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Not solving the issues with enterprise app stores ends up creating an unsustainable situation in the enterprise as users adopt the tools they prefer, but completely on their own platforms under their own control. App stores have thrived beyond all expectation in the consumer space over the last several years (as a primary example, Apple shipped its ten billionth app earlier this year through its market-leading, though proprietary, App Store.) A current rush to adapt this successful new distribution model for software to the enterprise has met a decidedly muted reception, at least from those in IT.
It's not that app stores aren't a good idea in themselves. Far from it. They can provide an enormously useful centralized directory of available software that is matched with community ratings and feedback to sort through the best possibilities while simultaneously making it very easy to acquire the latest updates. App stores also increase the trust level in new applications -- and by association their vendors -- since many app stores vet their submissions and ensure they meet various criteria for safety. Developers like them because app stores make it easy to rapidly tap into a potentially large (depending on the app store) and ready-made audience while also providing various ready-made methods for monetization including purchase fees, advertising, and in-app purchases.
But it's also this enormously wide variety of choice combined with a very low barrier to access that gives enterprises pause. While app stores have come and gone in various forms over the years, it's their runaway success on mobile devices, most notable iOS and Android, that have validated the model and more importantly, created critical mass and expectations in the minds of hundreds of millions of consumers as to the richness, variety, and ease-of-use they should expect when they decide to select and buy a new piece of software.
Especially in the last year, app stores have now moved well beyond the mobile space. With the opening of Apple's Mac app store earlier this year, a similar one rumored to be coming soon from Microsoft for Windows 8, and Google having entered the space last year with its Apps Marketplace, along with many other smaller players it's safe to say that traditional software has begun moving towards the app store model.
However, while enterprise app stores have now been launched in earnest from a wide variety of companies, large and niche both, their uptake has been very little like the gold rush mentality of consumer app stores. It may be because the enterprise offerings haven't hit on the right combination of features, target audience, and application inventory. Or it may be that there is little demand for targeted, just-in-time business software in enterprise settings. I personally greatly doubt the latter, but the former is always possible. After all, it took Apple and both its renowned user experience capabilities and market leadership position to hit upon the right formula and prove that app stores are not only viable but an increasingly preeminent way in which software is acquired.
Related: App stores, the new 'must have' digital business model.
In actuality, I believe that along with the right enterprise formula for an app store (which I think is somewhat problematic in the offerings to date), there is a matching problem in the mindset within most organizations when it comes to acquiring software. Unlike the Internet, most enterprises are not improving fast enough to make it easier and more rapid to obtain software.
I've been watching the enterprise app store space since its inception and it's clear that IT departments are not exactly lining up to enable this new software distribution channel within their organization as a faster, more hassle free conduit for access to a wider variety of price competitive business solutions. In fact, IBM's own offering in the space, Smart Market, has seemingly come to this same conclusion and proceeded directly to the most under served business segment that's much less likely to have the bureaucratic and cultural hurdles that larger organization will have. This market is small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) and they don't have IT departments or very much time and expertise to invest in independent vendor comparisons, complex installations, or painful recurring maintenance. SMBs want utility software that's 1) easy to find with 2) plenty of selection so they don't have to customize it for their needs, and 3) with lots of competition to drive down price. Incidentally, this is the same market that many SaaS products are going after, but never got critical mass around, partially I suspect because they didn't have a discovery and consumption platform as simple and easy to use as app stores.
No, a big part of the issue here is that IT departments are directly in the critical path of enterprise software consumption. Last year I explored how the stranglehold that IT has on both the strategic and tactical use of technology in large companies is slipping for a confluence of reasons. The ongoing consumerization of the enterprise (CoIT) is rapidly leading to something some observers are calling the Personal Enterprise, where users are increasingly in control of shaping their technology experience at work. When the business can't (or won't) provide the IT solutions they need, workers can increasingly reach for their personal smart device where they have ready access to software that is often a great deal superior to what they can get at work. That the cost of these new solutions is nearly free, while the outdated enterprise versions are enormously expensively is increasingly lost on fewer and fewer of us.
Related: Fixing IT in the cloud computing era.
A closely related trend to enterprise app stores is that both innovation and demand in IT solutions has moved beyond systems of record to systems of engagement (a good perspective on this trend by Redmonk's James Governer). Most organizations have enough systems of record, but a great many don't have enough effective systems of engagement. Apps that help businesses with better communication and collaboration, specifically with better discovery and access to both internal and external knowledge and people, is a growth industry as this time (as likely evidenced by this week's successful IPO of LinkedIn, a popular business social network.)
An important new offshoot of regular app stores are social app stores. Facebook had one long before Apple introduced its mobile app store and it was largely responsible for providing the community-developed feature set that ultimately catapulted Facebook past its then-rival and social networking leader MySpace.
In a microcosm of this whole narrative -- and one of more direct interest to those that follow this blog -- are enterprise social networking platforms that are now opening up and allowing 3rd party social applications to live and operate in the same way that Facebook apps do online today. Enter Google's OpenSocial social networking application format, which is getting increasingly popular with business users and especially popular with enterprise social software vendors.
The good news is that most of the top Enterprise 2.0 products, with the notable exception of Microsoft SharePoint, now allow OpenSocial applications to be installed and used with them. This includes Lotus Connections, Jive, SocialText, Confluence, etc. The problem with this? There really isn't an enterprise-ready OpenSocial app store that exists today that has necessary features we'd want to see to provide ready, end-user access to a river of 3rd party social applications. This includes vendor verification, curation, review, payments, etc. And that doesn't include the kind of feature that IT departments are going to want in app store if they're even going to set them lose, which I'll get to in a minute.
But that's about to change as I discussed recently as OpenSocial has increasingly added an enterprise focus to its capabilities. Now Jive Software will be adding a full-blown enterprise app store in its much-anticipated next iteration, Jive 5, which should be released next month. The new app store, which Robert Scoble took a look at last month, had at at last count commitment from 50 software vendors. Jive is as close as any large enterprise software vendor has gotten to providing a complete apps store.
Interestingly, the default mode of the Jive Apps Market is opt-in, meaning that users within an enterprise can see and potentially install all new apps that are being released into the app market from 3rd party vendors. While it can be changed to opt-in mode, where IT can specify only which apps can be seen, it's an intriguing test in my opinion to see if enterprises are ready to open up and let their users get better access to the software they need to get their jobs done. Given that about a third of all IT these days is so-called "shadow IT", meaning technology solutions that are unsanctioned by IT, and you can see why there might be a middle road: Offering a wider selection of apps to users without completely relinquishing control.
I spoke to the VP in charge of Jive Apps Market, Robin Bordoli, this week and asked him about what he thought the issues were in opening up app stores, in particular -- and this is a key point -- the opt-out mode is the default setting that Jive uses out-of-the-box. He noted that "what we're doing with Jive Apps Market is trying to open up a dialogue between employees, IT, and the business around which business applications employees can use to get their work done." Furthermore, (and this is a particularly interesting point) because it's a social platform that naturally fosters open discussion, Robin believes "only a social business platform like Jive has the ability to enable this dialogue between IT and employees inside an organization." And there are indeed features for IT in the Jive Apps Market, noting that "the Jive Apps Market actually strikes the balance between allowing employees to get access to the applications they need to get their work done, and giving IT control and line of sight into usage and spend."
Bordoli also had good things to say about OpenSocial itself as a model for social applications, saying the use of OpenSocial has "been fantastic. The cost of integration of 3rd party applications to closed enterprise platforms before OpenSocial has been too high. OpenSocial has slashed it to a few weeks from many months." There's often been debate on how effective OpenSocial in the consumer space has been given that Facebook has dominated social networking applications on the Internet. But in the enterprise, OpenSocial increasingly seems to be gaining a foothold as a natural integration models that also incorporates the social context of its users.
Frankly, while I've been bullish on OpenSocial for both internal and external uses for quite a while, there is often a terrible lack of imagination when using it to integrate applications into the social architecture of software. Too often OpenSocial is just used it as a dumb wrapper instead of a way to put social computing naturally into the flow of work taking place in systems of record. I'm hoping we'll see better from the products that are launched in the Jive Apps Market and other social app stores.
Finally to wrap up, I still believe that many of the issues that IT departments -- too many of which are either ignoring the broader consumerization trend or are merely being dragged incrementally into doing more instead of being proactive -- are failing to be addressed. Admittedly, they are somewhat challenging issues that will require a leader with industry stature. But not solving the issues with enterprise app stores ends up creating an unsustainable situation in the enterprise as users adopt the tools they prefer, but completely on their own platforms under their own control, instead of in a place that both the needs of the business and IT can both live with.
Here then are those issues that will have to be addressed if enterprise app stores are to flourish in a way that is constructive to the entire organization, including business and IT.
That this list is a tall order there is little question, but the trick, like all things these days that succeed in scale, is to push most of the effort out into the developer community while still making it easy to comply with. Mark my words, someday soon someone will offer an enterprise app store with the right mix of features, choice, customer community, developer community, and trust. It will probably look fairly similar to the list above.
What do you think it will take for enterprise apps to take off? Put your comments in Talkback below.


