisting in its claims to West Africa and the definitive renunciation of navigation rights in African waters. The Portuguese agreed to stop their attacks on the Canary Islands, but the Portuguese presence on the islands continued to grow, dominating agriculture and commerce during the 16th century. Spain launched its first serious effort to capture the Canary Islands in 1461, with attacks by Diego García de Herrera. In 1478 the Catholic Kings sent another expedition headed by Juan Rejón, who built a fort on Gran Canaria. From this beachhead Spain began its systematic attacks on the native population, obtaining a final surrender in 1483. Spanish attacks on Tenerife began in 1496, and by the end of the 15th century the Canary Islands were under nominal Spanish control, although native insurrection continued for many more years. The Spanish occupation of the Canary Islands coincided with the massive deportation of Guanches, many of whom were sent as slaves to Spain and other European countries. The Guanches who remained on the islands were forced to work on the estates and in the businesses run by the new masters. A contigent of Spanish Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula arrived in the islands beginning in 1492; following the establishment of the Inquisition in 1499 some emigrated to the Americas. Although Spain effectively controlled the Canary Islands by the turn of the 16th century, heavy immigration of Portuguese and Genoan colonists continued, spurred by the liberal immigration policies of Alfonso Fernández de Lugo, the first governor of Tenerife and La Palma. Fernández de Lugo recognized that the islands contained much fertile land, and encouraged the planting of sugar cane. The first sugar mill was constructed in 1484 in Agaete, on Gran Canaria. Another mill was built by a Genoan entrepreneur in 1501 in Gáldar, Gran Canaria, and much Genoan investment capital arrived to support the new sugar industry. During the 16th century numerous Portuguese immigrated to the Canary Islands. Many came from the Madeira islands, where they were engaged in sugar cane cultivation. Others arrived directly from Portugal and worked in agriculture. Portuguese settlers also worked as artesans and laborers, and a considerable number managed to acquire small properties. At the beginning of the sugar industry in the Canary Islands the technical personnel were almost all Portuguese, having obtained their experience in Madeira, whence sugar cultivation techniques had arrived via Genoans and Sicilians, who had transplanted the sugar industry from the Mediterranean to the Portuguese Atlantic islands during the 15th century. Guanche slaves were eventually deported from the Canary Islands and sent to Madeira, thus forming a vicious circle of sugar and slavery, which would be replicated a century later in the infamous sugar-slave-rum triangle encompassing Europe, West Africa, and the Caribbean. As the Guanche population was diminishing--through deportations and European diseases--the newly arrived colonists turned to the importation of black slaves from the Senegambia and from the nearby Barbary Coast (Lobo Cabrera 1982). The arrival of black slaves in the Canary Islands coincides chronologically with the initial presence of West Africans in Portugal and Andalusia. Granda (1972) speculates as to whether a bozal Spanish was ever formed in the Canary Islands, similar to the Afro-Hispanic pidgin which was to be found in major Peninsular cities during the 16th and part of the 17th centuries. To date, no credible evidence has come to date, but the sociodemographic conditions on some of the islands were similar to those which obtained in the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish also captured `Moorish' slaves from the neighboring coast of Morocco and Mauritania, thereby creating a linguistic and cultural mosaic which presaged the African communities in the large cities of Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries. Berber slaves arrived in the eastern Canary Islands, the `moriscos' who served as crewmembers on Canary ships. By the end of the 16th century, it is estimated that the `moriscos' constituted a majority of the population of Lanzarote. By 1600 the Guanches had for all intents and purposes vanished from Canary life, although a few remote settlements continued to exist in isolation. Portuguese emigration to the Canaries dwindled during the first decades of the 17th century, as Portugal fought to free itself from Spanish domination. With the definitive independence of Portugal in 1640, Portuguese immigration to the Canary Islands increased once more, spurred by the economic devastation suffered in Portugal, a situation exacerbated by the war with the Dutch over African and South American colonies. The Portuguese presence in the Canary Islands profoundly affected the vocabulary of Canary Spanish, and may have left traces in grammatical constructions as well. The now somewhat moribund non-inverted questions of the sort ¿Qué tú quieres?, OVERT SUBJECT + INFINITIVE (te digo eso para tu entender las consecuencias), and the combinations más nunca, más nada, más nadie, are all found both in Portuguese and in Canary Island Spnaish, as well as in Latin American dialects heavily influenced by Canary immigration. Scholars have proposed that dozens of lexical items also bear a Portuguese imprint. Of these, faca `dagger,' fechar, `to close, bolt shut,' guinchar `to scream,' jeito `cunningness,' rapadura `crystalized unrefined sugar' are the most notorious, but hundreds of other supposed Portuguese incursions have been collected by Pérez Vidal (1991); Morera (1994a) gives a more detailed analysis.. Many of these words have to do with meterological phenomena, particularly variants of light rain and drizzle: cheire `thick fog/drizzle,' cherizo `cold drizzle,' chobasco `drizzle,' choricera `drizzle with strong breeze,' chumbar `persistent drizzle,' chumirisquear `intermittent drizzle,' chumisca `drizzle of short duration,' churiza `persistent drizzle with light breeze,' churume `drizzle with breeze,' churivisca/chuvisca `drizzle of short duration,' chuvizna `drizzle,' gargón `drizzle with northwest wind,' garubar `light rain with wind,' garuga `fine drizzle with fog,' garuja/jaruya `drizzle,' moliña `cold drizzle without wind,' moraliña `drizzle with wind,' morriña `drizzle,' muña `light rain,' etc. (Pérez Vidal 1991: 154-9). Most of these items are found only regionally and only among older rural residents, although some are known throughout the islands.
Numerous monographs and articles have explored various facets of Canary Island Spanish, initially from a purely descriptive perspective, and more recently incorporating sociolinguistics, phonological theory, syntactic theory, and semantics. Medina López (1996) surveys the literature, and the remaining articles in Medina López and Corbella Díaz (1996) provide a useful cross-section of recent research. Almeida and Díaz Alayón (1988) and Lorenzo Ramos (1988) summarize many features of Canary Island Spanish. Medina López (1995, 1999) offers a trans-Atlantic perspective on Canary Spanish. Alvar (1975b) is a linguistic atlas of the Canary Islands, based on Alvar's personal fieldwork. As with similar linguistic atlases from Spain and other European countries, the principal methodology consisted in the elicitation of individual words—often monosyllabic—in isolation, with the result that apparent patterns of regional variation appear which do not always correspond with observed speech in the same regions. Alvar (1959) is an early monograph on the Spanish of Tenerife, while Alvar (1972) provides a first glimpse into social variation in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Almeida (1989, 1990) provides monographic treatments of rural and urban Gran Canaria speech, while Samper Padilla 1990, 1996) offers a sociolinguistic treatment of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria utilizing contemporary variational methodology. Torres Stinga (1995) is a monographic treatment of Lanzarote Spanish, while Morera (1994b) describes the popular speech of Fuerteventura. C. Alvar (1975) conducted a rudimentary survey in a fishing village on La Gomera, while Trujillo (1970) is a monograph on the speech of a village on Tenerife. Lorenzo Ramos (1976) is an exceptionally detailed monograph on another town on Tenerife, and many typically Canarian traits are described in this book. Trujillo (1978) is a phonetic study of the whistled language of La Gomera, now virtually defunct. Piñero Piñero (2000) is a study of verbal constructions in the educated speech of Las Palmas, while Troya Déniz (1998) describes periphrastic constructions based on the infinitive in the same dialect. Almeida (1999) examines aspects of rhythm in Canary speech.. Medina López (1993) gives a glimpse into the sociolinguistics of pronominal usage in one rural community. Cáceres Lorenzo (1992) is a more general study of adverbial expressions.
