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Like Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone, Reliance, Tata Docomo and Idea companies keeps launching new modems of different companies like : Huawei, ZTE and Micromax. Idea has recently launched new modems of huawei company in Indian Market Idea NetSetter E303Ds-1 modems.
Users who are having Idea Huawei E303Ds-1 for that good news. In these Idea Huawei modems you can find Firmware Version : 21.157.71.02.356 and Dashboard Version : UTPS21.005.20.06.356_MAC&LNX21.005.20.03.356. I have got the unlock solution for these modems via firmware down gradation.
Follow the simple steps to unlock Idea Huawei E303Ds-1 :
1. Download the firmware and Huawei Modem Unlocker software from the link which is provided at of the article.
2. After that close the dashboard of idea modem.
3. Run the Huawei Modem Unlocker software and put your IMEI in Huawei tab and generate the flash code.
4. Note down the flash code and now run firmware 21.157.13.00.910 which you have downloaded.
5. Accept terms and conditions and proceed to the next step.
6. Now it will ask you for flash code / password.
7. Use the flash code which you have generated for your IMEI and proceed to the next step.
8. After a few time your modem will be flashed with new firmware.
9. Now put another company SIM in your modem.
10. Now when you connect your modem to your computer / laptop it will ask you for password.
Don't use the password as unlock code you have got it from above step. Because it generates the password for 35series IMEI. But, your modem is of 86 series IMEI.
Presently we have not any solution for 86 series IMEI. I will soon provide you.


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Time, Inc. has made an agreement with Apple that will give its subscribers access to magazine content on the iPad for "free" as part of their subscriptions. Updated apps are now available via the iTunes Store so that those who subscribe to Time, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines will be able to log into the respective iPad apps as subscribers, giving them a leg-up on those who haven't gotten around to subscribing yet.
Until now, subscribers to Time's magazines had to pay for separate access to the iPad app regardless of their print subscriber status. Time's People magazine was the first to begin offering free iPad app access to existing print subscribers, and now Time, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated are following suit. Those who don't yet subscribe to the magazines in print will still have to pay $5 per issue on the iPad.
It has been almost three months since Apple first announced its in-app subscription system, which allows publishers to offer existing subscribers "free" access to the magazine on iOS devices. Publishers must, however, offer subscriptions through the app itself (in addition to their own website or other methods), allowing Apple to get a 30 percent cut of whatever gets sold through the app. Although there was some backlash following the announcement, it certainly seems as if Time, Inc. has decided that Apple's terms are acceptable. Which other publishers would you like to see follow suit?

subset: commoncrawl


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Yesterday it was near 50 degrees here in Athens, Ohio. That makes for an excellent running day, especially when you can run in shorts while snow is still melting on the ground. Although, I'd have to say I got some pretty weird looks and I trugged through the snow on Mill Street sidewalks and tried to keep my balance on a sheet of ice on the bike path… The entire run I was so grateful for the sunshine, I had a smile on my face and did not dread my 8-mile run at all! I finally may be starting to get the motivation back to train for this marathon =)
When training for this race in Athens, a lot of people always ask me "Where do you run?" or "How do you come up with that many miles around campus?" You don't. Ohio University's campus, although large, is no match for a long distance run. You need to venture off campus by some distance and explore Athens County. Luckily, the smallest loop while staying relatively close to campus is 8 miles long and thats what I ran yesterday. For those of you interested in it, here it is (and remember you can always tac on some extra streets to increase the milage):
-Start off on the bike path at Peden Stadium.
-Follow it to the left towards South Green and stay on it until you hit Stimpson Ave.
-Get off the path and run up Stimpson to the first stoplight. Turn right on Campbell. Then right again on Morris.
-Run Morris Ave. to S. Shannon St. Turn left.
– Follow it to the end, cross E. State to N. Shannon. Turn right.
-Turn right on Arden.
_Turn left on N. May
-Turn right on Woodside and follow up the hill.
-Go down the hill and cross over to Harris St.
-Follow Harris to E. State and turn right.
-Take E. State St all the way to Carpenter.
-Turn right on Carpenter to Court St.
-Turn left.
-Follow Court St to Union St.
-Turn right.
-Take Union St. all the way down to the red Habitat for Humanity house.
-Turn left onto the bike path.
– Take the bike path back to Peden.
You're done! It is a relatively simple route once you get the hang of it. Enjoy!


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Weapons don't rust and enemies killed at checkpoints stay dead, but that's not what makes early September's Far Cry 3 so different from Far Cry 2.
Nah, what makes it different is that this year's Far Cry is about maybe losing your mind on a remote jungle island, where a brother and sister pull you in two very different directions, both of which appear to converge into a conflagration of sex and violence.
I played a demo of Far Cry 3 a couple of weeks ago and will have a lot more coverage about the game in the days to come. But for now, I must confess that the thing that lingers most vividly from that demo isn't that the game brings back the wild flame propagation gameplay of the last one nor that your character seems as lethal as he seems mad.
What lingers most is that the single-player demo I played began with a first-person view from our hero's eyes of a topless woman straddling him. You'll see it in the trailer below. The developer-narrated walkthrough skips it, but is just as not safe for work. More importantly, things get ever wilder from there.
This game is about going crazy in decadent ways.
You were warned.
The game will be out for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC on September 4.


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Call me paranoid, or perhaps just realistic, but I think it is pretty clear that the end is always near. It could be an earthquake, catastrophic climate change, an asteroid or, what the heck, even a zombie outbreak that does us all in. One of the most feared, yet oddly fascinating, paths to destruction is an epidemic disease "event." I think withering away from disease is so dreaded not only because it would be a horrific way to go, but it seems so plausible. You only have to look at the past, both recent and ancient, to find possible candidates for a disease to do us in.
Let's start with some symptoms:
Severe headache, weakness, general malaise and pains of varying severity in the muscles and joints, especially in the back. The patient feels as though he had been beaten all over with a club.
This is how you would feel, at first, if you were unfortunate enough to contract a deadly strain of influenza as described in American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic by Nancy Bristow. Bristow focuses on the American experience of the worst pandemic in recorded history which claimed 50 million lives worldwide and over half a million in the United States. The author uses individual accounts and primary sources to paint an intimate and disturbing picture of the outbreak as it unfolds. She also brings to light the curious way society, once a pandemic is over, tries to forget it ever happened.
Almost all of Plasmodium's maneuvers inside the body occur in utter secrecy. When it slips into the body, while it hides in the liver, and even after it emerges into the bloodstream and attacks blood cells, there is no itch, no rash, no sweaty forehead that belies the infestation roiling within.
This chilling description is from The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah. Shah is an investigative reporter who skillfully describes Malaria's parasitic relationship with humanity and our catastrophic inability to control, let alone eradicate it. Her dogged examination reveals that it is not only the disease itself but the attitudes of those who do not live in tropical climates that allow the scourge to thrive.
Once inside the animal, pestis travels through the bloodstream to the lymph nodes, where it starts to replicate. Eventually the lymph nodes swell and become the huge, boggy, exquisitely painful mass we know as bubo.
Yes, it is the dreaded Plague, or Black Death, as described in Wendy Orent's Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease. A truly apocalyptic disease, wiping out 40% of the European population during the Middle Ages, the plague has shaped human history and still inspires terror. Despite the advent of antibiotics, Orent tells us, the plague is far from a thing of the past and not only survives but thrives in many parts of the world as it continues to evolve. Worse yet, the weaponization of the disease is far from fiction.
To read the history of epidemics is to follow a long story of the fears that go beyond the dread of death, the anxieties that make us who we are.
This intriguing nugget is from Dread: How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics from the Black Death to the Avian Flu by Philip Alcabes. Through health statistics and a study of historical epidemics, Alcabes makes a persuasive argument that our fear of catastrophic disease far outweighs the reality. This fear whether real or imagined, not only reveals the mores of the time but can lead to destructive and counterproductive actions. Most disturbing of all, the author illustrates how individuals and institutions use the fear of epidemics to push their own agendas.
So maybe I am just being paranoid. But then again, why does everyone seem to be coughing?