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MAYFLOWER, Ark., May 6 (UPI) -- Exxon Mobil won't pump oil through any section of the 850-mile Pegasus oil pipeline until regulators say it's safe, a company spokesman said.
Exxon crews repaired a damaged section of the pipeline in Missouri last week after about 42 gallons of oil spilled.
Patricia Klinger, a spokeswoman for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, told the Log Cabin Democrat, a Conway, Ark., newspaper, inspectors were looking at all 850 miles of the pipeline after a March rupture of the pipeline spilled about 5,000 barrels of oil in the Mayflower, Ark., neighborhood.
That means Exxon won't restart the entire pipeline until a full inspection is conducted.
"We will not restart the pipeline until both the relevant government authorities and we are convinced it is safe to do so," Exxon spokesman Michael Kontos told the newspaper.
The pipeline was carrying a diluted form of so-called oil sands from Canada at the time of the March incident in Arkansas. Authorities say air and water quality is within safe limits and Exxon has moved to a long-term remediation phase to clean a marshland soiled by the spill.

subset: commoncrawl


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It's interesting how people bond to ancestry and certain aspects of history related to ancestors. However, how often have you heard someone talk about their slaveholding ancestor? There are all sorts of descendant organizations, but is there an organization for the descendants of slaveholders? I'd be surprised if there was, and I certainly can't imagine anyone who would want to join.
Nonetheless, descendants of slaveholders are out there, and I'm one of them.
I don't say this as a point of pride or a point of shame. I can find no reason to be proud for this, yet because I am of the mind that we stand on shaky ground when we dare to judge those of the past through our modern lense of morality, I do not assume shame. I have no stories passed down to me about my slaveholding ancestors, but having, through research, encountered ancestors who owned slaves, I can't help but ask a number of unanswerable questions. I can only hope that the answers, if they could be found, would reflect favorably on the way the slaveholding ancestors treated their slaves. Though we find slaveholding repulsive today, I can't do anything about how they thought about slaveholding back then. I can, however, reflect on this matter.
No, the one Virginia slaveholding ancestor that I know of was not a Confederate. In fact, none of my Confederate ancestors were slaveholders. If anything, it is ironic that one slaveholding ancestor, whose two sons later served in the Confederate army (33rd Va. Infantry, Stonewall Brigade), actually ceased to be a slaveholder sometime after 1850. I have no idea whether he sold or freed the slaves. I think it is also interesting that this same ancestor almost died at the hands of a rabid secessionist for expressing his feeling of Unionism in 1860 and 61.
I also have a Kentucky ancestor who owned one slave in 1850, but had not owned one in 1840, and did not continue to own any slaves as of the 1860 census. Incidentally, two of his brothers later served in the Union army (27th Kentucky Infantry).
I have another antebellum slaveholding ancestor who was a Marylander. Most significantly, I continue to carry the surname of this ancestor, so it hits home a little more than the other one mentioned above. My fourth great-grandfather was the last of the line to own any slaves, and he died in 1840; but he was descended from a long line of slaveholders who lived in eastern Maryland, mostly around what is now Washington, D.C. and Prince Georges County, Maryland (Silver Hill being the site of one of the family properties). I've never looked into the numbers of slaves in this line of the family, in this particular geographic region, but they were quite active in growing tobacco and contributed significant amounts of tobacco to Maryland during the American Revolution, so it would seem they may have had a number of slaves in the 1700s.
By the time of my fourth great grandfather (born in 1773), well, he had moved to the western part of Maryland and lived in Clear Spring.
In the 1820 census, he was listed as owning one male slave between 14-26 years of age and seven female slaves. There was also one free black male living at the homestead.
Two years later he sold Mary (15), Hannah, and Patty (11). This disturbs me. Were all three of them family members sold to the same person, were they all children (I do not know Hannah's age), what happened to these people?
Then, it's also disturbing to me to know that, in 1825, he sold Joseph (age 50), Margaret (age 47), Harriet (age 15), and Rachel (age 11) to Robert Thompson of Louisiana for $900. I can only hope that they were all a family and stayed together.
In 1830, my fourth great grandfather owned six male slaves and two female slaves.
Ten years later, he had four male slaves and one female slave.
When he died in January 1840, he did not leave the legacy of freedom to his slaves. He did, however, specify that none of his slaves be sold outside the county or state.
Incidentally, from my fourth great grandfather, the only descendant to serve in the Civil War, served in the Union army (1st Potomac Home Brigade, Cole's Cavalry). The Union soldier, a distant first cousin of mine, was one of my fourth great grandfather's grandsons. This Union soldier never knew his grandfather as he died before he was born, and other than stories that he may have been told, I don't think he ever knew a time during his lifetime in which the family owned slaves.
In the end, if I take anything from being the descendant of slaveholders, I think what is important to me is, and this should be the most important thing among all of us, that we work to secure something more "forward thinking." When thinking about my slaveholding ancestors, I prefer to think of that which was mentioned by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "I Have a Dream" Speech; that "sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood." Certainly, that is the best possible thing that can come from being a descendant of slaveholders.


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Last night we kicked off the North American International Auto Show with the Volkswagen Group at its annual shindig in downtown Detroit. Other than some delicious fried shrimp and tasty fish tacos, there wasn't much to get excited about. The big news is that a three-row 7-person SUV is already in development and heading to the U.S in 2016. Volkswagen didn't release any more information about the upcoming vehicle, but it should be based on the CrossBlue concept the carmaker unveiled last year in Detroit.
The CrossBlue rides on VW's new scaleable MQB architecture that also underpins the new Golf and a host of other VW Group vehicles. Not meant as a replacement for the Touareg, the CrossBlue is longer (196.3 inches) and wider (79.3 inches) than the Touareg while measuring the same height (68.2 inches). The concept shown off in Detroit had an enticing plug-in diesel hybrid powertrain mated with a six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, but several engines and setups should be offered thanks to the vehicle's flexible platform. As with the CrossBlue, expect this new SUV to have a premium interior and to be outfitted with all of the latest tech—except for USB ports. For some reason, Volkswagen still doesn't think those are necessary in a modern vehicle. We disagree.


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Christopher, Illinois Tile & Asphalt Roof Cleaning
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Our roof cleaners always use soft washing to clean and restore your roofing. It's the safest way to remove algae, moss, mold, dirt, bird droppings, mildew, and lichen without damaging the shingles.
Combining effective cleaning solutions with a detail-oriented soft washing method, our Christopher, IL roof cleaning team will restore your roof to like new.
Your home is your largest investment and your roof is the first line of defense against the elements. Top grade roofing is an effective way to protect your home's value, but that value decreases greatly when your roof is damaged and becomes the neighborhood eyesore. Judge Services provides professional roof cleaning services that will keep your home looking its best from top to bottom.
Judge Services is a family-owned and operated business located in Carbondale, IL. Judge Services specializes in exterior cleaning, roof washing, siding cleaning, window cleaning & holiday lighting. Founded in 2014, our focus has always been to treat every customer like they are family and care for every home like it is our own. Experience quality, integrity & dependability with Judge Services. Your home may not be brand new, but we'll make it look like it is.
My better half, Melissa, is the Principal for Tri-County School in Murphysboro. Our oldest son, Jack, turned 5 in January and our youngest son, Silas, will turn 3 in July.
In 2014 I decided to follow in the footsteps of my grandfather, Don Judge. He started his own service business when he was 35 years old. "Judge Antennae & Alarms", in Olney, IL, was the area's household name for antennae and alarm installation. I'll never forget when he told me that he "hadn't worked a day since he was 35". This is a man that would climb 50-100 foot antennae towers on a daily basis to solve his customer's problems with their TV reception. He loved his small service business so much, that it never felt like work to him.
I, too, love what I do. Providing these services to my community, meeting new people and developing life-long relationships with my customers give me a great deal of pride. Thank you for considering Judge Services. I look forward to meeting you and caring for your home like it is my own.
Want to learn more about our services?
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Adding value to your home
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Our soft washing method safely treats the thin layers of moss, algae, and lichen. You can count on this technique to eliminate debris and dirt. Once lichen, moss, and algae disappear from the roof, the organism will not reappear for at least 2-5 years - depending on the environment of your home (shade on the roof, valleys or rivers nearby, etc.). As a result, our cleaning process adds value to your property.
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Gloeocapsa magma feeds on limestone, the material used for shingles. Getting rid of this bacterium means that you need a cleaning service like ours that is not only thorough but is experienced in dealing with Gloeocapsa magma. Here at Judge Services, we are here to ensure that your shingles are cleaned without damaging its granules.
Removing moss, lichen, & algae
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Our soft washing approach involves the application of a chemical solution designed to penetrate and eliminate the spores of organisms like moss, lichen, and algae. Soft washing is a cost-effective option compared to replacing your shingles. After we treat the moss, it turns white and any remaining spores will gradually disappear over time - generally, 1-3 months, which leaves your roof looking magnificent.
Our professional Christopher, Illinois roof cleaners conduct a thorough assessment of the roof's conditions to determine the right approach and solution to safely treat tile and asphalt shingles.