Although there is considerable regional and social variation in Canary Island Spanish, there is considerable homogeneity in pronunciation, with the major differentiators being social class and the rural/urban axis, together with age/generation. The principal features are: (1) Syllable-final /s/ is uniformly aspirated in preconsonantal and word-final prevocalic position throughout the Canary Islands. Phrase-final /s/ is more frequently lost. The isolated dialect of El Hierro is reputed to tenaciously retain syllable- and word-final /s/ as a sibilant. While this may once have been true, currently such sibilant pronunciation is found only among the oldest rural residents, combined with high rates of aspiration and loss of /s/ in the same positions. There are also some elderly speakers in isolated villages of La Gomera who spontaneously retain word-final /s/ as [s] in some instances. (2) No Canary Island dialect distinguishes /s/ and /θ/, despite occasional assertions that the dialects of El Hierro maintain this opposition. Ceceo or realization of all sibilants as [θ] is quite rare. The usual Canary Island /s/ is a plain alveolar fricative, similar to the /s/ found widely in Latin America and western Andalusia. Table 1 gives data on pronunciation of /s/ in key Canary Island dialects, the vestigial Canary-derived speech of the isleños of Louisiana, and selected dialects of southern Spain and the Caribbean. (3) Phrase-final and word-final prevocalic /n/ is usually velarized in Canary Island Spanish, and sometimes the velar nasal disappears, leaving only a nasalized vowel. There is no evidence of a completely denasalized final vowel, e.g. in the third person plural verbal paradigm, as sometimes occurs in vernacular Andalusian Spanish. At the same time, the rates of retention of alveolar [n] are higher in Canary Island dialects than in Andalusian and Caribbean Spanish. Moreover, in the more isolated islands such as El Hierro and La Gomera, where in rural areas the speech is in general more archaic, rates of retention of final [n] are proportionately higher. (4) Striking in the speech of all the islands is the retention—general in rural speech and increasingly less common in urban speech—of the palatal liquid /ʎ/, which when present is always given a liquid pronunciation, and is never realized as a fricative. Generally considered an archaism in the modern Spanish-speaking world, retention of /ʎ/ in the Canary Islands correlates well with other archaic features found in the more isolated Canary dialects. Among Canary Islanders, awareness of the existence of /ʎ/ is high, but urban speakers report that only old speakers and those from totally rural areas use this phoneme. In reality, even many younger urban Canary Islanders occasionally use /ʎ/, but its exclusive use appears to be on the decline throughout the archipelago. (5) There is considerable reduction and neutralization of syllable- and word-final liquids in Canary Spanish, with no single phonetic result predominating, even in the same dialect region. Word- and phrase-finally, total loss of /l/ and /r/ is the most common manifestation, as it is throughout Andalusia, Extremadura, and surrounding areas, but lateralization of final /r/ to [l] occurs sometimes, particularly in Las Palmas. Word-internal preconsonantal liquids show a much greater variation, with [l], [r], [Ø], [h], doubling of the following consonant, and even [n] being the most common manifestations. Currently there is almost no trace of the vocalization of syllable-final /l/ and /r/ to [i], a trait once common in rural Canary Island speech. (6) The affricate /č/ shows a variety of realizations throughout the Canary Islands, with a fronted variant approximating [tj] being the most common alternative to the etymologically expected [tʃ]. Deaffrication to [ʃ] is quite uncommon, in comparison with western Andalusia where the fricative pronunciation predominates. (7) Intervocalic /d/ is frequently lost in the desinence –ado and to a lesser extent in other contexts. Massive loss of intervocalic /d/ is correlated with the lower sociolinguistic registers. Word-finally, /d/ routinely elides, and often remains elided in plural forms. (8) The most striking departure from a simple rule of `continuant spreading' comes in the Spanish dialect of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands. In Las Palmas Spanish (LPS), as in all other Canarian varieties, voiced obstruents receive a continuant pronunciation following syllable-final consonants, thus falling in line with `mainstream' Spanish dialects. However, among the lower sociolinguistic strata, although /b/, /d/ and /g/ are uniformly fricative following [h] < /s/, when preconsonantal /s/ is elided altogether, the following obstruent receives a STOP articulation (cf. Almeida 1989: 57; 1990: 48-52; Alvar 1971: 100; Catalán 1960, 1964; Felix 1979; Samper Padilla 1990: chap. 3; Trujillo 1981: 164-5). This results in minimal pairs such as [laβaka] la vaca vs. [labaka(h)] las vacas `the cow(s).' Catalán (1960) describes the situation thus: `la aspiración, al desaparecer, convierte a la consonante sonora inmediata en una oclusiva [b], [d], [g],' noting that residents of Tenerife, for whom voiced obstruents are always fricative following any manifestation of /s/, interpret Las Palmas speech as containing an /n/ (after which voiced obstruents are stops in all Spanish dialects): lambaca < las vacas, landó < las dos, etc. Catalán (1964) notes that this `refuerzo de la explosión' also occurs before voiceless obstruents, citing the novel by Pancho Guerra (1977: 67) in which the author transcribes Las Palmas as Lan Parmas, in mimicking the speech of the latter city. Almeida (1990: 48-52) and Samper Padilla (1990: chap. 3) provide data on the sociolinguistic stratification of this pronunciation, while Almeida (1989: 57) provides data suggesting a rural origin for this process, which is not found elsewhere in the Canary Islands. The phonetic particulars of the stop/fricative alternation in LPS have been described by several observers, with results which do not always converge. Alvar (1972: 100) asserts that the stop pronunciation is most frequent in the case of /b/: `se produce una tensión articulatoria que lleva a la h al alargamiento de la fase tensiva de la b con relación siempre oclusiva ... y a veces, parecía percibirse un conato de ensordecimiento.' Alvar (1972: 102) also observed the apparent nasalization of preconsonantal /s/, although noting that gemination of the voiced obstruent was more common: `entonces, la posición débil de la h y fuerte de la b permitió la atracción de la primera a la realización de la segunda: es el grupo -bb-, que se documenta sin dificultades ... la doble b ... exige una tensión articulatoria muy fuerte que ... obliga a la diferenciación de un mismo sonido articulado en dos momentos diferences ... la lengua resuelve la cuestión eliminando una de esas oclusivas.' Trujillo (1981: 165) also claims prior gemination of the voiced obstruent in compensation for the loss of /s/: `... una geminación, acompañada de gran tensión articulatoria, aunque en pronunciación rápida se reduce normalmente a una simple oclusiva de efecto acústico muy semejante a la geminada, pues mantiene siempre toda su tensión.' Trujillo (1981: 164-5) explains the matter thus:
... ante consonante sonora continua que pudiera tener variante oclusiva, la sonorización de [-h] y su posterior asimilación resultaba perfectamente viable, porque se mantenía la integridad silábica, alargando la articulación y dividiéndola en dos, con una oclusión en medio ... debió pasarse, pues, de la sonorización de la aspirada a la igualación de ambas consonantes en una articulación única, partida por una oclusión que, al mismo tiempo, aumentaba considerablemente la intensidad de la consonante ... el resultado ... es con frecuencia una geminación, acompañada de gran tensión articulatoria ... en todo caso, geminada, alargada o más o menos breve, lo que se conserva inconmovible es la tensión fuerte.