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The past several decades, we have seen a dramatic decline in doctrinal and biblical preaching. We have gone from theology to therapy in the pulpits. In the past decade, we went from therapy to motivational speaking instead of preaching.
In addition to this, whole churches and movements have oriented themselves to a distorted understanding of the gospel by espousing a "hypergrace" approach that trickles down to not only what they preach but who they allow to minister and teach. (I was told there is even a new television station devoted to this view of "grace.")
Furthermore, many churches and preachers refuse to take a stand against sin and rarely if ever mention the need for repentance or topics like hell and judgment. Many of these same churches allow people to minister in music, as small group leaders and even as ministers with no personal accountability while looking the other way when they are living sexually immoral lives and regularly engaged in drunkenness!
This is nothing new. For centuries the body of Christ has wrestled with something called antinomianism (anti means "against"; nomos means "law"). This is the belief that the moral law of the Old Testament has been done away with and that, once we are in Christ, there is free grace in which we can almost live any way we want since we are not under the Law but under grace. Thus, according to this view, the Old Testament is not that important to read except for metaphors, types and symbols regarding the coming of Christ. The New Testament is all about grace and does away with the Old Testament Law!
Of course, Paul the apostle warned against this sort of thing in Romans 6:1-2 when he rhetorically asked, Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? His response: God forbid! How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer in it?
The first thing Jude the apostle says in his epistle (in the context of contending for the faith in verse 3) is that ungodly men amongst them were turning the grace of our God into a license to sin. Evidently these free-grace preachers were twisting the Scriptures by teaching that "we are no longer under the Law" means "we are no longer under any obligation to obey the moral law of God once we are saved."
This in spite of each of the Ten Commandments being directly cited or taught indirectly in the New Testament. Examples of exact citations are Ephesians 6:1-3, which quotes the fifth commandment; James 2:11, which quotes the sixth and seventh commandments (regarding murder and adultery) and says in verse 12 that believers will be judged according to the "law" of liberty; and Romans 7:7, where Paul quotes the 10th commandment regarding not to covet. Paul also says that we dishonor God when we disobey the (moral) law (Rom. 2:23).
Obedience to the Ten Commandments (the moral law) is also taught indirectly, as in 1 John 5:21, which instructs believers to stay away from idols (from the second commandment, regarding not making a carved image to worship); and when Jesus said that the greatest commandment in the Law is to love God with all the heart, mind and soul (Matt. 22:37-38), which corresponds to the first commandment regarding having no other gods before Him.
Paul makes it clear in Romans 7:12 that the law is holy, righteous and good and that the purpose of being filled with the Spirit of Christ is so the righteousness of the law would be fulfilled in us (Rom. 8:4)—not so we can just float around as spiritual beings without any standards for obedience and disobedience!
Although we cannot be saved by following the Law (because everyone is guilty of breaking the Law, according to Romans 3:19), God uses the moral law as the standard of righteousness in which to judge us of sin. Thus, the Law doesn't save us, but it sanctifies us when we yield to the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, because through it we have the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20).
So, then, what does Paul refer to when he says that we are justified apart from the Law (Rom. 3:21) through grace as a gift (v. 24)? The context of these statements and the other teachings of the New Testament regarding the Law is clear: While the moral law doesn't save us, it is still in effect as a guide and standard for righteous living, but the ceremonial law is no longer in effect and has been totally done away with. This we know because circumcision (Rom. 3:30; Gal. 5:1-2) and animal sacrifices (Heb. 9:12-14) are always brought up in context of Paul teaching that the Law has been nullified in Christ. Thus, Paul is affirming that the ceremonial law has been done away with in Christ because He was the perfect Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world (John 1:29) and in whom, by a single offering of Himself (Heb. 10:14), abolished the law of commandments and record of debt that were against us (Col. 2:13-14) because we violated them. In Him we are no longer obligated to follow the Levitical system, for although the old covenant terms are no longer in effect and faded away (Heb. 8:13), the new covenant clearly is a more perfect continuation of the old covenant because of its prophetic fulfillment in the Messiah (Heb. 10:1).
The following are signs of a hypergrace church:
1. The preachers never speak against sin.
If you are in a church like this, you will notice that the word sin is usually only mentioned in the context of forgiveness of sins in Christ but hardly ever in the context of taking a stand against sin, except of course when they condemn the sin of "legalists" and "Pharisees" who are the ministers they denigrate for preaching against sin.
2. The lead pastor never takes a cultural stand for righteousness.
When issues like abortion come up, these pastors will shy away from mentioning it because they are afraid of offending new people. I can understand this to a point. But I counter that we as ministers of Christ are obligated to at least mention our positions publicly so that we use it as a teaching moment for the sheep following us. Not saying anything about an issue like abortion is another way of condoning it!
3. The Old Testament is almost totally ignored.
In these churches, the Old Testament is treated as only types and shadows for sermon illustrations but has no real value regarding our standard of living today. As I show in this article, my position is that the New Testament and Old Testament are organically connected, with the New building upon the Old, not eradicating it altogether!
4. People who live immoral lives are allowed to teach and lead ministries.
One pastor was telling me that sexual immorality and drunkenness is rampant in many evangelical churches—even amongst small group leaders and other leaders in local churches! This is because there is very little accountability.
5. The lead pastor speaks often against the institutional church.
Many hypergrace pastors constantly denounce churches that are conservative in their values because they believe those churches represent the "old school" that is no longer relevant to today's culture.
6. The lead pastor preaches against tithing.
Although I believe tithing carried over into the New Testament, I believe it is more of a biblical principle that preceded the Law of Moses (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all tithed before Moses gave the Law), was taught by Jesus (Matt. 23) and was mentioned in other passages, like Hebrews 7.
These pastors denounce tithing as a law that was done away with in Christ. (For more on this, read my position paper entitled "Is Tithing in the New Testament?")
7. The lead pastor only preaches positive motivational messages.
Those attending hypergrace churches only hear positive messages on health, wealth, prosperity, God's love, God's forgiveness and how to succeed in life. Although I also agree with and teach on these topics, we have to be careful to include in our preaching the whole counsel of God so that we feed the flock a balanced diet instead of just the sweetness of feel-good messages. We must do this so we are free from the blood of all men (Acts 20:26-27).
8. Key members of the church are regularly living sinful lives with impunity.
Those attending a hypergrace church will most likely find that, because of the strong emphasis on grace—with no teaching against sin or on repentance, judgment or hell—there is an atmosphere of loose living, with many involved in sexual immorality and drunkenness as well as other physical vices.
The reason for this is "the law is our schoolmaster that leads us to Christ" (Gal. 3:24) because through the (moral) law comes the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20). If the moral law of the Ten Commandments is not preached or alluded to, then in ignorance the people will live foolish lives and will be like the blind leading to blind because "where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law" (Prov. 28:18).
In conclusion, there are many other things I could mention regarding hypergrace churches and their preaching, like how it is one step away from universalism (the belief that all people will eventually be saved, whether they believe the gospel or not, e.g. Love Wins by Rob Bell) and liberalism, because an increasing amount of Scripture is eviscerated because it is culturally offensive (like husbands being the head of the house, views on homosexuality, etc.).
I believe antinomianism is a dangerous trend in evangelicalism and is something we need to lovingly take a stand against with our brothers and sisters who espouse it.
Joseph G. Mattera is overseeing bishop of Resurrection Church, Christ Covenant Coalition, in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can read more on josephmattera.org or connect with him on Facebook or Twitter.
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Since 1933, Nissan has been manufacturing a vast range of reliable and economical cars, becoming one of the bestselling Japanese motor brands in the UK. In recent years, models like the Juke and the Qashqai have become staple SUV crossovers on British roads, renowned for their stylish looks, adventurous spirit, and superior performance. Along with smaller hatchbacks like the Micra and Pulsar, Nissan has a car ideal for families, businesses, and individuals alike.
Why Lease a Nissan?
Boasting practicality with a bold, sporty edge, the Nissan Juke makes for an extremely popular car lease. This compact SUV crossover reaches 62mph in 7 seconds, and the latest models feature ample opportunities for personalisation. As standard, each Nissan Juke comes with air con, CD audio unit, LED daytime running lights, and front and rear power windows. There are also 4 variants of the Nissan Juke on offer, including the Visia, Acenta, BOSE Personal Edition, and Tekna. Safety is also paramount for Nissan as latest models feature Intelligent 'Around View Monitors', with 4 cameras to help with parking. Economical to run yet fun to drive, the Nissan Juke is an all-rounder that adapts to family lifestyles particularly well.
Or, if you're looking for a bigger alternative for leasing, why not consider the Nissan Qashqai? Dubbed "the ultimate urban crossover", the Qashqai is a smart SUV that features the best in advanced Nissan technology with a comfortable driving performance. Originally introduced in 2007, the Qashqai was an innovator in the SUV market, becoming a massive success commercially. Along with this success, it's clear that Nissan has become a game-changer in the UK car market in recent years, making now the ideal time to consider leasing one for personal or business use.
Find the Right Nissan to Lease
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Lisa Williamson, Audi A3
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Website by Revive.Digital