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The only interaction I had with Mrs. Parish occurred many years ago (well, how could it not?) one evening in Anne Rosenzweig's "Arcadia," an intimate restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan considered at the time to be a jewel of culinary and decorative pleasure. I was there that night as the guest of my dear friend George Pinckney, a debonair southerner, who generously took me there to celebrate my birthday, so this was a special treat and not a throw away, happenstance occurrence.
During dinner I had the eerie sensation that someone was talking about me, so I turned around to scan the half-empty room (it was July), and caught the gimlet eye of "Sister" Parish who was sitting in a banquette with of all people, "Slim" Lady Keith. Given that I caught her with her mouth open, obviously making a derogatory comment about me or my companion, or the both of us, her mouth went slack as she aborted what she was saying. While I had never met Mrs. Parish, I had in fact only recently met Lady Keith when invited to her apartment one afternoon for "tea" (that was what it was billed as -- the only thing tea-like was the color of the brown liquor served).
With that as fortification, I got up from my table and walked over to theirs. Both looked up at me coolly but somewhat apprehensively as I approached them, a glimmer of "I've been caught, now what?" on their faces. When I arrived I addressed Lady Keith, and reminded her that I had enjoyed spending an afternoon as her guest and what a lovely time I had and how pleased I was to see her this evening and hoped she was well? She, with some relief, pretended to remember (she did a credible job of it, I recall) and turned and introduced me to her dining companion.
I smiled as our eyes met and said that it was a pleasure to meet the venerated Mrs. Parish, particularly on an evening such as this, my birthday, and how lucky I was to be my friend's guest in celebration of my milestone, for these were strange and exotic environs for a lad such as I to find myself in, and I hoped that her evening would provide her with but a fraction of the pleasure mine was giving me?


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Scrutiny had cleansing effect on construction industry, says Zambito
A former construction boss says the arrival of an anti-corruption police unit three years ago instantly changed the culture of bid-rigging and kickbacks in Quebec and drastically reduced the price of public works in the province.
After a series of investigative news reports created a scandal, and politicians took action, he says the construction industry started to get its act together in 2009.
Star witness Lino Zambito is back on the stand Wednesday for a fourth day at Quebec's corruption inquiry; he says things changed after the provincial police "Hammer" squad came into existence.
He says the proof is in the price: Zambito estimates that because of the new police unit, the cost of public-works contracts dropped as much as 15 per cent.
"The best way to demonstrate it is to study the contracts," Zambito said answering a question from Charbonneau Commission chair France Charbonneau.
"I think that it shows that cost of contracts has gone down."
Zambito says that, very quickly, construction bosses were no longer being forced to pay so-called "taxes" and kickbacks to various people.
Zambito has already testified that 2.5 per cent of the value of his rigged municipal contracts went to the Italian Mafia; three per cent went to the Montreal mayor's political party; one per cent was a bribe to a certain local bureaucrat; and many other gifts and cash went to other officials.
He says that all these things, along with industry collusion, pushed up the cost of construction work for years.
Zambito says municipal engineers and bureaucrats suddenly started taking their retirement after the arrival of the "Hammer" squad — so the extra fees also ended.
"Right there, the prices went down six or seven per cent," Zambito said.
Zambito says that by October 2009, as the scandals erupted and the police unit was created, he was no longer dealing with the cartel so he only participated in competitive bidding.
Since then, Quebec introduced a permanent anti-corruption squad in 2011 that includes the Hammer squad.
But Zambito, who is no longer in the construction business, said he thinks prices will eventually rise again as multinationals take over smaller businesses.
In 2011, Zambito's company went out of business. He was slapped with criminal charges and his company could no longer secure credit from the bank.
"The creation of the squad and my arrest left me on the outside in the industry," Zambito said.


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I stitched up this darling and simple shift dress for Addie to wear for the holidays. At age 3, she wants nothing much to do with any clothing other than pajamas, stretchy pants, and simple dresses. I knew that she would refuse to wear anything frilly or fancy and this little pattern was absolutely perfect. It's the new Go To Patterns Shift Dress. (affiliate links) It's just two pieces, with bias tape around the neckline, armholes, and keyhole cutout in the back. I used a silk/cotton blend for the dress – it's called Radiance by Robert Kauffman, the same fabric that I used to make the pink princess gown last year, the stuff is dreamy. To coordinate with the lace dress Grace would be wearing for Christmas, I imagined that this shift dress would pair great with some black lace tights or leggings. I wasn't able to find stretch black lace locally, so I attempted to dye a white lace. I used the stove top method with salt for black Rit dye on this nylon/cotton/spandex blend lace and it came out with a rich, even blackness. I used the Go To Leggings pattern to make a pair of footless tights; I skipped hemming the pants – they took about 10 minutes to sew together – love that pattern. Of course, the chances of convincing Addie to have her picture taken are slim to none. When she put the leggings on late Sunday afternoon and requested a photo shoot, I JUMPED to get the dress on her and race outside.
You'll have to excuse the blurry, less than ideal pictures. The kid is adorable, the clothes are awesome, the photography is poooooooor. But, I wasn't looking at my camera settings, I was just trying to click the shutter as fast as I could before the little boss called the whole thing off. See her grand finale down there in the corner? She busted out her 60's dance moves – plugged her nose and shimmied all the way down to the ground, laughing hysterically. Amazing how much of her personality I caught even if the pictures aren't grand!


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So, in the end the Zotero assignment worked very well on the Zotero side, and less well on the information literacy side. So I'm spending this week revising it and designing some new activities. A few quick takeaways:
The assignment was trying to do too much. It was the main way to assess:
- Students' ability to recognize different source types and explain where the fit into the scholarly process.
- Students' ability to track down those different source types.
- Students' understanding of what the scholarly and creative output of their department (and by extension the scope of intellectual activity within their discipline).
- Students' ability to use research tools to organize and manage their sources.
Way too much. Illustrated mainly by the fact that there were a few students to managed to do all of those things in their work. That made it very clear what others were missing and made me want to figure out a way for all students to be able to get to where the few did in this class.
So here's the thing – the first two outcomes up there were the problem, not the technology or logistics of syncing libraries and the like. The bibliography project should really be about the 3rd and 4th outcomes. The collaborative nature of the bibliography (and ability to see the breadth of what our faculty produces) was lost on students who had to work to hard to meet all of the format requirements that were in place to measure the first two outcomes. All of the format requirements I put in to meet the first two outcomes took away from the authenticity of the experience, and of the evaluation and contextualization I had hoped the students would be able to do.
So this term, I am planning to get at those first two outcomes in different ways, and then make some changes to the bibliography assignment:
- drop the number of sources required in the annotated bibliography from 5 to 3.
- increase the emphasis on evaluation (and multiple methods of evaluation) in the annotations.
- change the workflow a bit – have students create a broad, pre-evaluated body of resources in a personal library and then have them select their 3 sources from that larger pool, annotate them and add them to the collaborative bibliography.
- build in a required conference so that I talk directly to each student about the process fairly early on.
- drop the format requirements altogether and allow students to add any 3 resources they want (while increasing their responsibility to justify those choices in multiple ways in their annotations).
- push the due date for the sources up a week, add a week between the final sources due date and the final reflection due date, and target and focus the scope final reflection essay significantly.
(Big hat tip to my students. Many of these changes were also articulated by them when I asked them to help – in some cases their input was what really allowed me to put my finger on the problems).
What about the tech?
In the end, syncing did cause problems for a few, and Zotero hurdles did cause problems for a few. Students who were, for whatever reason, not able to spend a focused amount of time at some point earlier in the term learning the mechanics of Zotero found it very challenging to manage finding sources and figuring out Zotero in the context of a last-minute scramble.
I had thought that my students would have to do the bulk of their Zotero work at home because of having to re-download and sync Zotero every time in the classroom. MY Zotero library was still very difficult to sync in the classroom (I assume the hugeness is a factor) but the students rarely had to wait for more than 2-3 minutes. Clearly, I can and should rely a lot more on classroom time as a place where students can be working with Zotero.
Most students were very positive about Zotero. A few found it cumbersome. There was a clear pattern though that I found interesting, but troubling in that there is nothing I can do with it. The pattern was this — those students who had reason to use Zotero for real, for a real research project, during the term were much, much clearer in their evaluation of its value. And by extension, I believe that they are the ones most likely to keep using it.
My class is a 1-credit class. I can't assign an authentic student-y scholarly research project that would take that little work. But whether or not they have reason to use it in another class is nothing I can control. It's troubling because it points to a deeper issue about this class' place within the major – issues we all know about but aren't sure how to fix.