Trujillo (1981: 165) claims prior gemination of the voiced obstruent in compensation for the loss of /s/: `... una geminación, acompañada de gran tensión articulatoria, aunque en pronunciación rápida se reduce normalmente a una simple oclusiva de efecto acústico muy semejante a la geminada, pues mantiene siempre toda su tensión.' For Trujillo, partial assimilation of [h] to a following consonant, first voicing and then point of articulation, eventually provoked an increased articulatory tenseness. Almeida (1982, 1989) suggests the opposite course of events, namely that increased articulatory tension has induced gemination and/or shortening of the preceding vowel. According to Trujillo's description, preconsonantal /s/ is never realized as [h] in LPS, so that the only realizations of the combination /s/ + VOICED OBSTRUENT are a single or geminate voiced stop (preconsonantal sibilant [s] is artificial and unnatural in this dialect and is not to be considered as a legitimate phonological variant). Almeida (1982), on the other hand, tabulated many instances where /s/ remained as [h], but where a single or geminate stop instantiated the following voiced obstruent. Felix (1979) provides a somewhat different description of LPS, claiming that /d/ is realized as a stop following /r/ (as in orden) and following sibilant [s] (as in desde). /b/ is pronounced as a stop following sibilant [s]. The stop articulation is retained when the /s/ is aspirated or deleted altogether. Felix also states that the stop articulation following elided /s/ occurs only after final plural -/s/ or final /-s/ in words like pues, dos and más, and suggests a functional hypothesis. In second person singular verb forms ending in elided /-s/, Felix claims that a following voiced obstruent is realized as a fricative. Many of these conclusions, particularly the noncontinuant realization of /d/ following [s] and [r], are contradicted by other researchers, including Samper Padilla (1990: 67). My own fieldwork, carried out on LPS in 1983 and involving extensive recorded materials, confirms occlusive pronunciation of voiced obstruents following elided /s/, but reveal a dearth of conclusive cases involving [h] followed by a voiced obstruent. Regardless of discrepancies among different observers, and of differences in research technique (Alvar 1972 and Trujillo 1981 relied on real- time transcription, Felix 1979 employed tape recordings, while Almeida 1982 not only taped examples, but subjected them to spectrographic analysis), a common core of observations remains, which challenges currently available models of Spanish phonology. (9) There is some voicing of intervocalic/word-initial postvocalic /p/, /t/, and /k/ throughout the Canary Islands (Torres Stinga 1995:62-4; Trujillo 1980a; Morera 1994:55). (10) Intervocalic /s/ is occasionally aspirated or lost, although not to the extent found, e.g., in Honduras, El Salvador, and New Mexico (Torres Stinga 1995:73-5). Morera (1994:65) reports on the scarcity of this variant in Fuerteventura.
The frequent emigration of Canary Islanders over the past four centuries resulted in numerous transplanted Canarian communities throughout North and South America. Linguistic traces of Canary Island Spanish continue to persist in the Caribbean, particuarly in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. During the course of the 18th century, Spain sent large numbers of settlers from the Canary Islands to hold the line against French incursions at the western edge of the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo. The significant proportion of Canary Islanders in rural western regions and also in the capital city may account for some of the features of Dominican Spanish, particularly the use of non-inverted questions. Golibart (1976) believes that vocalization of syllable-final /s/ and /r/ (e.g. mujer > mujei, carta > caita, algo > aigo) in the northern Cibao region of the Dominican Republic is of Canary Island origin, although this pronunciation is very rare in contemporary Canary Spanish. Megenney (1990a: 80f.) hints at an African origin for the same pronunciation. Few other areas of Latin America have ever manifestated this phenomenon. Puerto Rican jíbaro speech of the 19th century apparently had this trait, now absent in all Puerto Rican dialects (Alvarez Nazario 1990: 80f.). Vocalization of liquids was also prevalent among the negros curros of 19th century Cuba, free blacks living in Havana who adopted a distinctive manner of speaking (Bachiller y Morales 1883, Ortiz 1986), more related to Andalusian than to Afro-Hispanic patterns. It is thus possible that vocalization of liquids was once more common in many Spanish-speaking regions, being now reduced to a few small areas. Granda (1991) believes that liquid vocalization is due primarily to sociolinguistic marginality, rather than to substrate influences. In Cuba, immigration from Spain was especially heavy in the second half of the 19th century, particularly from Galicia/Asturias and the Canary Islands. Canarian immigration peaked in the first decades of the 20th century, and was responsible for a not inconsiderable amount of linguistic transfer between the two territories. So concentrated was Spanish immigration that Cubans began to refer to all Spaniards from the Peninsula as gallegos `Galicians,' and to the Canary Islanders as isleños `islanders.' Alvarez Nazario (1972) gives an overview of the Canary Island influence on Puerto Rican Spanish.
Table 1: Behavior of /s/ in Canary Island and other Spanish dialects ------/sC/ /s#C/ /s##/ /s#V/ /s/#v [s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] ------Isleño 11 76 13 3 62 35 4 11 85 49 30 21 10 57 33
Fuerteventura (rural) 3 82 15 0 88 12 0 17 83 53 46 1 1 92 7
La Gomera (rural) 5 93 2 2 94 4 11 12 77 84 11 5 4 93 3
Gran Canaria (rural) 0 88 12 0 87 13 0 11 88 73 21 6 0 94 6
El Hierro (rural)
46 54 0 15 84 1 70 16 14 89 9 2 13 87 0
Lanzarote (rural) 7 82 11 0 83 17 0 20 80 74 24 2 3 80 17
La Palma (rural) 3 89 8 1 93 6 2 18 80 48 52 0 3 94 3
Tenerife (rural) 2 66 32 0 90 10 3 19 78 84 16 0 3 87 10
Sevilla 0 95 5 0 91 9 5 2 93 69 10 21 1 46 54
Granada 0 82 18 0 85 15 1 2 97 0 15 85 2 50 48
Cuba 3 97 0 2 75 23 61 13 26 48 28 25 10 53 27
Dominican Republic 8 17 75 5 25 70 36 10 54 50 5 45 17 22 61
Panama 2 89 9 1 82 17 25 6 69 69 17 14 2 39 59
Puerto Rico 3 92 5 4 69 27 46 22 32 45 32 23 16 53 31
Venezuela 7 40 53 3 47 50 38 16 46 57 26 17 15 52 33 ------Legend: C = consonant; # = word boundary; ## = phrase boundary; V = stressed vowel; v = unstressed vowel
Table 2: Behavior of word-final /n/ in Canary Island and other dialects ------Dialect /n/## /n/#V [n] [ŋ] [Ø] [n] [ŋ] [Ø] ------Isleño 82 2 16 94 0 6 Fuerteventura 30 54 16 50 37 13 (Pto. Rosario) Fuerteventura 17 26 57 56 21 23 (rural) La Gomera 27 51 22 55 34 11 (S. Sebastián) La Gomera (rural) 49 18 33 80 11 9 Las Palmas de G. C. 18 49 33 54 34 12 G. Canaria (rural) 29 29 42 73 10 17 El Hierro 71 5 24 96 0 4 (Valverde) Lanzarote 39 32 29 57 17 26 (Arrecife) Lanzarote (rural) 31 8 61 76 4 20 La Palma (S. Cruz) 3 63 34 55 23 22 La Palma (rural) 34 32 32 61 18 21 S. Cruz de Tenerife 13 51 36 63 19 18 Tenerife (rural) 36 35 29 63 26 11 Sevilla 2 42 36 40 38 22 Granada 0 77 23 48 35 17 Cuba 8 54 38 3 59 38 Panama 1 88 11 5 80 15 Puerto Rico 22 69 9 8 79 13 Venezuela 1 86 13 13 72 15 ------Legend: /n/ ## = phrase-final (muy bien); /n/ #V = word-final prevocalic (bien hecho)

subset: commoncrawl


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|665 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA
room 947
I am a Professor of Computer Science at Boston University, a founder of Sealance Corp., and until recently, a professor at Tel Aviv University's School of Computer Science and a research scientist at Columbia University.
My research focus is information security, cryptography and algorithms. I am particularly interested in what happens when cryptographic systems meet the real world, where computation is faulty and leaky.
I head the Laboratory for Experimental Information Security (LEISec), where my group investigates side-channel information leakage in computers through physical emanations (e.g., acoustic, electric and electromagnetic) and software (e.g., cache contention in local and cloud computing), and networks (e.g., identifying encrypted videos).
I cofounded SCIPR Lab, where we construct cryptographic zero-knowledge SNARK proof systems for ensuring the integrity of computation conducted on untrusted, faulty and malicious platforms.
I'm interested in blockchain-based cryptographic protocols, and am a founding scientist of the Zcash privacy-preserving cryptocurrency which implements our Zerocash protocol.
Other research interests include tamper resilience, homomorphic encryption, special-purpose code-breaking hardware and various aspects of network and systems security. See my publications for more information.


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Too predictable. That's the persistent complaint about the Academy Awards, whose drama generally is sapped by a glut of earlier award shows that spell out what films will win at the Oscars before the show starts.
Not this time — at least for Sunday's top prize.
With the best-picture lineup expanded to 10 films instead of the usual five, the science-fiction spectacle and box-office behemoth "Avatar" is head-to-head with the low-budgeted, low-grossing Iraq War story "The Hurt Locker."