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The Salafi Moment
As the death of a U.S. ambassador in Libya demonstrates, the ultraconservative Salafi movement is pushing to the forefront in the politics of the Middle East. The West should be careful how it reacts.
By now you've probably heard. Just a few hours after an angry mob of ultraconservative Muslims stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, the U.S. ambassador to Libya was killed during a protest in the city of Benghazi. Both riots were provoked by the news that an anti-Muslim group in the United States has released a film that insults the Prophet Mohammed. In Egypt, the protestors hauled down the U.S. flag and replaced it with the same black banner sometimes used by Al Qaeda. Shades of Iran, 1979. Scary stuff.
By now you've probably heard. Just a few hours after an angry mob of ultraconservative Muslims stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, the U.S. ambassador to Libya was killed during a protest in the city of Benghazi. Both riots were provoked by the news that an anti-Muslim group in the United States has released a film that insults the Prophet Mohammed. In Egypt, the protestors hauled down the U.S. flag and replaced it with the same black banner sometimes used by Al Qaeda. Shades of Iran, 1979. Scary stuff.
Both attacks are utterly outrageous. But perhaps the United States shouldn't have been caught completely off guard. The rioters in both cases come from the region's burgeoning Salafi movement, and the Salafis have been in the headlines a lot lately. In Libya, over the past few months, they've been challenging the recently elected government by demolishing ancient Sufi shrines, which they deem to be insufficiently Islamic. In Tunisia, they've been attacking businesses that sell alcohol and instigating nasty social media campaigns about the country's female competitors in the Olympics. In Syria's civil war, there are increasing reports that the opposition's wealthy Gulf financiers have been channeling cash to Salafi groups, whose strict interpretation of Islam is considered close to the puritanical Wahhabism of the Saudis and others. Lately Salafi groups have been gaining fresh prominence in parts of the Islamic world — from Mali to Lebanon, from Kashmir to Russia's North Caucasus.
Some — like journalist Robin Wright, who recently wrote a New York Times op-ed on the subject — say that this means we should be really, really worried. Painting a picture of a new "Salafi crescent" ranging from the Persian Gulf to North Africa, she worries that this bodes ill for newly won freedoms after the revolutions of 2011. Calling the rise of the new Salafi groups "one of the most underappreciated and disturbing byproducts of the Arab revolts," Wright says that they're now "moving into the political space once occupied by jihadi militants, who are now less in vogue." "[S]ome Islamists are more hazardous to Western interests and values than others," she writes. "The Salafis are most averse to minority and women's rights."
Others, like Egyptian journalist Mustafa Salama, dismiss this as hysteria. "The reality of the movement is that it is fragmented, not uniform, within Salafis there are various ideologies and discourses," Salama writes. "Furthermore being a Salafi does not boil down to a set of specific political preferences." The only thing that unites them, he argues, is their interest in returning to the beliefs and practices of the original Islamic community founded by the Prophet Mohammed — a desire that, in itself, is shared by quite a few mainstream Muslims. (The Arabic word salaf, meaning "predecessors" or "ancestors," refers to the original companions of the Prophet.) This doesn't mean that they're necessarily opposed to freedom and democracy. During the revolution in Egypt, he says, some Salafis were "protecting Churches in Sinai and elsewhere from vandalism and theft" at considerable risk to themselves, though the fact wasn't reported in the Western media.
If the first death of a U.S. ambassador in two decades is any indication, it's probably time that the world starts paying attention to this debate. I think there are several points worth mentioning.
First of all, however we define them, these new "populist puritans" (as Wright aptly refers to them) are enjoying an extraordinary boom. Though solid numbers are hard to come by, they're routinely described as the fastest-growing movement in modern-day Islam. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's Salafis barely figured in the political landscape during the Mubarak years — then stormed onto the scene to capture a quarter of the vote in the country's first democratic election last year. Their share of the vote could well increase, given that the new Brotherhood-led government is likely to have problems making good on the ambitious promises it's made to Egyptian voters over the past year. Their rapid rise in Tunisia is especially startling, given that country's relatively relaxed atmosphere toward religion.
Indeed, if the history of revolutions shows us anything, it's that transformative social upheavals of the kind we've seen in the Arab Spring don't necessarily favor the moderates. On the day that the Shah left Iran in 1979, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that the radical forces around Ayatollah Khomeini, who followed his innovative theory of clerical rule, would end up running the country. Secular socialists, communists, liberal democrats, democratic nationalists, moderate Islamists, and even other rival Shiite clerics were all vying for power. But Khomeini ultimately triumphed because he offered forceful, uncorrupted leadership with a simple message — "Islamic government" — that cut through the mayhem with the authority of faith. Lenin understood the same political dynamic: Hence his ruthlessly straightforward slogan "Bread, Peace, Land," which was perfectly calculated to appeal to Russians wearied by anarchy, war, and social injustice.
The Salafi notion of returning to the purity of 7th-century Islam can have the same kind of draw for some Muslims exasperated by everyday corruption and abusive rule. Syria offers a good example. If you're going up against Bashar al-Assad's helicopter gunships armed with an antique rifle and a few rusty bullets, you'll probably prefer to go into battle with a simple slogan on your lips. "Power sharing for all ethnic groups in a liberal parliamentary democracy" might not cut it — especially if you happen to be a Sunni who's seen your relatives cut down by Assad's murderous militias. This isn't to say that the opposition is now dominated by Salafis; far from it. But it's safe to assume that the longer the war goes on, the more pronounced the extremes will become.
At the same time, the Sunni Salafis are a major factor in the growing global polarization of the Islamic community between Shiites and Sunnis. (The French scholar of Islam Olivier Roy argues that the intra-Muslim rivalry between the two groups has now become even more important than the presumed confrontation between Islam and the West.) The fact that many Salafis in various parts of the world get their financing from similarly conservative elements in Saudi Arabia doesn't help. Perversely enough, Iranian propaganda is already trying to portray the West as backers of Salafi extremism in order to destabilize Tehran and its allies. We'll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing in the future, I'm afraid.
In short, no one should count on the Salafis to go away any time soon. So how should the outside world deal with them — especially if they're going to go around storming foreign embassies?
I think the answer is two-pronged. First, don't generalize. Not all Salafis should be treated as beyond the pale. Salafis who are willing to stand by the rules of democracy and acknowledge the rights of religious and cultural minorities should be encouraged to participate in the system. With time, voters in the new democracies of the region will discriminate between the demagogues and the people who can actually deliver a better society.
Second, don't allow radicals to dictate the rules for everyone else. This is why the outcome of the current political conflicts in Tunisia and Libya are extremely important for the region as a whole. In both countries, voters have now had the opportunity to declare their political preferences in free elections, and they have delivered pretty clear messages. Libyans voted overwhelmingly for secular politicians, while Tunisians chose a mix of moderate Islamists and secularists. But the Salafis in both places don't seem content to leave it at that, and are trying to foment instability by instigating a culture war.
What's encouraging is that we're beginning to see some pushback from ordinary Libyans and Tunisians who don't want to submit to the logic of radicalization — not to mention scholars at the Arab world's most prestigious university, also in Cairo. Don't be fooled by the rabble-rousers. The story in the Middle East is still more interesting than the stereotypes.
More from Foreign Policy
Saudi-Iranian Détente Is a Wake-Up Call for America
The peace plan is a big deal—and it's no accident that China brokered it.
The U.S.-Israel Relationship No Longer Makes Sense
If Israel and its supporters want the country to continue receiving U.S. largesse, they will need to come up with a new narrative.
Putin Is Trapped in the Sunk-Cost Fallacy of War
Moscow is grasping for meaning in a meaningless invasion.
How China's Saudi-Iran Deal Can Serve U.S. Interests
And why there's less to Beijing's diplomatic breakthrough than meets the eye.