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The 32 Annual Appalachian Studies Conference is over and Shawnee State University has welcomed its students back from spring break. I stand corrected (sitting on my ass actually) that the ASA Conference was being held for the first time in Ohio. As one of my mentors, Professor Rodger Cunningham points out, the conference has been held in Dayton at Sinclair Community Collage. (Rodger also corrects my misconception that Akron was the capital of Eastern Kentucky. It must be a county seat of Eastern Kentucky at least. ) It was, I believe the first time the conference was held in an Appalachian Ohio County.
The conference seemed to have a moderate attendance. I see on the history section of the ASA site, that the conference in 1999 in Abington, VA hit the 700 person mark. My experience as an event planner tells me that this conference was around half of that number. More than once I heard comments about presenters and attendees who had planned on coming to the conference but who had been unable to because of budget constraints. This is no doubt due to our economic down turn. I think that those who did attend the event were pleased with the facility and enjoyed spending time in Scioto County. One complaint was the lack of coffee service. Being a caffeine addict, I was more sensitive to hearing this complaint than perhaps others.
Although the attendance may not have been at its peak these sessions did not seem to suffer for quality and if anything were a bit less woolly than they had been in the past. I sensed more of an advocacy and utilitarian nature to the sessions than I had in the past. This is not to say that there has not always been a great focus on advocacy with ASA and there are still papers and presentations that focus on the rarities in Appalachia but this year seemed to strike me with more of an "okay what do we do with what we know?" spirit.
Many of the sessions concentrated on building sustainable communities with industry and agriculture. The theme of the conference was connecting Appalachia to the world through the arts but in reality it would have been more accurate to have just labeled it: connecting Appalachian to the world, period. There were many fewer presentations like: "The Impact of Laplander Feminist Rhyming Schemes on the Bluegrass Music of Appalachian Utah.". It seems like those who are still in the Appalachian Studies community are more interested in finding ways to benefit the people of the region and less in saying something provocative to get attention or just poking hillbillies with a stick and recording how they react.
I am a bit concerned that as the Appalachian Studies community moves from scholarship for scholarship's sake to a more activist role, that many of the nation's colleges and universities that have supported Appalachian centers and programs may start to withdraw that support. I would normally say good riddance if I thought that there was a substitute means of support but I really don't see how other public and private philanthropy will pick up the slack. One frightening example of this "pull back" is Radford University. I hear that Radford is in the process of dismantling its Appalachian Studies programs. What I find most disheartening about this possibility is that Radford has been one of the most useful programs when it comes to Appalachia.
Much of the work at Radford has been focused on improving the lives of Appalachians in Virginia and indeed within the region. This stands in stark contrast to the pointless scholarship that I rage against at other institutions. I fear that that this move by the Radford administration is due largely to ignorance and bigotry. The ignorance comes from the misguided notion that natives from Appalachian can choose not to be Appalachian. We can call ourselves Appalachians, Americans, Virginians, Ohioans or whatever but the outside world will always see us as hillbillies. The bigotry of course comes from the fact that the public at large thinks that there is something wrong with being a hillbilly. In my contact with the students and faculty of Radford's Appalachian programs in the last decade I have found that this group of people take the common sense approach of fixing the world's perception of what Appalachians or Hillbillies are about without making natives of the region feel as if they have to be anything other than themselves. Being a hillbilly is a good thing.
I was glad to spend a bit of time with folks who love the Appalachian people and who have worked tirelessly on their behalf. It really charges your batteries to see folks who you have known for almost 20 years still going and offers some bit of hope to meet new advocates. Next years ASA conference will be held at North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega, Georgia on March 19-21. So if you have the time and a couple hundred dollars please think about attending.