The acting prizes look as predictable as ever, with Oscars expected to go to Sandra Bullock as best actress for "The Blind Side," Jeff Bridges as best actor for "Crazy Heart," Mo'Nique as supporting actress for "Precious" and Christoph Waltz as supporting actor for "Inglourious Basterds."
"Avatar" won best drama at the Golden Globes, traditionally a good gauge for how the Oscars might play out. But the Globes were nearly two months ago, the first major ceremony in the long buildup to the Oscars. A lot has happened since.
"The Hurt Locker" dominated honors from Hollywood trade groups, including guilds representing directors, writers and producers. It also won best-picture and five other prizes at the British Academy Film Awards.
Bigelow would be the first woman ever to win best director, a prize Cameron earned with 1997's "Titanic."
And one of Bigelow's fellow producers on "The Hurt Locker," Nicolas Chartier, has been barred from attending the Oscars after he ran afoul of the awards rules by sending e-mails to academy voters urging them to support his film over "Avatar."
Overseers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took some heat after doubling the field to 10 films last summer. Many actors, filmmakers and others in Hollywood wondered if the Oscars had lowered their standards by letting so many films into the best-picture race.
But the move has brought a different energy to the show, both for producers with films in the running and TV viewers who have gradually lost interest in the Oscars. The ceremony's TV ratings sank to an all-time low two years ago, then bounced back a bit last year.
The top awards were utterly predictable both years, "No Country for Old Men" dominating two years ago and "Slumdog Millionaire" winning last time.
"People seem to be talking about the movies. The idea that we've gone to 10 is something that's been a little controversial to some people, even though we've done it before," said Tom Sherak, academy president. The Oscars often had 10 or more best-picture nominees until 1943.
"It's created a conversation about the movies, and I don't think there's a clear-cut winner. We want it to be fun to watch, for people to have an interest in seeing what's going to happen with these 10 movies," Sherak said.
Also in the running for best picture: the football drama "The Blind Side," the sci-fi thriller "District 9," the British teen tale "An Education," the World War II saga "Inglourious Basterds," the Harlem story "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," the Jewish domestic chronicle "A Serious Man," the animated adventure "Up" and the recession-era yarn "Up in the Air."
Along with "The Hurt Locker," which took in just $12.6 million domestically, competitors such as "An Education" and "A Serious Man" have found relatively small audiences.
The lineup is balanced with huge hits, led by "Avatar," the biggest modern blockbuster with $700 million domestically and $2.6 billion worldwide. "Up" and "The Blind Side" both topped $200 million domestically, while "Inglourious Basterds" and "District 9" were $100 million hits.
Academy organizers also aim to liven up the show, continuing a trend they began last year by hiring song-and-dance man Hugh Jackman as host, rather than a traditional comedian.
Sunday's show features past host Steve Martin paired with Alec Baldwin, the first time since 1987 that the Oscars have had more than one emcee.
Lifetime-achievement Oscars have been moved to a separate event to speed up the pace of the show.
Oscar producers Adam Shankman and Bill Mechanic also are mixing up the cast of awards presenters with young talent such as Miley Cyrus and "Twilight" co-stars Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner and veterans such as Sean Penn, Barbra Streisand and Samuel L. Jackson.
"New Hollywood and classic Hollywood. Love it," Shankman said.
"You'll see that quite a bit," Mechanic said. "Not paired together, but you'll see a respect for the traditions of Hollywood and a welcoming of new Hollywood."
And a scramble by Oscar bosses come Monday to see how the ratings went.


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Call 214.509.4254 with questions about a criminal protective order or a Temporary EX PARTE order.
Show All Answers
Allen has an alarm ordinance to help reduce the number of false alarms. This helps first responders remain available to respond to true emergencies. All homes and businesses with alarm systems must register them with the City of Allen. Alarm registration must be renewed annually.
The non-emergency number is 214.509.4321.
You can request a copy of a crash or incident report online, by mail or in person. No fax, email or phone requests are accepted. Cost for an crash report is $6.
Requests must be made during regular business hours (8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday) at Allen Police Headquarters, 205 W McDermott Drive. Visitors may pay the $6 report fee with cash, check, money order, Visa, MasterCard or American Express. Credit cards not accepted after 4:30 p.m.
Written requests may be submitted to the Allen Police Department by mail. Sender must include a self-addressed stamped envelope and $6 report fee paid by check or money order. Mail requests to:
Allen Police DepartmentAttn: Records Unit205 W. McDermott DriveAllen, Texas 75013
Yes. Kids ages 10 through 16 can't be in a public place or on the premises of any establishment after 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday or after midnight on Friday and Saturday.
The curfew doesn't apply if juveniles are with a parent or guardian, on an errand for their parent or guardian, at a church/school event or work-related activity, or dealing with an emergency.
Juveniles who stay out too late can face fines of up to $500. Their parents can be fined if they knowingly permit—or, by insufficient control, allow—children to break curfew. Owners, operators and employees who allow juveniles to hang out in their establishments past curfew may also be subject to the fine.
The curfew was originally established in 2007 and must be reviewed every three years, in accordance with state law. The ordinance was last renewed on June 25, 2019.
All incident report requests must be submitted in writing in one of the following ways. You must provide your incident case number in your request. Fees may apply.
If you have questions, please call 214.509.4350 or email firstname.lastname@example.com.
To check on your case or talk to the assigned investigator, call 214.509.4239.
All Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests must be submitted in writing in one of the following ways:
Yes. Citizens, media representatives, police department job applicants and others must complete a Ride Along application and submit it at the front desk of Allen Police Department Headquarters (205 W McDermott Drive).
Call 214.509.4321 to inquire about impounded cars.
City ordinance prohibits the use of motor assisted electric or gas scooters on any highway, street, alley, path, or trail within the city limits except on paths or trails set aside for the exclusive operation of bicycles. A person may not operate a motor assisted scooter on any path or trail within a city park except on paths and trails set aside for the exclusive operation of bicycles. Scooters may be ridden on sidewalks.
State law considers vehicles abandoned if they meet one of the following criteria:
Vehicles with expired registrations are not automatically considered abandoned under state law. However, they may be deemed junk vehicles and subject to code enforcement action.
Report abandoned vehicles with MyAllenUse the MyAllen app to send reports on-the-go, or you can use MyAllen directly from your web browser. Create an account and you're all set!
By City ordinance, a vehicle is considered "junked" if it meets both of the following criteria:
If the vehicle remains inoperable more than 72 consecutive hours on public property, it may be declared a public nuisance if it meets certain criteria.
Report junked vehicles with MyAllenUse the MyAllen app to send reports on-the-go, or you can use MyAllen directly from your web browser. Create an account and you're all set!
Any person with a "reportable conviction or adjudication" who resides, works or attends school in Allen must register as a sex offender with the Allen Police Department. Call 214.509.4239 to get information regarding registration.
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Considering the narrow lanes on the Harry Kelley Memorial Bridge, also known as the Route 50 Bridge, it's a wonder there have not been a rash of accidents or at least busted rearview mirrors. Although no serious accidents have been reported as a result of the construction, one incident reported in this week's "Cops and Courts" section revealed the work is getting under some drivers' skin more than others. It appears a 52-year-old woman became agitated over a near-collision as her vehicle and another merged into the single, eastbound lane on the bridge. According to police reports, an officer observed the woman approach the driver of the other car at the light at the foot of the bridge. In an apparent fit of road rage, she reportedly began screaming and kicking the vehicle's door, all the while three young kids were in the backseat. She was eventually charged with disorderly conduct and malicious destruction of property before vowing to discover where the motorist lived and threatening to kill her. For what it's worth, the bridge project should be complete by May 11.
Disturbing as it is, five people have died tragically in the area in the first four months of the year. First, there were the four people who died on the same day last month in horrible pedestrian accidents, one on Coastal Highway in Ocean City and another on Route 13 in Pocomoke. Three weeks after those fatalities comes the brutal murder of a well-known local woman in her home in Mystic Harbour, a peaceful West Ocean City residential community. It's interesting to point out this is the second murder to take place in this neighborhood in the last 15 months. Although it sounds strange to say, considering there have been two homicides in a short amount of time, this is an anomaly. I know that neighborhood well and it's a safe place to call home. Residents in that community realize this. However, it's understandable if even the most rational are little guarded these days in light of what's transpired.