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Resealable latch bag in clear plastic.
Dimensions 450 x 500 mm. The dimensions are the inside dimensions of the bag, i.e. from the bottom of the bag to the sealing strip.
The sales package contains 100 minigrip-style, resealable, transparent latch bags.
The bags are manufactured and approved in accordance with EU standards for food use. Made of LDPE plastic and has a hanging hole for store use.
The stock balance indicates the number of bundles of one hundred pieces in stock.
Price includes VAT 24%


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The Oscars are this Sunday and I couldn't be more excited. The Oscars are like my Super Bowl. I have loved the awards show ever since I was little, but I really remember getting into it when I became OBSESSED with "Titanic" in the third grade. We all have a favorite movie experience and "Titanic" is mine. It was so epic and such a phonomenon at the time, and it starred my first celebrity crush, Leonardo DiCaprio. Around that time I decided I wanted to be a famous actress, and Oscar Sunday was the time I could see the actual people who had accomplished the big goal I always wanted.
While I no longer have dreams of being an actress, my love for movies and the Oscars has stuck with me. But this year I have a different perspective of the film industry as a New Orleans resident: I am truly enjoying life in "Hollywood South," as New Orleans is often called. I love hearing and reading about movies being filmed here. According to Film New Orleans, a part of the Mayor's Office of Cultural Economy, the state of Louisiana passed film production tax incentives in 2002. According to this 2012 interview with Film New Orleans Director Katie Williams, Louisiana is third in the nation for production, after California and New York. (You can read more about the New Orleans film industry at filmneworleans.org.)
So as a New Orleanian, I am extra excited for this year's Oscars because I feel a sense of pride for two films: "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "Django Unchained." The two films are up for Best Picture, among other awards, and they were filmed in New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana. I've been reading a lot about "Beasts of the Southern Wild," especially, because Houma, La., native Quvenzhané Wallis is the youngest in history to be nominated for Best Actress. Then there's her co-star, Dwight Henry, who is a baker in New Orleans. (If you want to learn more about these two, I recommend this story by Ann Curry from NBC's "Rock Center with Brian Williams.") "Beasts of the Southern Wild" seems like this year's "little movie that could," so it's fun to have that connection and for the state of Louisiana to have a film to cheer for.
To be honest, it's going to be hard for "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "Django Unchained" to beat "Argo," the current front-runner for the Best Picture prize. And not to be a Debbie Downer, but it's also going to be tough for Wallis to beat seasoned actresses such as Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress. But in my opinion, it doesn't matter if Wallis and "Beasts of the Southern Wild" or "Django Unchained" walk away with an Oscar. Having successful films being shot in New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana get people talking about the area, which is great for the city, just like the Super Bowl created buzz for New Orleans. For locals, it's fun to say, "Oh, that movie was filmed in New Orleans." It gives locals a sense of pride and gives visitors another reason to plan a trip here. New Orleans' reputation as Hollywood South is just another factor that sets New Orleans apart from other cities in the U.S.
I've decided that while I'm living here I want to find out how to be an extra in a film, so maybe my dream of being an actress hasn't completely died. Maybe New Orleans can help reach my childhood goal, or maybe it's just fun to live where the movie stars work.


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Benzhu worship.
Benzhu are local protector deities in the Dali area, their worship is a key element of Bai identity.
In the Dali area, almost every Bai village has a Benzhu Temple, the home of a local protector spirit. These protector spirits are mostly historic figures, such as local heros, kings, generals or others who have through good deeds won the adulation of the local population.
Each Benzhu usually has his own festival day, with activities varying greatly from place to place.
The temple fair falls on the same day as the Torch Festival.
|Guande Benzhu Temple 官徳本主庙
|Guande Old Benzhu Temple 官徳老本主庙
|Baijie Festival 柏洁夫人庙会
|16 Aug. 2023
Red: this - Blue: nearbyView all festivals on map


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In an attempt to rid New York City streets of gangs and reduce their ability to recruit new members, the City Council approved legislation on Thursday that creates a specific crime for gang initiation activity.
The problem, said opponents of the proposal, is the bill does the exact opposite.
Too broad and too vague, the bill will give the city's police department another excuse to put innocent kids in jail, the critics charge, creating more tension between police and the communities they are trying to protect.
"I don't think it's going to deter one gang violation," said Councilmember Jumaane Williams. A bill like this, he added, would have sent him on the wrong path as a youth. "The collateral damage isn't worth it," said Williams.
Supporters of the legislation argue it will give prosecutors and police one more weapon to deter violent and harmful gang activity.
"We need to give our prosecutors tools that will aid in prosecuting individuals who engage in activities that put our communities at risk," said Councilmember Maria del Carmen Arroyo, the sponsor of the bill.
The bill was approved by a vote of 38 to 9 with one abstention.
Averting Initiations
The bill (Intro 1) would create a misdemeanor charge for conducting a gang initiation.
Whether it's harassment, hazing or assault, activity associated with gang initiations is already illegal, said Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr., the chair of the council's Public Safety Committee. What the law does, officials said, is create an extra penalty if that illegal activity is part of a gang initiation. To convict someone of violating the new law, prosecutors would not have to prove that an injury took place during the gang initiation. That means a prosecutor would not need the testimony of any alleged victim to prove the crime occurred, according to city officials.
The bill, supporters said, will not result in innocent youth being targeted by police.
"You can't pull anyone off the corner with this law," said Vallone. "That's ridiculous."
Advocates and civil liberties groups disagree. According to a letter to the council from a number of civil rights groups, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Peter Cicchino Youth Project at the Urban Justice Center, the bill does not tackle the root of gang activity. The bill, the letter charges, is too broadly defined. It defines a gang as an informal or formal group of three or more, where one of the primary purposes is criminal activity. The abuse of that definition would result in the arrest of black and Latino youth for lawful conduct, critics say.
"This law enforcement activity is unlikely to reach criminal gang activity, but will more likely sweep in groups of three or more young people with no gang affiliation," according to the letter to the council. "Parents who call the police out of concern that their kids are being solicited by gangs are likely to find that their children will be subject to police interrogation and, if admissions are made, will face arrest, inclusion in the NYPD's gang database, and quite possibly incarceration and a criminal rap sheet."
The letter urges the council to concentrate on prevention, intervention and educational programs to combat gangs.
The Renters' Blacklist
In addition to the gang bill, the council unanimously approved legislation (Intro 5) tackling an obscure and often under-the-radar tool used by city landlords: the tenant blacklist.
Hundreds of companies comb through housing court violations every year to compile tenant-screening reports, which landlords have used to deny tenants apartments. But unlike credit reports, these companies compile their information by name, not social security number, making way for inaccuracies and errors, said council officials.
On Thursday, the council approved a bill to require landlords to disclose to tenants if they are using a tenant screening report in their selection process and what company they are using. The disclosure allows for tenants to correct any inaccuracies or errors and provide justification for any visit to housing court -- appearances that can be caused by deplorable conditions, not an inability to afford an apartment.
"We are making sure that tenants are fully empowered," said Quinn. "It is hard enough, ask anybody, to find an affordable good quality rental apartment in the City of New York. We don't want to make it even harder."