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The need for instant gratification has truly compromised our ability to see beyond what is immediately in front of us. I mean in some cases we can't …
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The need for instant gratification has truly compromised our ability to see beyond what is immediately in front of us. I mean in some cases we can't even see the next three hours that are directly in front of us let alone three weeks, three months, or three years down the road.
We want something and we want it now.
I do agree that part of this insatiable need for speed when it comes to our wants and desires has been shaped by technology and the fact that we can access information with one or two clicks on our computer, tablet, and smart phone. But I also believe as a society we have developed a perceived need to keep up with our neighbors, family members, and our competitors when it comes to business.
We want what they have and we want it now.
You see, short-term thinkers limit themselves to what they can have or achieve today instead of seeing the much bigger potential of tomorrow. And whether tomorrow comes in a day, in a month, or over several years … tomorrow will eventually come. And if we live only for the things we can have at our fingertips in this moment, we forgo the opportunity to enjoy the rewards that come by careful planning, temporary sacrifices, saving, being patient, and willing to earn and wait for the things that will provide enjoyment and security in the future.
Near-term thinking or seeking is driven by an attitude of impatience. Big-picture visioning and pursuing is driven by a goals-oriented and results-focused attitude. The student will make a decision to blow off a homework assignment today in exchange for a good time tonight. The unemployed person will stop sending resumes and applying for the position they truly want because they were not offered a job today. The person seeking to lose weight or improve their physical fitness will avoid the gym because the pounds are coming off too slowly or their endurance or strength is not improving rapidly enough.
There are countless scenarios where the shortcut and partial success are rationalized by the acceptance of fractional achievement of what we really desire. Our choice to accept the "almost-win" always seems easier at first, but ultimately leads to a life filled with "woulda," "shoulda," "coulda" thoughts and regrets.
Of course there are activities and tasks that require short-term thinking and immediate actions. However, when we allow everything we do to be driven by the near term, it is so easy to lose sight of the big picture.
So what do we do about this instant gratification epidemic? The first thing we need to do is to adopt an attitude of patience and big-picture visioning.
The second thing we need to do is to identify our goals. And as a best practice, categorize each goal into one of three buckets: near term, mid-range, and long-term. The first time that we go through this exercise we will probably notice that one of the buckets is filled with more goals than the other two. This is a good thing, as it will bring awareness to where our current focus lies. The next step is to go back and make sure that there is some level of distribution in all three buckets.
Once we have taken the time to identify and prioritize our goals into these categories, we will begin to see and internally own the roadmap for our personal success. This is easier than we think; it only requires some time and thoughtful consideration to get started. And there is no time like the present to get started.
How about you, is it about instant gratification or are you willing to put in the time, hard work, patience and sacrifice necessary to realize your goals and dreams? I would love to hear all about it at email@example.com, because when we get our heads and hearts around what our long-term future can possibly be, it really will be a better than good week.
Michael Norton, a resident of Highlands Ranch, is the former president of the Zig Ziglar organization and CEO and founder of www.candogo.com
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Making Sense of the 2012 Social Security Trustees' Report
Filed Under (Retirement Policy, U.S. Fiscal Policy) by Jeffrey Brown on Apr 24, 2012
Yesterday, the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds issued their annual report on the financial status of these entitlement programs. These annual reports have been published for decades, and are generally recognized as the most credible, unbiased, and objective assessment of the long-run financial situation facing these programs. I am going to focus on the Social Security program in this post.
Interest groups and policy analysts from across the political spectrum immediately issued press releases trying to spin the findings of the report. Here are the first two that crossed my virtual desk yesterday:
The National Academy of Social Insurance (of which I was a member for many years before finally resigning over frustration at their defense of the status quo) issued a release spinning the report in the most positive light possible: "The 2012 Trustees Report shows that Social Security is 100 percent solvent until 2033, but faces a moderate long-term shortfall. In 2011, Social Security had a surplus – revenue plus interest income in excess of outgo – of $69 billion. Reserves are projected to grow to $3.1 trillion by the end of 2020 … While the trustees' projections indicate that major changes are not needed, modest changes should be made in a timely manner and can bring Social Security into long-term balance."
In sharp contrast, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget issued a release stating: "Today, the Social Security and Medicare Trustees released their 2012 report on the financial status of Social Security and Medicare, showing that reforms will be needed soon to make these programs sustainable … Social Security as a whole is on an unsustainable path … Social Security's financial status has deteriorated significantly since last year's report … Currently, Social Security is adding significantly to unified budget deficits. Not counting the payroll tax holiday this year and last year, the program is projected to run a $53 billion deficit in 2012 and $937 billion from 2013 through 2022."
Both NASI and CRFB are highly respected organizations, yet the pictures they paint could not be more different. So, who is right? Is it possible to reconcile these two views?
Like last week's post, in which I tried to cut through the rhetoric over the cost of the Affordable Care Act, this post tries to cut through the rhetoric over Social Security's finances by using a fictitious debate. And just like last week, the answer to "who is right?" is "It depends …"
Let's focus on what appears to be a factual disagreement. NASI says "In 2011, Social Security had a surplus." CRFB says "Social security is adding significantly to unified budget deficits."
How can the program be running both a surplus and adding to the deficit?
The answer is that it depends on whether you think about interest on the Social Security trust funds as being income or not. One's views about the Trust Funds also help shed light on whether we should view Social Security as being in financial distress now (the CRFB view), or whether we still have two decades before we have any real problems (the NASI view).
How does the Trust Fund work? (For this post, I am going to ignore the distinction between the retirement and disability trust funds – implicitly, I am assuming that Congress will simply re-allocate the payroll tax revenue across the two programs, as they have done in the past when needed).
Let's go back a few years to the pre-financial crisis, say, 2007. Suppose you earned $50,000 that year. You and your employer each paid 6.2% of payroll into the system, for a total of 12.4%. This was approximately $6,200 that the U.S. Treasury collected, and this money was designated for the Social Security Trust Fund.
Social Security took most of that $6,200 (just to keep that math easy, let's say they took $5,200 of it), and paid it out to current retirees and other beneficiaries (such as disabled workers, widows, etc). The remaining $1,000 was not needed in that year, so it was handed back to the U.S. Treasury. In return, the U.S. Treasury issued a $1,000 special-issue U.S. Treasury bond to the Social Security trust funds. Like other U.S. Treasuries, this one was backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.
Now, back in 2007, like in most years in recent history, the U.S. government was running budget deficits. Thus, the Treasury department basically took your $1,000 and used it to finance the government spending that we were doing in excess of the income tax revenue we were bringing in. They did not actually invest the money in financial securities – rather, they spent it. Of course, they still owe the $1,000 to the Social Security trust fund.
This has been going on for about three decades. As a result, the Social Security trust fund now owns several trillion dollars' worth of government bonds. And the U.S. Treasury pays the trust funds interest on these bonds.
Today, to a first approximation, the entire $6,200 that a $50,000 per year worker and her employer pay into the system is all going to pay benefits. So there are no more new deposits to the trust fund. But the balance of the account is quite large, and is spinning off interest.
So here is the key question. Should the interest that Treasury is paying to the Social Security trust funds be counted as income? Here is how a discussion might go between NASI and CRFB representatives. (Any misrepresentations of views are mine alone).
NASI: "Of course the interest should count as income. The interest grows the trust funds, and the trust funds represent a legal claim by the trust funds that will be backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government."
CRFB: "Yes, but while these bonds – and their interest – represent an asset to Social Security, they are a liability to the U.S. Treasury. And because the Treasury spent that money rather than saving it, it is crazy to think that we should count this as income. The interest payments are just an accounting fiction, not a real flow of money into the government as a whole."
NASI: "Ah, but the trust funds do represent real savings. If the Treasury had not issued this debt to Social Security, they would have had to increase public borrowing. So the Trust Fund balance represents money that the U.S. did not have to borrow – and that is a form of saving."
CRFB: "But for decades, Congress used the Social Security surpluses to hide the deficits in the rest of the government. As a result, Congress spent more money over the past few decades than they would have if they had not been able to hide the true cost of their profligacy behind a unified budget framework."
NASI: "There is no way to know for sure that the Social Security surpluses led to increased spending by Congress."
CRFB: "Ah, but there is – at least two academic studies (here and here) have shown that this is exactly what happened."
NASI: "Academic studies aside, there is no question that we should count this interest. And if we do count it, it is clear that Social Security is running a surplus. It is also clear that the program can pay 100% of promised benefits at least until 2033."
CRFB: "But that is a narrow perspective. We care about the government budget as a whole – not just the narrow question of the Trust Funds. From that perspective, what we know is that the amount of money we are collecting in payroll taxes today is no longer enough to cover the payments to beneficiaries. The days of cash flow surpluses are gone. And because interest on the trust fund is just one arm of government (Treasury) making a paper transfer to another arm of government (the Trust Funds), this does not represent real income to the government as a whole. As such, the program is in dire straits, and needs to be fixed now."
That fictitious debate roughly captures the economic disagreement underlying these two very different assessments of the latest Trustees' Report.
I happen to support the CRFB view that the problem is serious, that we need to address it sooner rather than later, and that there is no pain-free solution. But at the end of the day, it is impossible to fully refute the NASI view because we cannot go back in time and re-run an alternate history to know how spending would have responded in the absence of past Social Security surpluses.
Regardless of which view one holds, it is becoming increasingly difficult to deny the existence of a financing problem. Even if you take the NASI view that we do not have a problem until the trust funds run dry in 2033, it is worth noting that this date is quite a bit earlier than what has been previously estimated. Furthermore, 21 years is not a very long time when we are talking about a retirement program. After all, nearly half of today's 65-year olds will still be alive in 2033 and relying on Social Security benefits. Today's 46-year olds will reach their normal retirement age in 2033. And today's college students will be nearly half-way to their own retirement age. We need to make changes now – so that we have time to phase-in the changes gradually and to allow individuals to adjust.
So, regardless of one's views about the trust funds, it seems obvious to me that the real story behind the release of the Trustees' Report is that the problem is real, it may be larger than we previously thought, and that it is not going to go away on its own.


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|On the steppes of Kazakhstan, Asa lives in a yurt with his sister Samal, her husband Ondas, and their three children. Ondas is a herdsman, tough and strong. It's dry, dusty, and windy; too many lambs are stillborn. Against this backdrop, Asa, a dreamer who's slight of build and recently finished with a stint in the Russian Navy, tries to establish a life on the steppes. He, his friend Boni, and Ondas call on Tulpan, the only single girl in the area. The men talk to her parents while she listens out of sight. Her answer and Asa's later trips to talk to her form an arc of hope against the harsh land. Is this the place of Asa's dreams? What about the other lambs?
|Directed by:
|Sergei Dvortsevoy
|Karl Baumgartner, Thanassis Karathanos
|Tolepbergen Baisakalov, Ondas Besikbasov, Samal Esljamova, Askhat Kuchencherekov