The risk was not worth the reward, Gov. Martin O'Malley essentially said recently when he announced public lands intended for conservation are not available for potential wind power generation sites. Although the situation raises some interesting water cooler conversation, the administration was right to leave land, owned by the people of Maryland set aside so as not to be developed, immune from any kind of manmade influences, even if its intentions are noble. Upon word the state wants no parts of any commercial wind generation project on its own protected land, critics say the alternative energy movement was dealt a major setback in western Maryland, a prime site for the electric-generating windmills common in other mountainous parts of the country. That's being overly dramatic in my view. This announcement only deals with land held in fee-simple ownership by Maryland and managed by the state's Department of Natural Resources. Most of the properties ruled out are heavily forested, raising the question of whether trees should be cut down to make way for the alternative energy producers. This would seem to us to be an example of offsetting a good, creating alternative energy through wind power, with a bad, destroying a precious resource. Maryland will one day have windmills generating some energy for its residents, but it should not come with an ironic twist to it.
Being inquisitive, some may say meddlesome, is part of being a newspaperman. That's why I am intrigued by yard sales. I have neither bought anything at a yard sale nor ever held one, but I do always take a look at what's up for grabs. There were yard sales in my neighborhood recently, and it was amazing to see what was available for the bargain hunters. Items included an automobile, couches, screen doors, tools, benches, lawnmowers and lots of clothes. Indeed, yard sales have gone upscale with the goods found at yard sales these days a lot nicer than they used to be. Perhaps that's why one sign posted around town the other day invited folks to a yard sale where "free coffee" was being provided.


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"I'm an arsehole!" exclaims Tim Minchin, interjecting to round off a thought as I'm a few words into a fresh question. "There's your headline". In reality of course, he's far from it - he's just managed to draw a discussion about his extensive schedule of charity gigs and the list of good causes that his work often benefits to a thoroughly illogical conclusion, a playful and self-aware joke from a man whose canon largely revolves around ideas of 'reason' and 'logic'.
His career as internationally renowned funny-man, a songwriter that employs comedy (his rock-star caricature guise now almost unmistakeable) as a vehicle to examine our morals, ethics and "hypocrisy" is a relatively new development in the grand scheme of things, but already he's selling out arenas in both his native Australia and over here in the UK. It's his most recent spate of performances that has put him on the phone with me today – the two sell out shows at the Royal Albert Hall as part of his tour with the 55-piece Heritage Orchestra this summer having been filmed and released to his adoring public. When I ask Minchin for something of a self-critique of the gigs his answer seems restrained by a subtle modesty, but he's clearly proud of the performances nonetheless:
"I think it went really well … I mean the reaction seemed really good. I don't really read reviews and stuff, but as far as I know it was really well received. ... My shows have always been quite theatrical and quite razzle-dazzle, but I think the orchestra shows were funny, and sometimes just kind of crazy, and sometimes quite quiet and moving. It did what it intended to do: it didn't say, "I am stand-up comedian with an orchestra", it didn't say, "this is a rock show". It didn't claim to be anything but a show that was trying to make musical comedy kind of awesome and massive and interesting, and take it musically to an extent that it might not have been taken, and I think we succeeded in that. I'm kind of proud of it."
He's not wrong - the shows were almost unanimously well-recieved. His role as arena-filling performer (or "megastar", as he later quips, drolly implying an incongruity to the label) is hardly the only aspect of his career, though. I'm keen to ask Minchin about his other projects – just within the last couple of years alone he's written a stage musical adaptation of beloved Roald Dahl story 'Matilda' (produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company), created a YouTube sensation with his animated 10-minute beat poem 'Storm', racked up a formidable list of TV credits, and hosted the very first BBC Comedy Prom. It's something he clearly considers important ("I love, I love that I've got such a varied career"), but he soon begins to talk a little about the frequency with which people ask him where he'd like his career to finally focus itself, an end-goal that Minchin maintains he's not necessarily interested in:
"You know people often ask 'what do you want to end up doing?' and I'm like 'err, I'm doing it! I want to end up doing what I'm doing, I want to end up doing some acting, directing something, making a movie, writing songs for theatre, performing, performing in a non-comedy way, whatever'. It's incredibly exciting to me, and that's how you stay motivated and how you stay challenged, and all that sort of thing."
He quickly goes on to address the question in terms of the sustainability of his predominant role as a comedian.
"I think comedy is a zeitgeist, a bit. So what happens is a comedian becomes popular, and then culturally, his or her voice becomes familiar. You know what I mean? Their worldview, and the way they make their jokes, and their and angle becomes familiar and suddenly it's not fresh anymore - comedy is about newness. So I'll keep trying to write stuff that challenges – I mean I'm still on music comedy, so I'm hoping that I'll get better, but I don't want to be doing gigs beyond when I'm inspired to write comedy, or even worse, beyond when my audience starts to – you know, I don't want to perform forever. I'll think I'll be able to, but I don't want to thrash out another arena tour when people no longer want to hear it. I don't want to be pushing and pushing and pushing and saying "LISTEN TO ME, I'M STILL FUNNY". I just want to control my own career, so having other things is incredibly important, so you don't get stuck."
Further to this, I wonder how cemented Minchin is in his role as a comedian – I had seen him play earlier in the year to a Thursday night crowd at this year's salubriously middle-class Green Man festival, where he had closed out his set with an entirely straightforward rendition of Leonard Cohen's exhausted classic Hallelujah. In honesty, I had (in my then limited knowledge of Minchin and his work) expected at the time for the song to develop into a sort of parody – but it turned out that it was simply a musician seizing the opportunity to play a well-worn masterpiece to a tent crammed to bursting. So we will ever see any material from Minchin strictly as a musician, stripping away the comedian facet altogether?
"Well I think I'll always write songs that have quirkiness in them, I am – I mean I have been for years – trying to find time to write a studio album, you know, sit down and write a bunch of songs that are just songs motivated by whatever comes into my head that aren't aiming for laughs, and record it, and maybe do some gigs with a band or whatever. So I thought the thing to do would be to get a band and give it a name, so that it's clearly a side project. Because I don't want to say to people [mock English accent] "I'm Tim Minchin, and you came to my show last year, now come to this new show, which is me doing covers of Whitney Houston…" You know, I don't want to sort of trick my audience into – I want it to be a side project, but yeah, very, very interested in that, and I don't think I'm being too much of a megalomaniac to suggest that – you know, I can play piano a bit, and I can sing a bit, and I can write songs a bit so I don't think anyone will be surprised. So yeah, very keen."
Of course, the Green Man festival isn't the only of these sorts of gigs that Minchin's played. He also made appearances at the likes of Tennessee's Bonnaroo this year - he's just begun to make a tangible impression on US audiences over the past 12 months (with a helpful jump-start in January in the form of an appearance on late-night regular 'Conan'). I ask quite vaguely "how it's going" over in the States:
"It's good man. I mean I've had a tour around, played some theatres, you know, usually 500 or 1000 people turn up – seems to just work wherever I go, it's amazing. … In Australia and here people come to my shows because they kind of, I've been around for a bit now and they've seen me on this or that, but in the US it's because it's all built on YouTube, and it's a lot of people that like 'Storm' and 'The Pope Song' and stuff. … But I'm not trying to be Russell Brand or anything, I'm not trying to be a movie star – I'm very interested in Broadway as well obviously, as a theatre maker I want to work with people in New York, but I'm not trying to 'break it', just trying to satisfy the market."
I start to think about possible reactions to Minchin's material – he's not shy about his atheism – and what sort of reception he's been getting in those religiously-orientated areas of the States that we might stereotype as being hypersensitive to that sort of thing – but he seems slightly perturbed by the idea of his shows being met with hostility:
"Well the thing is, people – I mean fundamentalist Christians are not going to come to my shows, they're not going to be tricked into coming to my shows, I've played in Dallas, Texas, and you know, Dallas was about the most responsive audience I had on the whole tour, because they live in a place where people pray for their football games and their governor Rick Perry prayed for rain at a public prayer meeting, and they are justifiably furious because they're surrounded by fucking weirdos, and they come to my show and they go apeshit."