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3 arrested, dozens treated for heat exhaustion at City Hall Plaza concert
50,000 attend free concert
Three teenagers were arrested and dozens of others had to be treated for heat exhaustion during a free concert on Boston's City Hall Plaza on Sunday.
The free 103.3 AMP Radio Birthday Bash started at 2 p.m. and went until 5 p.m. It featured artists such as Selena Gomez, Jason Derulo and Boston's Sammy Adams.
Boston Police Lt. Tom Lee an estimated 50,000 people -- mainly teenagers -- showed up for the event. Many were unprepared for the scorching heat.
"People didn't want to lose their space at the front and they were not properly hydrated," Lee said.
Boston EMS officials said about 80 teens were treated on the scene for dehydration. About 20 others were taken to area hospitals as a precaution.
Lee said three teenagers were arrested after a fight broke out in the crowd.
"It was just a hot day -- you get kids pushing kids. And they were all teenagers and a couple of them started fighting," he said. "We were able to bring in some additional officers and quell it quickly and place those individuals under arrest."
The three juveniles were charged with disorderly conduct and public fighting.


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We're all about sun-safety here at Seventeen, and the best (and most fashionable) way to block those UV rays is with a cute hat! A big, floppy brim like Emma Watson's is totally retro-chic, and the most effective in shading your face. Ashley Tisdale wear a similar style, but the brightly patterned band adds an interesting detail that makes the hat feel even more summer-y. Do you prefer Emma's neutral hat that matches everything, or the unique stand-out touch on Ashley's?
Baseball caps were probably the most surprising accessory to hit the runway during the last New York Fashion Week, but they're actually growing on us as a trend! Khloe Kardashian shows her team spirit while going out for dinner with Kim in NYC — would you wear a baseball hat as a fashion statement? Beyonce's hat is a sleek fedora that dresses up the casual outfit she wore for a date with hubby Jay-Z. What are your feelings on fedoras – cool accessory, or too old-fashioned?
Which of these summer hats would you rock at the beach this summer, and which trends are you just lukewarm about? Leave a comment below!


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One of the favorite themes in antique samplers is Adam and Eve. I thought I'd put up a few of the photos I've collected of these samplers and hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I do.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Adam and Eve Samplers
One of the favorite themes in antique samplers is Adam and Eve. I thought I'd put up a few of the photos I've collected of these samplers and hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I do.
Posted by Deborah at 8:34 AM 9 comments
Labels: adam and eve. antique samplers
Thursday, February 25, 2010
My sister and I have been discussing rainbows for the past year and a half. We live in Arizona, not exactly the rainbow capitol of the world, yet have seen more rainbows in the past 18 months than we have ever seen previously.
Rainbows have always been a big deal to me, they are just so magical, a little gift from God saying hello. So believe me when I say, I might see a rainbow once a year here in the land where we get maybe 10 inches of rain per year, but never once a month which has been happening since Thanksgiving 2008. The last rainbow I saw is in the above photo, taken last month in Nevada.
And now that my sister and I are attuned to seeing rainbows, we are seeing them everywhere. Last month I was talking to her on the phone with the TV on in the background. We were talking rainbows (again) and a commercial appeared where a leprechaun carried a pot of gold over to a cardboard rainbow and set it underneath. I don't even remember what the commercial was advertising. I was just so stunned to see it while talking with her.
My daughter's dance recital this year was "The Wizard of Oz" and my sister was with me. Again we were talking rainbows and like idiots weren't even thinking that the ultimate rainbow song is "Over the Rainbow" until the whole cast came on stage in multi-colored costumes and danced to the song. We looked at each other with wide eyes and OMG mouths. One of our mother's favorite songs was Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow". So one connection made, these rainbows have to do with Mom.
I have been re-reading the Bible this year, my only new year's resolution, and turned to Noah's story to see what is said about rainbows. This is Genesis Chapter 9 verse 11:
11And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.
12And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
13I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
14And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:
15And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
16And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.
17And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.
So another puzzle solved. My Dad's birthday was Sept 11th. Chapter 9 verse 11...
My feelings are my Dad is showing my sister and I that he is with our mother. He is saying his covenant with her has not broken since his death and neither has his covenant with his children. She has dementia and except for a few devoted friends and her children, her life is extremely limited. To know he is with her while she lives out the last bit of her life is extremely comforting. I think the rainbows will stop when she does. In the meantime, thanks Dad, we have needed to see these and we have always known you are still with us and your love for Mom is endless.
Posted by Deborah at 7:11 AM 4 comments
Labels: rainbows
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Long Overdue Update!
Christmas came and went, children came and went, I went and came back and stitched a little in between. The last 6 weeks have been a storm of emotions, happiness and sadness, full house and empty nest. Today is quiet and I have time to update here.
I had a wonderful experience a couple days ago on the 2nd anniversary of a good friend's death. One birthday, she had given me a small pitcher from England and I began finding them when I traveled and shopped. One from Mexico, another from Poland, you get the idea. Then I stopped finding them even though I purposely would search for them. The 2nd anniversary date, I was in Nevada with a friend and we came upon a clearance rack at a store and the small white pitcher pictured above was on sale for $1. When I looked at it closer, what I thought were little stars on the belly of the pitcher turned out to be X's, as in cross stitch X's and important in my mind since needlework is a love we shared. It wasn't until I bought the pitcher that I realized it was the 2nd anniversary of her death. I've changed and learned through the years and something I would have considered a coincidence years ago, is no longer a coincidence in my mind. Rest in Peace Anne, I miss you.
I received this Engish Cottage Sampler by Chessie and Me for my birthday last year and immediately started working on it. I was so tired of only stitching my own designs and made relatively good progress until Thanksgiving and the Christmas holiday seasons began. I just pulled it out again today and think I'll continue stitching it ASAP, the colors are gorgeous.
As mentioned above, I was visiting a good friend near Lake Tahoe and what was supposed to be a week long trip turned into a month due to various factors including a snowstorm. She taught me how to force bulbs so yesterday I planted four Paperwhite bulbs and can't wait for the roots to start growing around the marbles in the bowl.
It turned out to be an excellent idea to stay a month as I feel much better emotionally and physically than I did after Christmas when it got quiet around here again, my kids went back to college and I was sick with pneumonia. Now I feel ready to tackle new projects and get my life back on track. My intuitive daughter told me the other day that we are going through the same problem at the moment. How is that? She said she has had to find a new identity at college as her old identity from high school is gone. She is no longer the Japanese speaking, viola playing, black belt girl. Well, yes, the Japanese is still there as that is her major but she is one of many now and the viola is stored in our hall closet and her black belt is languishing until she finds a group that she feels comfortable working out with. As for me, I've devoted over 20 years of my life to raising kids and suddenly they are gone so I'm rummaging around in my mind, shuffling through ideas and trying to forge a new identity beyond motherhood. I'm still a work in progress.
And now to the good part, this is Nick on Christmas Eve. We were so happy to have him home from Thanksgiving until right after the New Year. He's funny, gentle and artistic and we couldn't ask for a more unique, creative son.
My daughter, Maggie, brought home her boyfriend Noel from college. He stayed with us a week until we put him back on the plane to Seattle Christmas afternoon. Maggie stayed on another week until she too had to return to college. We loved finally meeting Noel, he was all we imagined and hope to get to know him even better in the future and maybe stay in one place for a bit. We hit all the local attractions plus spent 2 nights in Mexico, not to mention Christmas. It was a whirlwind but a fun ride nonetheless. BTW, that's our oldest cat Snowflake in the photo, looking appropriately catlike and cranky.
I'm stitching an ornament for the 2010 JCS Christmas issue plus one for their preview Christmas issue. I'll get back to work now.
Posted by Deborah at 1:46 PM 12 comments