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rheostat rē´əstăt˝ [key], device whose resistance to electric current depends on the position of some mechanical element or control in the device. Typically a rheostat consists of a resistance element equipped with two contacts, or terminals, by which it is attached to a circuit: a fixed contact at one end and a sliding contact that can be moved along the resistance element. Electric current enters and leaves the resistance element through the contacts. By moving the sliding contact toward or away from the fixed contact, the length of the resistance element through which the current travels can be decreased or increased. In this way the current through the circuit can be increased or decreased. Rheostats are widely used for such purposes as controlling the speed of electric motors and dimming electric lights, but they have been replaced in many applications by systems based on semiconductor devices that waste far less power. See potentiometer.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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Lohan reports to jail for probation violation
Whisked away to a women's jail in an unmarked sheriff's car after a brief hearing, Lindsay Lohan reported Tuesday for a 90-day sentence that the troubled actress likely will serve in isolation, and which may be significantly shortened.
Wearing dark denim jeans, a gray top, black corset belt and black jacket, the 24-year-old Lohan showed up at the Beverly Hills courtoom about 10 minutes late. After a short hearing, she rose and was handcuffed behind her back to serve her time for a probation violation.
Lohan was accompanied to court by her mother, Dina, and younger sister Ali, who wiped away tears after her sister was taken into a lockup.
Her estranged father, Michael Lohan, yelled, "We love you Lindsay!" as his daughter was led away. She was then taken across town to the Century Regional Detention Facility in the industrial suburb of Lynwood.
In court, Lohan was represented by her longtime attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, who had resigned earlier but never filed a formal motion with the court. Famed celebrity attorney Robert Shapiro said Friday that he had agreed to represent the actress, but Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Marsha Revel Revel said Tuesday that he had told her hours earlier that he would not take the case.
While the judge did not address Lohan's tardiness Tuesday directly, she did order her to report to probation officials within a day of her release from jail. The judge had previously ordered Lohan to report within two days.
Revel also has ordered officials not to allow Lohan to serve any of her sentence on house arrest or work release.
Two weeks ago the judge determined that the "Mean Girls" star violated her probation by missing seven alcohol education classes since December. She had been on probation since August 2007 after pleading guilty to misdemeanor drug charges and no contest to three driving charges.
Lohan, a prolific user of the microblogging site Twitter, posted a message roughly 12 hours before her court appearance referencing her looming incarceration.
"The only 'bookings' that I'm familiar with are Disney Films, never thought that I'd be 'booking' into jail eeeks," Lohan posted.
The jail and rehab stints have left some of the actress' projects in limbo, including her planned portrayal of porn star Linda Lovelace in a biopic.
Once considered an up-and-coming star, Lohan has in recent years been better-known as a tabloid staple and for the criminal case she has struggled to put behind her.
Her probation had to be extended for a year to give Lohan more time to complete her alcohol education courses and Revel ordered weekly attendance in December. But the actress didn't complete the sessions as ordered and missed a court date in May, setting a stage for her return to jail.
She is expected to serve her time — probably a quarter of her sentence or less — in isolation at a women's jail in the industrial suburb of Lynwood. The facility has hosted several female celebrities, including Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Michelle Rodriguez, Khloe Kardashian and very briefly, Lohan.
She will be forced to wear a jail-issued jumpsuit and be given a set of simple toiletries that all inmates receive: toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, comb, deodorant, shampoo and shaving implements. Hilton received one for her own secluded 23-day stay in 2007 for reckless driving charges.
McCartney reported from Beverly Hills. AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch contributed to this report.


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In politics, it's all about the cash. And this year, as in most even-numbered years, New York State politics is awash in it, with candidates spending hundreds of thousands -- sometimes into the millions -- of dollars to win election to the state legislature.
Fueling a candidate's coffers, critics say, can buy the rich access to government the rest of us do not have. To remedy that, cities, states and the country have implemented varying types of campaign finance reform.
New York City has kept up with the trend. It has adopted public financing and, last year revised its law to increase public matching funds and limit contributions from those that do business with the city.
Of course, New York City has not addressed all the apparent inequities. The Supreme Court has prohibited limits on self-financing -- the justices equated spending one's own money with speech -- meaning a billionaire mayor can spend as much as he wants to win a third term. Recent reports say Mayor Michael Bloomberg could spend as much as $100 million in next year's mayoral contest, prompting some to call on him to voluntarily close his wallet.
New York State has not modified its campaign finance laws in 33 years. Individuals can give almost $56,000 to a candidate for governor, nearly $100,000 to a political party and an unlimited amount to party "housekeeping" accounts.
In an effort to address that, the State Assembly has put forth a proposal that would limit individual donations to $2,000 and include a public matching fund.
Gov. David Paterson has also proposed cutting contribution limits, though he is silent on public financing.
The State Senate, however, opposes any change.
With all of these options floating through the capitol, several experts surveyed the existing laws and how they could be changed at a forum held by Citizens Union -- the sister organization to Gotham Gazette's publisher. The following comments are adapted from the discussion at the forum.
Calculating the Shortcomings -- Blair Horner
What Reform Can Do -- Susan Lerner
How to Change New York -- Dan Cantor
Testing Different Approaches -- Michael Malbin
A Look at 'Corporate' Donations -- Adriano Espaillat
Calculating the Shortcomings
By Blair Horner
My job is to lay out the failings of the campaign finance system and the debate in Albany. To do that, I'm going to give you four numbers: 94,200; 200; less than 1 percent and -- the last is not really a number to the numerical concept -- unlimited.
One: 94,200 is the campaign contribution limit in New York law. The legal limit for our campaign contributions is $94,200 each and every year for the party of your choice. That money can be used to advance candidates under state law.
Two: 200 is the average number of fundraisers that occur in Albany during the legislative session -- 60 days a year, roughly 40 nights on average. They're not holding them for you to go up there. They're holding them for the people who write the $94,000 checks -- Albany's political elite.
Three: Less than 1 percent, that's the number of individuals in the state that write campaign contribution checks in a year. One percent of individuals whip out their checkbooks and make a campaign contribution.
Four: It's the concept of soft money. You say, "I gave $94,200, but I want to give more." Under New York state law you can give more. It's called "soft money." And just to show that lawmakers have a sense of humor, they call it the "housekeeping account." You think of somebody vacuuming or dusting, but it's really a gigantic loophole.
Those four numbers give you a flavor of how we view the campaign finance system. It's a system designed around "pay to play." It's about big donors writing big checks to lawmakers under the assumption that the favor will be returned during the legislative or regulatory process. That's at the heart of what's wrong.
To add insult to injury, New York doesn't have very good system of disclosing information about the finance system. It is riddled with loopholes so that, for example, you can create multiple limited liability corporations that can give as much money as an individual can. The last part of the insult is pathetic and riddled with loopholes. The rules are, for all intents and purposes, not enforced.
We should demand higher ethical behavior. In New York, for example, people can use campaign contributions for their own personal expenditures. If you're a legislator, you can legally use your campaign contributions to subsidize your lifestyle - lease a luxury car, pay for country club memberships, go for trips abroad. The money from interest groups goes to a legislator, who frequently has no opponent. And so that money is basically pocketed.
A more ethical system would deal with those kinds of issues, because the public needs to see not only participation, but also a confidence that the laws are fair and are being enforced.
This system has been in place for a long time, and it has profound impacts. For example, the public is denied competitive elections. Since 1982, 35 incumbents have been beaten in the general election -- that's in roughly 2,500 races. Campaign finance also has an impact on public policy because big donors don't give big money because they feel charitable. This is American capitalism, people expect something in return, and sadly I think they get it.
Blair Horner is legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group.
What Reform Can Do
By Susan Lerner
What are we trying to achieve concerning campaign finance? Here are some of the things that people talk about. Each one -- however you order this list and what you leave off this list -- has a very important impact on what you have to choose for the campaign finance system.
One possibility is that you open the ballot to a greater pool of candidates. Reform can provide people without personal wealth or without wealthy friends or access to a lot of money the ability to compete for private office.
It can encourage broader participation in support of candidates, increase competition for office, with more people running. It could level the playing field among candidates; free candidates from constant fundraising; emphasize the role of individual voters, rather than special interests and corporate interests -- organized people, not organized money; and let more viewpoints reach the voters, because candidates have the ability to get their word out more effectively.