I feel as if he's got a bit more to say on the matter, so I essentially rearticulate the same question about hostile reactions to see what comes back.
"No, far, far from it. The point is, if you're an atheist in Texas then my show's going to be like… wicked [laughs]. Because you're hearing your problems, the things that frustrate you articulated with [silly voice] my songs! So yeah, it's fine so far, but you know, if some right-wing conservative Christian group heard about me they might start picketing my shows or whatever, and I wouldn't like that very much. I'm not trying to create fights; I'm just doing comedy about what I think about really."
Of course if anyone ever did start picketing Minchin's shows, you'd logically assume that those people were concerned that his material had the ability to influence opinion, or at least that it was attempting to. I wonder how often Minchin considers his songs in terms of their ability to challenge attitudes and beliefs, in tandem with their ability to make people laugh. Initially, he seems to want to distance himself from this idea, referring to his material as "very didactic, and preachy and stuff", but ultimately insisting that he's not "setting out to change people, it's just because it's what [he] thinks about." After a bit of consideration, though, he starts to talk about some of the responsibilities he inevitably has to face:
"Having said that, young people listen to my material, and if they're questioning their faith their parents brought them up with or, looking for ways to articulate their ideas, I understand that people like me can have an impact, and I get a lot of emails to suggest that's the case. I've come to terms with the fact that I'm not living in a vacuum, and I'm not performing into a vacuum, it's interesting and in fact I have much older people – especially in America – fans who, really interesting people who are going through changes in their lives or – being an atheist in America's a big deal, you know they're looking for solace and they're looking for clarification of what they think and they're looking at me and thinking "oh, it's okay to be angry" and you can be angry and moral – because my show's very much about ethics and having a heart, and you know, ideally people listen to the encore and feel teary and – or the end of Storm is about appreciating the beauty in this life and not the magic, and… so you know, I feel alright about it."
He goes on to confirm something I suspected when I earlier quizzed him on hostile reactions:
"I'm not necessarily emotionally hardy enough to deal with people hating me, so I don't want everyone to – I'm not trying to get my material out to people who are then going to come and burn my car or whatever, I just want to support people who are looking to kind of clarify their view of the world."
A little later, I begin to ask about musical influences and what Minchin listens to on his downtime. Minchin (very politely – something that's characterised this interview from the go when he kindly apologised for calling all of six minutes late) interrupts to tell me he's got people gesturing at him to wrap things up – apparently he has to shoot off for a radio appearance. Quickly then, I ask about something I read in an interview elsewhere in which he said that he 'doesn't really listen to music anymore'. I describe it as a "genuinely frightening idea", at which point Minchin begins asking me about my own tastes and listening habits. At this point, I'm a little concerned to find that the interview's flipped on its axis so that I'm the one answering questions from an interviewee who's just told me he's "got about one more minute". Thankfully, it's not too long before he offers something more substantial:
"Yeah – see because I – it's my experience that about half the people I know who are composers don't listen to much music. But I just – it's hard to explain – I get tired ears basically, and I – if I turn on the radio there's just some fucker talking or there's a song that's inane and annoying, or it's a song that's brilliant and it makes me feel jealous. But I'm not – I should be listening to amazing music – I must, if I'm going to write my record. But I've just got out of the habit – and I never was, I never had loads of rock stars on my walls or, I never owned – apart from the Beatles – I've never owned all of the albums of any one band. I'm not a fan – I've been to about five big concerts in my life, and you know, you can count the times I've been to a gig in a pub on my fingers and toes – they're just noisy, and the sound's never good and, you know, it's… I think it's just that I'm irritated enough by music – I don't have a casual relationship with it, and I'm irritated enough by bad music and bad sound that I allowed myself to get out of the habit, when of course what I should have done is pursued good music and good sounds. I'll get back, maybe. But at the moment I just go home and just want everyone to shut up."
I laugh at Minchin's seeming confusion about his own listening habits, before he wryly comments – "…that's a positive end. "I want everyone to shut up". There's another headline."
Tim Minchin's third live DVD show is out now (also available on BluRay). Get yourself a copy now at: http://amzn.to/pYSYlC.


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Last month, Microsoft showed off a group of new features for its Office 2016 client applications on Windows that it said would begin rolling out to users in November, first to those who want to test the latest functionality as part of the newly minted Office Insider program.
That ... didn't quite happen. Because of unforeseen delays with the update, it's just now rolling out to members of the Office Insider program, giving them access to new features including the Morph transition in PowerPoint 2016 and the ability to embed online video in OneNote 2016. Enterprise users who are enrolled in First Release from organizations on the Office 365 Current Branch will also start getting the updates Wednesday.
It's not clear how long it will take for the updates to roll out to people who aren't Office Insiders, but Microsoft said last month that it expected to wait a few weeks to gather feedback before sending the updates out to consumers and enterprise users on the Current Branch of Office 365.
Consumers and university users who are interested in trying out the new features can sign up for the Office Insider program here. Doing so won't just offer early access to the updates that were released Wednesday, but also future sneak peeks at features Microsoft plans to release in the future. People who opt into the program will get support from Microsoft if they encounter any problems.


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[nggallery id=509]
Deion Sanders said the $10k+ he was paying in child support was too much considering he has temporary custody of the couples two sons (Pilar has custody of their daughter).
The court agree with Sanders and reduced his child support payments by almost 50%.
Deion is also paying for Pilar housing a $3500 a month home while the divorce proceedings are still ongoing. Pilar would like to have her prenuptial agreement voided, that request was denied last time they were in court, but Pilar is appealing that decision. Pilar Sanders' attorney was shot at last month and that case is still being investigated.


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They're the best.....around. | by Pat
Stepping away from football for a second to write about fútbol.
Notre Dame accomplished an extremely rare feat recently when Joseph Lapira from the Men's soccer team and Kerry Hanks from the women's soccer team both won the Missouri Athletic Club (M.A.C) Hermann Trophy, college soccer's version of the Heisman Trophy. It is the first time in history that the men's and women's trophy were won by the same school in the same season.
Lapira won the Men's Hermann Trophy after finishing a junior year that saw him lead the nation in goals (22) and points (50) as well as sport a bitchin' moustache. Lapira is the first ND player to win the Player of the Year award for men's soccer. Also named the Big East Offensive Player of the Year and ND's 3rd ever 1st team All-American -- along with current teammate Greg Dalby -- Lapira helped lead the Irish to the quarterfinals of this year's NCAA tournament. It was the first time in program history that ND made the quarterfinals and a large reason why was Lapira's golden goal in double overtime the game before against Maryland, last year's national champs.
Over on the women's side of things, Kerri Hanks accomplishments might be even more impressive. The sophomore won the Women's Hermann Trophy after leading the nation in goals (22), points (66), and assists (22). A key member of a club that was ranked #1 for most of the season, Hanks and her fellow Fighting Irish got all the way to the championship game before falling 2-1 to North Carolina. Hanks became the 3rd Irish player to win the Hermann Trophy following Cindy Daws (1996) and Anne Makinen (2000).
What makes Hanks accomplishments so impressive are the fact that she's the first sophomore to ever win the Hermann Trophy. Not only that, she's only the 2nd player in history to lead the nation in both goals and assists, with the other player being Mia Hamm. With two years of eligibility left, Hanks already owns 43 different Irish scoring records and should continue to be dangerous when paired with freshman Michele Weissenhofer, who finished 2nd in the nation in assists and points and 6th in goals this year.
As a final aside, Notre Dame has had 47 athletes either win an individual national championship or be named Player of the Year. The entire list can be found at the bottom of the post here with the breakdown being 42 NCAA individual champions (18 men's track, 12 men's fencing, 10 women's fencing, two men's cross country), and 12 national player-of-the-year winners (seven football, three women's soccer, one men's basketball, one men's soccer)
Congrats to both Lapira and Hanks for an unprecedented and amazing accomplishment.


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For me, Don Boudreaux puts it all perfectly in perspective in another of his beautifully crafted letters-to-the-editor, this one to a radio station:
"During today's 1:00pm hour you played a clip of a listener who is 'livid that Americans aren't up in arms against the devastation that corporations inflict' on us. This gentleman's anger was sparked by the BP oil spill.