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goodbye mithra
from jessi rae:: For the last three months we have been traveling as an eclectic group of 4 women all bringing a different background and flavor to create the mixture which has defined the women of wanderlust. Mithra was a late addition to this trip but made a wonderful difference. Today she left us for home and now we are down to 3 and things will not be the same without her. Love you Meech and we'll be missing you til we join you back in Cali.


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BEIRUT—Syrian government helicopters and warplanes unleashed a wave of airstrikes on more than a dozen opposition-held neighbourhoods in the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, firing missiles and dropping crude barrel bombs in a ferocious attack that killed at least 36 people, including 17 children, activists said.
Aleppo has been a key battleground in Syria's civil war since rebels swept into the city in mid-2012 and wrested most of the eastern and southern neighbourhoods from the government. Since then, the fighting has settled into a bloody grind, with neither side capable of mounting an offensive that would expel its opponents from the city.
But over the past two months, President Bashar Assad's air force has ramped up its aerial campaign on rebel-held areas of Aleppo, pounding them with barrel bombs — containers packed with explosives, fuel and scraps of metal — that cause massive damage on impact.
More at thestar.com:
Syria allegedly razed entire neighbourhoods as punishment
Syria starving its foes to gain tactical victory
Bouthaina Shaaban: The dark side of Syria's public face
On Sunday alone, Syrian military aircraft targeted 15 opposition-controlled neighbourhoods, said an activist who goes by the name of Abu al-Hassan Marea.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the Tariq al-Bab district on the eastern edge of the city was the hardest-hit, with at least eight barrel bombs raining down on it Sunday. Marea said one of the air raids in the neighbourhood struck a vegetable market and another landed near a mosque.
The Aleppo Media Center activist group said the strike near the Abdullah bin Masoud Mosque killed more than 10 people.
The Observatory put the day's death toll in the air raids at 36, including 17 children. Marea said more than 50 people were killed in the airstrikes, although he did not have an exact count.
An amateur video posted online showed a helicopter circling in the blue sky, and then a barrel plummeting from the aircraft until it slams into buildings on the horizon, sending a pillar of smoke and dust into the air. The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other Associated Press reporting of the events depicted.
This is not the first time that Assad's air force has waged an intense campaign over Aleppo. In December, military helicopters pounded rebel-held districts of the city with barrel bombs, levelling buildings, burying people under the rubble and killing more than 500 people over a two-week stretch.
The misery in Aleppo was then compounded in early January by an outburst of rebel-on-rebel fighting, which has weakened the opposition's grip on parts of the city.
Over the past two weeks, Assad's forces have slowly chipped away at the rebels' hold on neighbourhoods in southeastern Aleppo. While the advances have been small, they still mark the most significant government gains in the divided city since opposition fighters seized the areas in mid-2012.
As intense as the airstrikes have been, the rebels' position in the city and across northern Syria has been undermined to a greater degree by the bloody bout of infighting that pits the al-Qaida-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant against an array of ultraconservative brigades and more moderate factions.
The rebel clashes have killed more than 1,400 people since they began a month ago, and the fighting shows little sign of coming to an immediate close.
On Saturday, a twin suicide bombing killed 26 people, including a senior military commander of the Tawhid Brigade, a prominent rebel group opposed to the Islamic State.
The attack, widely blamed by both pro- and anti-al-Qaida activists on the Islamic State, targeted the base of its rivals in the Tawhid Brigade and killed senior leader Adnan Bakkour, said Observatory director Rami Abdurrahman.
The Islamic State also killed another prominent commander, Abu Hussein al-Dik of Suqour al-Sham, on Saturday near the central city of Hama, the Observatory said. Abdurrahman said al-Dik was killed in an ambush outside of Hama, where he was travelling to try to help rebels encircled by Islamic State fighters.
Both the Tawhid Brigade and Suqour al-Sham are part of the Islamic Front, a powerful alliance of seven Islamist rebel factions that united in November. The Islamic Front has emerged as a heavy weight in northern Syria, and has been a driving force in the fight against the Islamic State.
Analyst Charles Lister of the Brookings Doha Center said the Islamic State "appears to be targeting particularly strategic locales and individuals in its continuing operations against perceived enemy rebels."