If you emphasize opening the ballot to a greater pool of candidates and give those without personal wealth or wealthy friends an opportunity to run an effective campaign -- if that is your primary, or perhaps, your only goal -- then you are going to be inclined toward a matching fund system like the one that we have in New York City. These are found in several other cities around the country and in just a very few states that adopted their campaign finance programs about 20 years ago, about the time New York City adopted theirs, because a matching funds system was sort of the campaign finance reform idea du jour.
Now if you are looking to increase competition for offices, free candidates from constant fundraising or lessen the impact of campaign money on public policy, then you tend to advocate what we call "clean money" or "clean elections." That's the more current fashion du jour. It is what we have in Arizona, Maine, now Connecticut, a pilot project in New Jersey and in North Carolina for judicial and for down-ticket state-wide races.
Clean money is a system where you qualify to run by collecting a set number of $5, or in some cases $10 donations -- never more than $100 -- from a certain number of people in the district in which you're running. You don't collect more, you don't collect less, and once you have sufficient money to qualify, you get a block grant. Everybody who qualifies gets the same amount of money. If you're outspent, you get what we call Fair Fight Funds, which are matching funds.
In Arizona, this is funded primarily through a surcharge on civil and criminal penalties. It comes out of a general fund in Maine, and they have a tax check-off for judicial races in North Carolina.
So we need to think about what are we are trying to achieve. What are our policy goals? We need to get some clarity on that and then work backward to help us shape what we should use for the right public funding system.
Susan Lerner is eexecutive director of Common Cause/NY
How to Change New York
By Dan Cantor
The goal of campaign finance reform here is less about getting private money out -- I don't think that will ever happen -- than getting public money in. We want to reduce the advantage that the wealthy and the well connected have.
Let's build on the New York City system. It's not perfect but it's familiar. It's pretty good.
The introduction of the robust matching fund system has totally changed New York. Those of us who try to recruit people to run for public office can tell people who come out of a history of service to a community group or a union, "All you actually need to do is raise $17,000 and the city's going to write you a check for $90,000." If you can't raise $17,000, you probably shouldn't run for office.
The State Assembly, which has been pointed out, has a pretty good record on this. The Assembly has passed a good bill. The bill backed by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is quite interesting. It's a hybrid that combines elements of New York City's "matching system" with the so-called "clean money system" that has passed in Maine and now Connecticut. The vast majority of the Senate Democrats are on record publicly in favor of that bill.
The reason we don't have public financing in New York State is because of the State Senate. It remains in Republican hands. There will be no campaign finance legislation in New York State as long as Republicans hold the State Senate.
Now once the Democrats get the State Senate that doesn't guarantee we will get it. Senate Democrats are desperate for the support of people like us, and so they're making promises now that we think we can enforce very early next year. We are trying to get them obligated to actually pass campaign finance, otherwise they will become hooked, like drug addicts, on the same finance cash that has hooked the Republicans for so many decades. The whole thing is getting it done early.
We also need some help with the governor, who despite his long-term commitment to campaign finance is singing the blues theses days: He can't do it, because public financing will cost too much.
Dan Cantor is the executive director of the Working Families Party.
Testing Different Approaches
By Michael Malbin
We have often heard it said that the goal of campaign finance reform should be to get big money out of politics. You cannot prevent determined rich people from spending their money to influence politics. You can regulate direct contributions, but not independent spending. As a result, I agree with the statement that you have to "forget about getting private money out of politics." But I do not agree that "the goal is (simply) to get public money in." Public money may be desirable, but it is a means. It's not an end.
When political scientists describe goals, we acknowledge the negative or preventive goals stated by courts: avoiding corruption or the appearance of corruption. But we typically look also at affirmative goals: competition, expanding the pool of candidates, and greater and more equal public participation.
Much of the Campaign Finance Institute's work over the past several years has involved exploring the expansion of participation. The idea was to ask whether we could promote equality by building up the base -- the small contributors -- instead of just squeezing down on the top.
This has been a good year for small donors, largely because of the candidacies of Barack Obama and Ron Paul. From those campaigns, some have gotten the idea that the Internet would solve everything. I disagree. Technology is important, but public policy has an important role to play.
As political scientists, we can specify goals, but we are agnostic about how to achieve them. Our work at the Campaign Finance Institute has involved looking at a series of states, using extensive survey research and data analysis, to see whether public policy really does or can make a difference.
In most states, campaign contributions come from a few donors at the top.
Minnesota is unusual (See chart here). Donors who give no more than $100 account for 45 percent of the money. Minnesota has 100 percent rebates of up to $50 for donors who give to publicly financed candidates -- ones who agree to limit expenditures in exchange for public money.
The New York distribution is not unusual (See slide). Donors who gave zero to $100 donors accounted for only about 2 percent of the money raised by state candidates in 2006; donors who gave an aggregate of $1,000 or more accounted for 40 percent, and nonparty organizations another 39 percent.
But we then asked this question: Can we make states like New York look like Minnesota? In some obvious ways, no, but are the differences just a matter of political culture and background?
So we went ahead and modeled three different kinds of reforms, testing each one for its impact separately and in combination.
First, we assumed lower contribution limits, hypothesizing a $2,000 limit per candidate. Second, we assumed public matching funds -- multiple matching like New York City's (See charts here).
Finally, we asked what would happen if you also enacted policies that would get more people to play -- those small donors giving less than $100? Suppose -- either because you put in a tax credit or a rebate for small donors -- you could get the percentage of people who contributed up to 3 percent? Less than 1 percent of New York's voting age population contributed to any candidates in the 2006 state election. The number in Minnesota was 5 percent. (See Charts)
It turns out that building up the bottom like this could have a huge impact. And public policy -- including rebates, tax credits or matching grants -- can be structured to help make this happen.
The key lessons are first, that policy choices can change the situation radically and, second, that there is more than one way to reach the same goal. So it is important, when you talk about campaign finance reform, to think about what it is you're trying to get to, not just what you're trying to get away from.
I would argue that one of the key goals is to get more people involved in the process. We know that getting more small donors involved also means more volunteers. There is two-way feedback between giving and doing. Getting people involved is valuable for its own sake, so it's important when formulating campaign finance policy to think carefully about how best to encourage this goal.
Michael Malbin is executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute and professor of American politics at Rockefeller College, University at Albany
A Look at 'Corporate' Donations
By Adriano Espaillat
I will speak to you from the perspective of a consumer, since I have benefited from public campaign financing. In 2005, I probably wouldn't have been able to run for the borough presidency without some public financing involved. I came out in the middle of about 10 candidates running. I raised about $600,000 and was able to get significant matching funds, and I think that made my candidacy a more competitive one.
I am a supporter of public financing and am a sponsor of the Assembly bill that has been passed. I hope that some day that will come to fruition at the state level as it has at the city level, where it has fostered and encouraged many folks to run for office and represent their communities.
One goal, of course, is to take soft money out of politics. Another one is to make the government more transparent and accessible to the general public. The public finance system here in New York City has accomplished some of that. If you take a look at the makeup of the City Council, it is more reflective of the composition of the city of New York. People who may not be rich or middle class are still able to raise some dollars and be competitive in a race and represent their communities.
In the effort to get hard-core money out of politics, there is a proposal to restrict campaign contributions. To most people, that means limiting contributions from pharmaceuticals and the big insurance companies and the people that have a vested interest in what happens in Albany and Washington. But what happens to the Korean fruit store who has a corporation and like many New Yorkers is not a citizen? One third of New Yorkers are foreign born. These people play by the rules, they pay taxes, they send their kids to public school, and they ride the subway. What happens to them? How do they get involved in the electoral process? How do they have an impact on who is going to represent them or the district where they have their stores?
Many of them choose to write a $500 check to a candidate. I don't see it as trouble that a Dominican bodega owner or a Jamaican beauty shop owner or a Korean fruit storeowner writes a corporate $500 check for me. I don't thing that's twisting my arm. I think it's very much part of America and that's granting access to government to people.
In all of this discussion, no one is talking about the rich people -- very rich people -- spending millions and millions of dollars to represent us. I just looked at the financial reports for congressional delegations in New York State and across the United States and the number of millionaires that represent us in Congress. Nobody has said a peep about millionaires and, in some cases billionaires spending lots and lots of money to represent us, but we may be restricting the Korean fruit storeowner, the Jamaican beauty storeowner or the Dominican bodega owner.
Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat, represents Manhattan's District 72 in the New York State Assembly. Â