"I have little sympathy for BP, it being a firm that has often feasted at government troughs. But some perspective is now very much needed on the costs and benefits of corporations.
"Consider that the latest estimated cost of the BP spill is $33 billion. That's a lot of money, to be sure. But this sum pales in comparison to the amount of money that Wal-Mart's retailing efficiencies are estimated to save consumers each year: $200 billion.*
"Oil spills are compellingly photographable – and, hence, attention-getting and emotion-stirring. In contrast, lower prices for – which, by the way, mean fewer resources used to bring to market – clothing, children's toys, digital cameras, camping equipment, kitchen appliances, groceries, and other goods that we routinely enjoy are not photographable in any compelling way. The result is that the social benefits of corporate innovations and competition are easily overlooked, ignored, taken for granted, forgotten. But these benefits are enormous. And any assessment of the worthiness of corporations in modern life had best take them into accurate account lest we adopt policies that make us all poor and miserable.
Donald J. Boudreaux
* See Matt Ridley's splendid new book, The Rational Optimist (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), p. 113. A few
pages earlier (p. 110), Matt observes
"Yet for all the liberating effects of commerce, most modern commentators see a far greater threat to human freedom from the power of corporations that free markets inevitably throw up. The fashionable cultural critic sees himself or herself as David slinging stones at vast, corrupt and dehumanizing Goliath-like corporations that punish, pollute and profiteer with impunity…"
- "Never let a crisis go to waste, and it if looks like it may, extend it."
Extending the BP Crisis – Jeff Perren, SHAVING LEVIATHAN
- This video attacking Obama's handling of the Gulf crisis is about as partisan as you can get—implying that there was some magic Republican wand that could have been raised to deal with the gushing oil that the Democrat president didn't have or wouldn't use—but it does capture very well the sense that this president, moreso even than recent presidents, sees the world in terms of opinions to be massaged rather than a reality full of absolutes.
Oil Spill Timeline from RightChange on Vimeo.
And in other news…
- If university funding is to be made partially contingent on whether graduates are able to get jobs after university, as Steven Joyce suggested yesterday, then Eric Crampton has a reasonable point: "If we now reckon the point of universities is the increased earning power of graduates, there's little case for state funding of university students…"
Yeah, but will it get you a job? – OFFSETTING BEHAVIOUR
- Is the philosophy PhD student admitting that philosophy doesn't produce job options…? Maybe that has something to do with the brain damage that studying philosophy in today's philosophy departments engenders.
Fears for philosophy degrees – STUFF
- This is bound to go well… "Congress approved a sweeping overhaul of rules touching every corner of finance in the biggest expansion of government power over banking and markets since the Great Depression."
Law Remakes U.S. Financial Landscape – WALL STREET JOURNAL
- Who says Auckland hasn't got toll roads? To the world's most expensive toll bridge in Grafton, you can now add this: "Auckland drivers have been fined $4.2m in a year for using bus lanes…
$4m bus-lane 'disgrace' – NZ HERALD
- For some reason, many people are talking about a guest post by Jordan Carter at the progressive Policy Progress (sic) blog whining about the "failures" of the left in the face of "thirty years of neo-liberal ascendancy"—whatever the hell that means--a post that almost point by point proves Doug Reich's thesis on liberal inanity that I posted here the other day. I'd suggest reading Jordan's piece; followed by Phil Sage's fisking of it; followed by Doug's more substantive piece. They make a nice complete set.
Have they really changed? – Jordan Carter, POLICY PROGRESS
Socialism is dead, long live market democracy – Phil Sage, NO MINISTER
Liberal Despair Over Obama, Taker of the Ham Sandwich – Doug Reich, RATIONAL CAPITALIST
- And there's a good post-script to those book-ends that Doug recommends: an earlier post reflecting why liberals don't even bother reading the laws that they pass. Trust me, it's worth reading.
Why Liberals Don't Read Their Bills, Evade Their Constituents, but "Penetrate the Message Wars" – Doug Reich, RATIONAL CAPITALIST
- Quite apart from the news-value involved, if this doesn't get your irony meter going nothing will. Communist-hunter Trevor Loudon recommends reading Fidel Castro's comments on the potential for a looming Iran/Israel war. Don't know about you, but I make that at least three layers of irony.
Fidel Castro on the Looming Iran/Israel War – Trevor Loudon, NEW ZEAL
- Hugo Chavez continues to demonstrate that the end road of socialism is dictatorship.
Globovision under Siege – Gus Van Horn
- Meanwhile, Libya took time out to taunt Israel. A Libyan ship carrying "aid" and activists was heading for Gaza in a mission that Israel described as an "unnecessary provocation." A prize if you can work out which of either aid or provocation Libya was more interested in.
Israeli navy on alert as Libyan aid ship heads for Gaza – GRAUNIAD
Fortunately, this time, the ship's master agreed to divert to Egypt, where the "aid" was peacefully unloaded just a few hours ago.
Libyan Aid Ship for Gaza Unloading Supplies in Egypt – VoA
- Britain's healthcare anti-system still struggles to do what its name says if should. And now "the 'sixth major reform of the service in 20 years," looks as likely to succeed as all the others," says Lindsay Mitchell. Which is to say, it's unlikely.
Another Mickey Mouse makeover for the NHS – LINDSAY MITCHELL
- They're wrong about John Key's predications, but apart from that I like Roar Prawn's short and sweet comment on the possibility of "boat people" arriving in KiwiLand. I like it a lot.
Waka Bailers - ROAR PRAWN
- Peter Schiff thinks the US is entering the economic lull before the storm.
- Retail spending is down in the States … but don't despair. That's a good thing, says Jeffrey Tucker. "Contrary to the model of an economy without risk, uncertainty, time, or capital, this is exactly what should be happening in light of the downturn." Bring on the savers!
Retail sales despair – Jeffrey Tucker, MISES ECONOMICS BLOG
- A new spectre is haunting the dis-united states of Europe, one not entirely unrelated to KArl Marx's famous piece of imagery. This time it's the spectre of public debt. "The debt-to-gross domestic product ratio for the European Union is projected to reach 80 per cent this year," and folk are starting to realise things are not going to go well. Not well at all.
Pain ahead for indebted Europe – Henry Ergas, THE AUSTRALIAN
- And in completely related news, the States comprising America's United States are going the same way. "While the private economy has done a good job adjusting during the recession and paving the way for the growth we see now, we can't say the same holds true for the government. In fact, as fiscally irresponsible as the US government has been, the next big shoe to drop for the US may be the revealed insolvency of some of its big states."
When the States Go Bankrupt – Chris Mayer, DAILY RECKONING
- By the way. Just so you know. Economics is tool difficult for bloggers. Yes, it's true. A bureaucrat at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia, says so. Economist Sterling Terrell tells the econo-weasel to go to hell.
Economics Is … Easy – Sterling Terrell, MISES ECONOMICS BLOG
- Mind you, you can see how you'd think economics was complicated when you fall for the nonsensical chartist blather at the heart of the Keynesian system. It's a theory that doesn't so much shoot itself in the foot, as shoot everyone in the wallet.
The Self-Defeat of the Keynesian Cross – Predrag Rajsc, MISES ECONOMICS BLOG
- Still, if you don't want to listen to bloggers, here's some freedom-fighting talking heads disagreeing about the reasons for the US's economics malaise. See how many fallacies you can spot.
- Thanks to reader David S. for this: "A look at some of the flawed thinking that prompts people who believe in certain non-scientific concepts to advise others who don't to be more 'open-minded'."
- (The video discussion rather reminds me of Howard Devoto's noisy musical take on this question on the B-side of his 1976 'Shot By Both Sides' single, the the B- and A- sides of which seem to have subsequently become, respectively, a personal mantra and a description of my place in both politics and the political blogosphere.)
Magazine - My Mind Ain't So Open – YOU TUBE
- An atheist takes on the Pro-Atheism billboards appearing around the city.
"What sort of abject cop-out is 'There probably is no God' … Would we say there probably are no goblins, ghosts, tooth fairies, taniwha and trolls under bridges?"