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Though pro football has never been more popular on television, attendance in NFL stadiums has decreased for four straight years. The arguments in favor of watching at home are plentiful: It's cheaper, easier to park, and the view on your HD flat screen is better than from your stadium seat. Despite all of those obvious advantages, attendance has been similarly pitiful at my apartment this season. If my football get-togethers were games, they'd be blacked out more often than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Why can't I get anyone to watch football with me?
Your first guess is probably that my friends don't enjoy my company, and you'd be right. But I also find myself turning down other people's invitations and opting for a hermitic approach to football Sundays. It used to be a given that my friends would meet up at someone's house each week. And this year, only four out of 12 of us bothered to show up for our fantasy draft barbecue. The Bowling Alone effect isn't just for participatory sports any more. In this age of fantasy football and DVR, rooting for your favorite team has become a pastime that's best enjoyed by yourself, hunkered down in a fandom isolation chamber. We are now millions of audiences of one.
Some of the reasons I prefer to keep to myself are as old as fandom itself. The inherent shamefulness of overzealous rooting—guilty as charged—causes me to duck out on social obligations, especially when I know the game will be ruined by a fun anchor who's indifferent about sports. (I've never understood blind rage until I watched my beloved New England Patriots lose in the playoffs while some killjoy was talking about how football is emblematic of our violent American culture.) The small talk, the elaborate food rituals, and the children milling about all take away from the experience of watching the game. Even so, I've always been willing to put up with human contact, as the benefits of a group football hangout usually outweighed the negatives.
Technology has changed that calculus. I no longer need to be in the same room with my friends to share a collective moment of euphoria. Now I can simply share my delight on Twitter or Facebook and collect dozens of electronic high-fives instantaneously. I spend more time now interacting with my friends digitally than in the flesh; it's only logical that we'd take that approach to sports as well. Right now, for example, my friend is G-chatting me about how much he hates Tim Tebow, while another handful are complaining about their teams on our fantasy league board and a third group is texting me about the Patriots game. In a living room, you'd call that noise. Here at home, it's a lot easier to manage. We're essentially watching TV together—why do we need to be in the same room?
As home-theater technology has filtered down to the masses, we've all become captains of our own sport-y spaceships. DVRs have become much more commonplace in just the last few years, with the percentage of DVR-equipped homes increasing from 14 percent to 42 percent since 2007. HD has also become mandatory for sports fans, and diehards can now follow multiple games at once thanks to NFL Sunday Ticket and the revolutionary RedZone channel.
Now that a personalized, crystal-clear picture is at everyone's fingertips, it is pure torture to let someone else man the controls. Watching my friends operate a DVR makes me feel like a nervous backseat driver. When I'm at my in-laws' house, for instance, I have to watch the Patriots game in a separate room because my father-in-law will inevitably flip over to golf during commercials. Personally, I like to pause the action every time there's a stoppage in play or when, say, the damn Patriots defense allows yet another third down conversion. (That happens a lot.) After I hit pause, I'll walk around the house a few times grinding my teeth. If I did that with company around, it would inevitably lead to someone complaining about being behind real time and somebody else whining that he can't check his fantasy numbers without spoiling the game that's now on pause. And they would be right to complain, if those hypothetical people still came over to watch football. Thankfully, I've scared them all away.
On the few recent occasions that I have dragged myself to a friend's house, or vice versa, we spend most of the time staring at our smart phones and tablets. What exactly is the benefit of physical proximity in that scenario? "Check out this funny tweet I just sent" doesn't really count as conversation, does it? And there's always the one poor guy who didn't bring his laptop and has to continually ask one of us to check his scores for him. He might as well be watching the game through a hole in a wooden fence like a cartoon character from the 1930s.
This together/alone approach isn't unique to sports viewership. Consider how video-game producers have moved away from split-screen games and multicontroller hubs and toward online multiplayers where everyone logs in from their couch. A generation of children is being raised with the idea that "hanging out" means logging on and "playing" with your friends online. Internet porn is similarly encroaching on our actual sex lives. It's often more convenient to just get the job done digitally, by yourself, at your leisure.
Is technology like this isolating, or does it allow us to connect with more people more often? In this case, I'd say it's both at once. I still want to interact with my friends through sports, but I can reach more of my fellow Patriots fans through a single tweet than I ever could have back in the analog era. There are plenty of days, though, when my increasingly personalized approach to sports-watching makes interpersonal connections harder to achieve. If I'm watching on DVR delay, I have to avoid Facebook and texts and chats so as not to spoil the game. That means I'm eschewing both the real-life social experience and the techno-social one—but, hey, at least I don't have to make small talk during the beer ads.
I'll leave one final thought for the sports philosophers. Fandom is the quintessentially shared experience, the modern expression of the primal collective. But if I'm cheering for Wes Welker by myself—in my house, watching on tape delay, with my phone turned off—does it even make a sound?