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|Tacos el Rancho
17945 Magnolia St.
Fountain Valley, CA 92708
(714) 841-8797
Facebook Page
Listing on Yelp
No known official website.
Authentic Mexican tacos and more right in the heart of Fountain Valley with Mexican meats that maybe most FV residents wouldn't jump at. Meats such as buche, cabeza and lengua. That about says it all. When I went there there were several crews of Mexican construction workers heartily enjoying the food. So if that's your determinant for what makes a great Mexican place then Tacos el Rancho is it.
Click on any photo above to be taken to the complete flickr photo album for Tacos el Rancho.


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Product and feature availability may vary by state and broker/dealer.


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Today's News: Our Take - Pilot Season: Apartment 23's Krysten Ritter Lands Lead in NBC's Assistance
Krysten Ritter may not be off the air for long: The Apartment 23star has landed the leading role in NBC's Assistance pilot.
In the comedy based on Leslye Headland's play of the same name, an idealistic assistant (Ritter) tries to find balance in her life as she strives to please her larger than-life boss.
Check out which other actors are joining NBC pilots in our complete pilot report
Ritter, who played the titular B---- in Apartment 23, is also well-known for her roles on Breaking Bad, Gilmore Girlsand Veronica Mars. ABC yanked Apt. 23 off the air in January after it failed to perform on Tuesday nights. It was averaging 3 million viewers and a 1.2 rating in the 18-to-49 demographic.
Bachelorette's Headland will write and executive-produce with Saturday Night Livealum Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, Chris Henchy and Owen Burke.
View original Pilot Season: Apartment 23's Krysten Ritter Lands Lead in NBC's Assistance at TVGuide.com
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The Fight for Racial Equality Fuels 42
- Christa Banister Crosswalk.com Contributing Writer
- 2013 8 Apr
In the best baseball movies, America's pastime often takes a backseat to an even greater story.
Now following in the grand tradition of films like Moneyball, A League of Their Own, Field of Dreams and The Natural, 42 is also fueled by something far more substantial than batting averages and which teams made the playoffs once September rolled around.
The true story of American legend Jackie Robinson, 42 is about how two ordinary men took a bold stand against racial prejudice in the late 1940s.
In an age where separate restrooms and bus seats for African Americans still existed and baseball was often considered a "white man's game," the resolve of Robinson, and the man who signed him to the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey, forever shaped culture, not to mention the game they both loved so much.
Getting Into Character
As Rickey, the forward-thinking baseball executive, Harrison Ford (Extraordinary Measures) said during a recent press event in Los Angeles that he was intentional about distinguishing himself from the screen icons he's played in the past.
And just to make sure he wasn't mistaken for Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan or Han Solo, he sported "a fat suit" (Rickey himself was a bigger guy), as well as bushy eyebrows that render him virtually unrecognizable.
"Early on, I had the idea that the film would be much better served by a Rickey look-a-like than a Harrison Ford look-a-like," Ford says. "I didn't want the audience to think they knew me from some previous experience at the movies, so I invested in trying to figure out what I should—and shouldn't—do to achieve the look of the character. What helped more than anything was the fat suit because it really gave me a sense of what it meant to maneuver at the size."
Joking that it was a rare opportunity to "play someone younger" since Rickey was 65 at the time, and Ford is knocking on 70, Ford was drawn in by the script written by Brian Helgeland (Robin Hood) who also directed the project.
"I think the best movies aren't made from a point of view that depends on your personal history, whether it's the color of your skin, your politics or even the place you come from," Ford shares. "The best movies are made from a point of view of understanding human nature, history and what motivates people from an emotional place. I think this movie tends to all those requirements, and I hope there will be more like this. This is a movie about the history of racial equality in the United States, and that makes it visceral history."
Earning the Blessing of Jackie's Widow
While many biopics deviate from the real-life details to create a more dramatic narrative, Helgeland had to earn the blessing of Rachel Robinson before moving even an inch forward with 42.
"From the beginning, I had to prove to her that the way I wanted to tell the story was the way to tell the story. She had the rights and wasn't going to sell them to just anyone," Helgeland shared.
Turns out, Mrs. Robinson was involved in every part of the process, including the script, which made for a memorable experience for Helgeland, who wanted nothing more than to "get it right."
"She was involved all the way, and I'll never forget when she walked in after reading the script. It was dog-eared and had Post-Its all over it, and I'm like 'Oh no!'" Helgeland remembers. "When she sat down, I could tell she wasn't mad, but she definitely wasn't happy. There's a scene where someone explains to her what a balk is, and she said to me, 'In what world do you think I don't know what a balk is? Have someone else ask the question, not me.' She's not like your grandmother where you're going to get away with something, she's tough. But I was so thankful for her insight in telling this story, especially with the little things."
Standing on the Soldier of a Giant
For newcomer Chadwick Boseman, who bears a striking resemblance to Robinson, playing Number 42 was not only the opportunity of a lifetime but a part that resonated with him in a profound way.
"Once you know the full scope of what he did—on the baseball field and in his later work in the Civil Rights movement—you realize that his contribution to society was tremendous, and not just in the sports world. He paved the way for people in every field, so I feel a personal connection to him because I am literally standing on his shoulders right now."
For the baseball part of the story, Boseman admits it took many, many hours to look convincing as a legend, particularly because Jackie's batting stance was so unique.
"I felt I had to down my own stunts," Boseman explains. "I couldn't separate the acting from the stunts because you need to see Jackie's face; you need to see the courage, the defiance, the fear and even the fun because, at the end of the day, he loves the game. That's an important aspect of the story."
Not shying from the uncomfortable realities of racism with scenes that reveal the ugliness and ignorance of sinful man, what also inspired Boseman and everyone involved in 42 was the loving and supportive marriage that Jackie had with Rachel, something that several African-American reporters in the press room noted was "rare" in today's movies.
Faith also figures prominently into the storyline as Rickey reminds Robinson that God built him to last, and that sense of divine intervention adds another integral dimension in explaining not only who Robinson was, but Who was by his side through the struggle and victory.
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements including language, 42 opens nationwide on April 12.
Publication date: April 8, 2013


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In some of the strongest evidence yet to support the RNA world hypothesis -- an era in early evolution when life forms depended on RNA -- scientists at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research have created an RNA catalyst, or a ribozyme, that possesses some of the key properties needed to sustain life in such a world.
The new ribozyme, generated by Associate Professor of Biology David Bartel and his colleagues at Whitehead, can carry out a remarkably complicated and challenging reaction, especially given that it was not isolated from nature but created from scratch in the laboratory. This ribozyme can use information from a template RNA to make a third, new RNA. It can do so with more than 95 percent accuracy, and most importantly, its ability is not restricted by the length or the exact sequence of letters in the original template. The ribozyme can extend an RNA strand, adding up to 14 nucleotides, or letters, to make up more than a complete turn of an RNA helix.
These results, described in the May 18 issue of Science, suggest that RNA could have had the ability to replicate itself and sustain life in early evolution, before the advent of DNA and proteins. The findings will ultimately help evolutionary biologists address questions about how life began on earth more than three billion years ago.
Until almost two decades ago, many researchers thought that RNA was nothing more than a molecular interpreter that helps translate DNA codes into proteins. Then scientists discovered that not all enzymes were proteins; some were made of RNA. Over the past decade, they've developed techniques for producing new ribozymes in the lab, and a series of studies by the Bartel lab has been lending credence to the notion of an RNA world.
Still, none of the ribozymes generated by the Bartel lab or others in the field possessed the sophisticated properties needed to accurately replicate RNA. The finding reported in Science narrows that gap.
"Creating a complementary strand of RNA is a challenging enzymatic reaction because it requires several things to happen at the same time. The reaction must be accurate in incorporating nucleotides based on the template strand, general enough that any template can be copied, and efficient enough to add on a large number of nucleotides," said Wendy Johnston, first author on the paper and research associate in the Bartel lab.
Theories about the origins of life have long intrigued scientists and lay people alike. "A fundamental question about the origin of life is what class of molecules gave rise to some of the earliest life forms?" said Professor Bartel.
For years, scientists debated this question, some arguing that RNA molecules were the progenitors and others arguing in favor of proteins. "It was a classic chicken-and-egg argument. RNA, like DNA, has the genetic information necessary to reproduce but needs proteins to catalyze the reaction. Conversely, proteins can catalyze reactions but cannot reproduce without the information supplied by RNA," he said.
The discovery in 1982 of ribozymes bolstered the notion that RNA came before protein, but more challenges lay ahead for evolutionary biologists before they could espouse the RNA worldview. For one, there are only eight known ribozymes in nature -- nowhere near enough to sustain the range of reactions in an RNA world. Further, compared to protein enzymes, ribozymes seemed slow and inefficient as catalysts. So scientists set out to make artificial ribozymes that were more versatile and efficient than the natural ones. If they could create such ribozymes in the lab, it would suggest that natural ones could have existed during the RNA era but have become extinct since.
Designing new enzymes is a difficult task, but what researchers can do is make thousands of trillions of RNA molecules with the hope that one or a few of them can catalyze the appropriate reactions. To identify the few that have the desired properties, researchers subject the huge population of ribozymes to a test-tube evolution -- a process of selection and evolution that mimics these processes in nature.
"During the selection process, we look for RNAs that can change themselves in a special way. We can then separate them from RNA that don't change themselves," said Dr. Bartel.
In 1993, he and Jack Szostak at Harvard University found 65 novel ribozymes from a search of more than 1,000 trillion RNAs. "When we subjected these ribozymes to a test-tube evolution, we found descendants that were 100 times more efficient," Professor Bartel said.
Since then, his lab has been using the test-tube evolution method to gather further evidence for the RNA world. Three years ago, for example, the lab found a ribozyme that could carry out the type of reaction needed to synthesize its own building blocks.
In this study, the Bartel lab scientists took the approach again of making 1000 trillion random RNAs go through test-tube evolution to find those that could catalyze RNA formation. After successive rounds of testing, the lab isolated a ribozyme that didn't depend on a particular template sequence, but could build a complementary strand of RNA using information from any general RNA template. In fact, the ribozyme isn't hindered by longer RNA templates and works nearly as well with longer sequences as with shorter ones.
This suggests that if efficiency is increased, it may be possible to replicate the entire ribozyme. The ribozyme also accurately matches bases -- A to U, and C to G -- to the RNA template more than 95 percent of the time, better than any previously isolated ribozyme.
"We will never be able to prove the existence of the RNA world because we can't go back in time -- but we can examine the basic properties of RNA and see if these are compatible within the RNA world scenario," Professor Bartel said.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on June 13, 2001.