Memo to NZ Atheists—Grow a Pair! – Lindsay Perigo, SOLO
Ken Perrott rounds up some of the other reactions to the lukewarm atheist activism, and offers a challenge...
Theological critiques of billboards required – OPEN PARACHUTE
- Russell Brown tries "a waggish, attention-grabbing headline."
Wanna Route? – HARD NEWS
- "It should come as no surprise that the development of a way to grow apples that won't brown when sliced would encounter opposition. It is, after all, progress. And progress is something some folks don't hold with. Folks who embrace the so-called 'precautionary principle,' that is.
"This principle holds that no new development or activity should be allowed until the proponents can prove that no damage will occur to the environment or public health. The principle has taken hold in Europe and in some quarters of the United States, particularly among environmental and health-advocacy groups.
"Under the precautionary principle, however, many of the millions of technological advances that have occurred since the dawn of time would not pass muster…."
Precautionary Principle Thwarts Scientific, Societal Advancements – CAPITAL PRESS
- GM Food Labels: Is it the Need to Know or Right to Know This is the doctoral thesis that Sue Kedgely needs to read. (Maybe someone could send it on)"
"Label what and why? An interdisciplinary risk analysis methodological comparison in the context of green biotechnology and food labeling," by Dr Stan Benda
Thesis may be secured from Thesis Canada. Dr. Benda can be reached via email@example.com.
- Should the law encourage preventive health? Well, no. (And, yes, send this one to Sue too.)
- Just three years ago the politics of global warming was enjoying its golden moment. Now, it's in headlong retreat. Stefan Thell explains why "the environment" is no longer a sure-fire winner.
A Green Retreat: Why the environment is no longer a surefire political winner. - NEWSWEEK
- Warmist Clive Crook rips the two main Climategate reports a new one. Even a child could see the corruption on show in the Climategate emails--"an ethos of suffocating groupthink and intellectual corruption" calls it. So how come the so-called independent reports couldn't? Because all they listened to was the case of the defence. They never even bothered to listen to the case for the prosecution.[Hat tip WUWT]
"I had hoped, not very confidently, that the various Climategate inquiries would
be severe [says Crook]. This would have been a first step towards restoring confidence
in the scientific consensus. But no, the reports make things worse. At best they are
mealy-mouthed apologies; at worst they are patently incompetent and even
wilfully wrong. The climate-science establishment, of which these inquiries have chosen
to make themselves a part, seems entirely incapable of understanding, let alone
repairing, the harm it has done to its own cause."
Climategate and the Big Green Lie – Clive Crook, THE ATLANTIC
- India's Economic Times has a sober summary of the situation now:
"Critics have lambasted the supposedly-independent inquiry by Sir Muir
Russell because he himself is a climate change crusader. He interviewed the CRU
scientists but not the climate sceptics whom the scientists were targeting. This has
been called 'a trial with judge, jury, reporters, spectators and defendant , but no
plaintiff. The plaintiff is locked outside the courtroom sitting in the hall hollering
and hoping the jury hears some of what he has to say.'
"At the end of it all, two things are clear. First, it is fantasy for crusaders to claim
that catastrophic global warming is established science: the emails reveal doubts
and caveats even among true believers in CRU. Second, the International Panel on
Climate Change must disavow its claim made first in 2001 — based on the 'hockey
stick' graph of Michael Mann using historical tree-ring data — that the world is
warmer today than ever before…
"This is inconvenient for climate crusaders who blame fossil fuels for all warming.
But it will provide citizens with basic information they need before deciding whether
to spend trillions on combating a problem that may or may not be real."
Climategate: Beyond inquiry panels – ECONOMIC TIMES
- More post- ClimateGate Fall-Out: After their whitewashed report, Michael Man's employer endures a belated ad richly-deserved integrity crisis.
Penn State's Integrity Crisis – CANADA FREE PRESS
- And a post-Climategate global warming debate in London brings together at least one of the major players. Oddly, both Greenpeace and Anthony Watts feel much the same about how the evening went.
Climategate- the showdown –GREENPEACE
Report from the Climategate Guardian debate – Anthony Watts, CLIMATE AUDIT
UPDATE: Video of the event is available here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/jul/15/climategate-public-debate
- While I'm posting links to Greenpeace, why not go the whole hog and link to the Green Party as well, you say? Okay, here you go. We might disagree on the science, but the Greens' Frog Blog has posted a link to a neat Google Earth plug-in showing the purported effects of a 4 degrees rise in world temperature—the very upper limit of IPCC "predictions." Find out their worst prognostications (and let me know how the Himalaya glaciers and Amazon predictions look—given recent events they'd be two among dozens worth checking for their propaganda value).
Google Earth – climate change edition! – FROG BLOG
Czech physicist Lubos Motl offers a less sympathetic view:
Alarmist politicians draw circles on Google Earth – Lubo Motl, REFERENCE FRAME
- The Czechs do it again—giving it up for "transparency" in politics. See what I mean: Czech MPs pose for a "glamour calendar" in shots like this one.
(Please, please don't try this in Wellington. I get all the wrong sorts of visions of Ruth Dyson!)
[Thanks to reader Jeff for the link]
Female Czech MPs pose for calendar – TELEGRAPH
- FIFA's rankings of the world's soccer teams are out, and following their unbeaten World Cup campaign, New Zealand has rocketed up twenty or so places to 52. But John Ansell reckons on the basis of games unbeaten, New Zealand should be on top of the world. Maybe just below the Octupus?
Only NZ and octopus undefeated – JOHN ANSELL'S BLOG
- Here's a great web tool. According to this analysis site, and depending on which of my most representative ten posts I paste for analysis, I write like either H.P. Lovecraft (twice!), Kurt Vonnegut, Dan Brown (three goddamn times!), Edgar Allan Poe (twice), or David Foster Wallace. Take your pick.
A bit disappointing really (particularly all those damn Dan Brown hits), and especially so since I was always aiming at a style somewhere between PJ O'Rourke and Raymond Chandler. Sigh. [Hat tip Fundy Post]
I Write Like…
- And here's some great tips to help you unclutter. I"ll get on to actually doing them shortly. Honest.
10 uncluttering things to do every day
- The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra put on a great show last night in the first of their Splendour of Vienna series, with Beethoven's Ninth being a highlight, as always, particularly with a choir that really did get it powerfully right on the night.
But the big surprise for me was the three lieder by Hugo Wolf. Here's the most dramatic of the three, a setting by Wolf of poet Eduard Mörike's 'Fire-Rider,' sung with uncharacteristic feeling by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
- And here's the highlight of the evening, the choral finale to Beethoven's Ninth—the fitting finale for this (or nearly every) evening (performed here by the Vienna Philharmonic under the energetic Leonard Bernstein).
- The list of listenable songs by free-jazz messiah Ornette Coleman is a short one. This one was recommended by estimable Aucklander Graham Reid, whose equally estimable Elsewhere website contains literally hundreds of thoughtful recommendations for intelligent listening in Jazz & Elsewhere. Start with his Essential Elsewhere, "a selection of cornerstone albums to help you build an interesting collection of diverse Elsewhere music." Highly recommended.
- And finally, I'm not sure I'm really partial the video itself, but here's the song that was a minor 'hit' at last weekend's party. By local heroes Sola Rosa, by way of a cannibalised Tommy Dorsey track.
Have a great weekend!
And if you're in the area, check out the Cask-Conditioned Croucher's Pale Ale now on tap at Galbraith's, Mt Eden. I will be.


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Eurocopter AS365 / EC155 helicopters for sale
The Eurocopter AS365 (also known as Dauhpin 2 or Dolphin) is a medium-weight multipurpose twin-engine helicopter built by Eurocopter (originally by Aérospatiale). It is one of the most successful designs of Eurocopter, widely used as corporate transport or emergency medical services helicopter.
The EC155 is a long-range medium-lift passenger transport helicopter derived from the Dauphin family for civil aviation use. It is twin-engined and can carry up to 13 passengers along with 1 or 2 crew, depending on configuration.
Eurocopter AS365 (1)
Eurocopter AS365 N für DEKOon request
Year: 2000; TTAF: 5000h; Type: Helicopter; Location: Germany