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Two years ago a TED Talk by Margaret Heffernan garnered 1,819,512 views, and well it should. Heffernan began her story by telling about a person whose acquaintance we shared, Dr. Alice Stewart (1906-2002)
Our first experience with Alice goes back to 1977, when she testified before a House Committee that was looking into the health effects of radiation from nuclear power plants. The Rogers Committee and had called Alice, her co-worker George Kneale and Dr. Thomas Mancuso to testify about their epidemiology study of the Hanford plutonium workers.
Also testifying that day were Drs. Rosalie Bertell and Irwin Bross, who conducted the Tri-state Leukemia Survey that linked in utero x-rays to childhood mortality and Dr. John W. Gofman, one of the co-discoverers of U-233, whose funding at Livermore National Laboratory was suspended when he revealed the world about the likely cancer and genetic consequences of the nation's rush to nuclear power.
All of these people would become friends of ours, some closer than others, but we took the opportunity while in Washington to bike down Constitution Avenue and attend the testimony Alice gave later that same day to the National Academy of Sciences.
Understand, testifying to Congress is a bit like speaking to a senile aunt. They may hear you, but they just mutter something like "Whatever you say, dear," and go back to their soap opera. Stewart, Kneale and Mancuso were received politely by the Congressmen, but apart from making a public record for the sake of history, nothing would come of it.
Down the road at the NAS it was a different story. The knives were out as soon as Alice had finished her opening statement. She was making waves not just in the world of electric power generation, but in the world of medicine and science. She was prepared to demonstrate, and to defend, strong findings that at even the most infinitesimally small doses, exposure to ionizing radiation carries an inexorable risk of mortality. There is no safe dose. She knew it. She could prove it.
The reason Alice Stewart was not afraid was because she had George Kneale.
George was completely ill-suited for the role he found himself thrust into that day; sitting beside Alice before both Congress and the NAS. A tall and heavy-set Brit resembling an unkempt Stephen Fry in a second hand suit, he gave us the impression, when we first spoke, of being marginally autistic, a savant perhaps, but a man who would not hold your eye and would much prefer he were somewhere far away.
Tom Mancuso, a full professor at the University of Pittsburgh at the time, was more like a pugnacious, union shop floor boss, someone who was not afraid to tussle for the rights of his workers if it came to it. Stewart, the medical doctor of the three, seemed weary, as if this experience had happened too many times before, and she knew it was all a colossal play for time — purchased at the cost of real children's lives, in very large numbers.
According to Stewart's telling at the Right Livelihood Awards ceremony in 1986, Kneale had two major contributions to biostatistics while he was still a young man advancing his degrees at Oxford. The first was to discover a way to isolate the confounding variable of death from pneumonia or other secondary infections by way of an impaired immune system (which is more than 300 times more likely to be fatal in children exposed to radiation) from death by leukemia within 5 years following radiation exposure.
Kneale's second achievement, some years later as he began studying radiation workers, was his proof that resistance to cancer from radiation is exceptionally high in men at 20 years of age, but by 50 years it may be no greater as it was shortly before birth.
Stewart first came to prominence as the first woman admitted to the UK Association of Physicians and the youngest ever admitted to the Royal Academy. During World War II she investigated the effects on workers of exposure to TNT in munitions factories, the effects of carbon tetrachloride, and the mysterious prevalence of tuberculosis among workers in the boot and shoe industry.
Heffernan tells Alice's story this way:
[Alice] was unusual because she was really interested in a new science, the emerging field of epidemiology, the study of patterns in disease. But like every scientist, she appreciated that to make her mark, what she needed to do was find a hard problem and solve it. The hard problem that Alice chose was the rising incidence of childhood cancers. Most disease is correlated with poverty, but in the case of childhood cancers, the children who were dying seemed mostly to come from affluent families. So, what, she wanted to know, could explain this anomaly?
Now, Alice had trouble getting funding for her research. In the end, she got just 1,000 pounds from the Lady Tata Memorial prize. And that meant she knew she only had one shot at collecting her data. Now, she had no idea what to look for. This really was a needle in a haystack sort of search, so she asked everything she could think of. Had the children eaten boiled sweets? Had they consumed colored drinks? Did they eat fish and chips? Did they have indoor or outdoor plumbing? What time of life had they started school?
And when her carbon copied questionnaire started to come back, one thing and one thing only jumped out with the statistical clarity of a kind that most scientists can only dream of. By a rate of two to one, the children who had died had had mothers who had been X-rayed when pregnant. Now that finding flew in the face of conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom held that everything was safe up to a point, a threshold. It flew in the face of conventional wisdom, which was huge enthusiasm for the cool new technology of that age, which was the X-ray machine. And it flew in the face of doctors' idea of themselves, which was as people who helped patients, they didn't harm them.
Nevertheless, Alice Stewart rushed to publish her preliminary findings in The Lancet in 1956. People got very excited, there was talk of the Nobel Prize, and Alice really was in a big hurry to try to study all the cases of childhood cancer she could find before they disappeared. In fact, she need not have hurried. It was fully 25 years before the British and medical — British and American medical establishments abandoned the practice of X-raying pregnant women. The data was out there, it was open, it was freely available, but nobody wanted to know. A child a week was dying, but nothing changed. Openness alone can't drive change.
So for 25 years Alice Stewart had a very big fight on her hands. So, how did she know that she was right? Well, she had a fantastic model for thinking. She worked with a statistician named George Kneale, and George was pretty much everything that Alice wasn't. So, Alice was very outgoing and sociable, and George was a recluse. Alice was very warm, very empathetic with her patients. George frankly preferred numbers to people. But he said this fantastic thing about their working relationship. He said, "My job is to prove Dr. Stewart wrong." He actively sought disconfirmation. Different ways of looking at her models, at her statistics, different ways of crunching the data in order to disprove her. He saw his job as creating conflict around her theories. Because it was only by not being able to prove that she was wrong, that George could give Alice the confidence she needed to know that she was right.
It's a fantastic model of collaboration -- thinking partners who aren't echo chambers. I wonder how many of us have, or dare to have, such collaborators. Alice and George were very good at conflict. They saw it as thinking.
So what does that kind of constructive conflict require? Well, first of all, it requires that we find people who are very different from ourselves. That means we have to resist the neurobiological drive, which means that we really prefer people mostly like ourselves, and it means we have to seek out people with different backgrounds, different disciplines, different ways of thinking and different experience, and find ways to engage with them. That requires a lot of patience and a lot of energy.
And the more I've thought about this, the more I think, really, that that's a kind of love.
Because you simply won't commit that kind of energy and time if you don't really care. And it also means that we have to be prepared to change our minds. Alice's daughter told me that every time Alice went head-to-head with a fellow scientist, they made her think and think and think again. "My mother," she said, "My mother didn't enjoy a fight, but she was really good at them."
So it's one thing to do that in a one-to-one relationship. But it strikes me that the biggest problems we face, many of the biggest disasters that we've experienced, mostly haven't come from individuals, they've come from organizations, some of them bigger than countries, many of them capable of affecting hundreds, thousands, even millions of lives. So how do organizations think? Well, for the most part, they don't. And that isn't because they don't want to, it's really because they can't. And they can't because the people inside of them are too afraid of conflict.Because we are the kind of species we are living in the world we inhabit, ethical choices are absolutely incumbent upon us, every day. Our larger task, as sentient life-forms, is to steward that which is placed in our care, nourish it if it is well, restore it to health if it is ill, and then safely pass it along to responsible successors in the next generation.
We are, by virtue of our genetic heritage as herd animals, required to look out for our kin. As we allow our consciousness to expand, as it must, we extend the definition of kin out to all our relations; those with two legs, four legs, eight legs, wings, fins, shells, roots in the ground and taxa beyond number. All our relations. We need them, they need us. It is because they have worth that we have worth.
This is something Alice and George understood very well. They knew they would not be welcome in the lions' den. They knew their seminal works would be challenged on the size of their statistical sample, on the unorthadoxy of a superlinear dose response curve (lower doses are more deadly than higher because they mutate rather than kill cells) and, far worse, go unheeded while thousands perished from lax regulations of these insidious new poisons.
Alice knew John Gofman was right that nuclear power would kill millions of people from legally permitted emissions, even with no accidents (although accidents happen every day). She knew Rosalie Bertell was right about the cause of a childhood epidemic in x-ray-caused leukemias in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. She knew all of that could have been prevented if people like those who sat across the table from her at the National Academy — those whose decisions set the standards — would have the courage to choose to act.
It is not as thought they just sat, though. Those who listened to her two public talks that day in 1977 and had authority to take action did. They cut her research funding. When she received the Right Livelihood Award in 1986 she used the small amount of money that came with that to restore funding to yet another of her studies that was being defunded, an investigation into the potential health damage caused to fetuses by ultrasound.
Before she died in 2002, Stewart told The Guardian:
"'Good people are seldom fully recognized during their lifetimes, and here, there are serious problems of corruption. One day it will be realized that my findings should have been acknowledged.'"
"'Plants get all their energy from the sun and so should we,' she would say. Then she would smile wistfully, for she knew how very long that learning curve might be."
Given this pattern of lopping the heads off anyone who tries to warn of danger, it is a wonder why anyone bothers to speak up the way Alice and George did. We know the territory all too well from working on chronically underfunded but incredibly significant projects, and having done so for most of our lives. Occasionally some allies take notice and help us down the path a bit further. Other times we just have to tough it out or hole up until we find the support to make it to next stages of our research.
This week we published a collection of our essays that appeared on this site from 2008 to 2014 and were selected by our readers as most popular. These are our biggest hits. They are now a free download for members of Kindle Unlimited, and $1.99 to everyone else. It is our hope that the collection will generate enough sales to get us to our next stop, which is the North American Permaculture Convergence in Minnesota over Labor Day weekend. We have been invited there to speak on the subject of the state of permaculture in 2014, but they don't provide expenses or honoraria.
Our feelings about permaculture is that it is a useful framework, a multiplier for energy efficiency, but all by itself does not pay the rent. It may be ethical but it is not always economic, and therein lies its greatest challenge — macroeconomic reform to account for neglected externalities like coral reefs, social justice and children with leukemia.
It's worth having that conversation. We are hoping enough others agree to make it possible. So far, enough people have bought our new book, Pour Evian on Your Radishes,
in the first 24 hours to push it to the ninth best seller of Kindle's collected essays category.
The sign says, "If you want justice, don't have fear. If you want peace, don't be of faint heart."


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Etta James (born Jamesetta Hawkins; January 25, 1938 – January 20, 2012) was an American singer. Her style spanned a variety of music genres including blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, gospel and jazz. Starting her career in 1954, she gained fame with hits such as Roll With Me, Henry, At Last, Tell Mama, Something's Got a Hold on Me, and I'd Rather Go Blind for which she wrote the lyrics. She faced a number of personal problems, including drug addiction, before making a musical resurgence in the late 1980s with the album The Seven Year Itch.
James is regarded as having bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and is the winner of six Grammys and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Grammy Hall of Fame in both 1999 and 2008. Rolling Stone ranked James number 22 on their list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and number 62 on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists. - WIKIPEDIA


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López Obrador, Andrés Manuel
López Obrador, Andrés Manuel ändrās´ mänwĕl´ lō´pĕs ōbrädôr´ [key], 1954–, Mexican politician, president of Mexico (2018–). A lawyer, he was active in the Institutional Revolutionary party (PRI) in the state of Tabasco, but he left the PRI and in 1988 helped form the leftist Democratic Revolutionary party (PRD). In 1996 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the Tabasco governorship, but fraud may have contributed to his defeat. Four years later he was elected mayor of Mexico City, becoming a highly visible and popular PRD leader. As mayor he promoted social programs but was often at odds with the city assembly and sometimes governed by decree. In 2004 he was charged with ignoring court orders in a land dispute and was arrested, but the federal charges were seen as a politically motivated move to prevent him from running for president in 2006 and were dropped. He was indeed the PRD's presidential candidate in 2006 and was also favored to win, but narrowly lost to Felipe Calderón. Accusing the National Action party of stealing the election (a charge not supported by independent observers), he refused to concede, and his supporters staged large protest rallies for several weeks after the election. He was the PRD's candidate for the 2012 presidential election, and again placed second (to the PRI's Enrique Peña Nieto) and rejected the results. López Obrador subsequently left the PRD to focus on transforming the National Regeneration Movement (Morena), a grassroots group of his supporters, into a political party (registered 2014). In 2018 he ran for president as Morena's candidate and won easily; his policies as president were populist and sometimes even conservative.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Mexican History: Biographies


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