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This is Part V of a loose, unofficial transcript of Dr. Jeffrey Sachs's remarkable lecture "Representing the Voiceless: The Poor, The Excluded, and the Future." He delivered this lecture on September 11, 2008 at Harvard Law School. You can link to Part I here, Part II here, Part III here, and Part IV here.
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Now what are some of the things that we'll need to solve these problems? I, of course, don't have any full list, but let me mention a few things that I think are important to add to the mix.
First, we absolutely have to find ways to reinforce the role of science in society. And that's because of the fact that the nature of our problems, the interconnected challenges of the physical environment and human economic activity and survival require a deep understanding of underlying physical mechanisms. We need to get science deeply embedded in our public policy processes in ways that it's not right now. Congress is scientifically ignorant. The White House, I won't even go there, but a travesty and a danger for the world. George Bush, in my mind is the worst president in American history. Because I don't have the visceral feeling for James Buchanan, by the way. He may be the rival, but other than that, and a large part of it is how Bush scoped up precisely the anti-science that we need right now for survival.
My favorite international institution in this regard is the Inter-governmental Panel on climate change. The IPPC, which won the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore last year, and the reason I like it so much is that it is a constructed model of how to create a public understanding about scientific consensus on a complex topic. That's not easy to do. There's lots of reasons why the general public has almost no sense of what real science is about. Of course, general public hears almost no science. It's not trained to understand these issues, does not get Science magazine once a week to read – though should. I recommend it to all of you. Because even the first half is quite wonderful for non-scientists. Just to give you a general update about the world of science. And it's very important for you to have that. Because that's what our world needs to understand right now.
But, more than that, there are obviously deliberately obfuscatory forces the corporate world and the religious world and others that take shots at all of this. And so the public's utterly confused even when the scientific community has a rich knowledge and understanding of very complex challenges. So the IPPC is a process that was designed to bring in a serious methodical – some would say plodding, but still it works – methodical way for scientific knowledge and consensus to the broad public. And it's having it's effect on slowly, grudgingly dragging the world into a recognition about climate change risk. Because it has a certain authority to the way it has been carefully constructed to be open, transparent, honest, pure review base to deliver that sense of consensus. We need that on many, many fronts. We don't have that kind of process right now. Congressional oversight doesn't work. The administration and the mechanisms of our departments are independent of science. And so we need to invent new ways to bridge the divide.
Second, we face massive financing problems for global pubic goods and for addressing the needs of the poor. They're not massive relative to our wealth or our income. I've estimated that they require between 2-3% of the world's annual income to address the inter-connective problems of extreme poverty, climate change, energy systems, water, food supply, bio-diversity conservation. It's not a lot of money to actually consolidate the future and end extreme poverty and head off the risks on anthropogenic climate change and other massive challenges to our future well-being. Small. But it's vastly larger than what we actually put into any of these things right now.
Our budget on energy research, just to give you an idea, has been running at about 3 billion dollars a year. We went to war in Iraq because of oil, and have spent about a trillion dollars so far. It's just not smart, this imbalance between what we're investing in real solutions and what we're ready to invest in bombing and killing people for illusory solutions. But that's the kind of trade-off that we're making. We're spending almost 2 billion dollars a day on the military in this country, and for whatever reason both candidates are basically saying "yeah, we've got to do that, probably even more." Which I think is a huge mistake. That means that the three billion we spent total on sustainable energy systems each year comes to 1½ days of Pentagon spending. That can't be the right allocation for our security. It just can't be right.
So I think we need new ways to finance these public goods. Some, of course, does have to go through our political process each year or Congressional appropriations, but we also need global financing to address global challenges like climate change. And one of the things I want to work on much in the future is an allocation of some fraction of a global carbon tax or selling carbon permits to mobilizing global financing for public goods.
So we right now are emitting about globally about 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. I'm sorry, it's about 36 billion tons of which 30 billion is from energy and about 6 billion is from deforestation, and the number is rising because of the growing world economy of course. But if we devoted $10 per ton to addressing these problems, and the that would be maybe one cent per kilowatt hour implication for electricity, then when you do the arithmetic you see that would be global financing of another 300 billion dollars a years. Which actually would be enough to address some pretty basic questions of energy transformation as well as poverty reduction. So creating a mechanism of global financing I think is an important part of solving the global public goods problems.
Third is public education. Well, it started here in Massachusetts, and I kind of believe you're going to have to step up to this much more, and we're all going to have to step up to this. But we actually will not solve these problems with an American public that is as poorly informed as it is right now. I don't have an answer to that.
We're competing against a very confused, difficult, overloaded environment of sound bites. But the truth is we're not having a discussion worthy of our survival in this country. The newspapers won't be the ones to do it. We're going to have to figure out other ways to do it. I don't have an answer to that. I just want to raise the problem that's it's got to be part of our solution, and it's got to be public education, not only here but internationally obviously, where the issues are at least as urgent.
One of the things we're doing at Columbia, which I like in the last year and this year is that we've created a global classroom where we have 15 campuses on-line, once a week for an hours so that we have an international discussion that includes New York, Keota, Ecuador , Sussex, England, Paris, Mycale, Ethiopia, Abadan, Nigeria, Delhi, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, universities in all those places, and I do believe that somehow we should be able to use technology more effectively t]o spread knowledge, information, understanding, and I wouldn't mind if you did that between now and November 4 also. Because we're just sitting here like sitting ducks, or paralyzed moose, or whatever it is. And we shouldn't, we really shouldn't be sitting here just paralyzed. So that's a third area.
Fourth is leadership by all key intellectual sectors including the law. I would like to see the law school and the legal community step up to these problems more than they have. We have, for example, international treaty obligations which as I understand it from the Constitution makes those obligations part of our national law. In climate change, for example. But international law is such a weak reed in our system that it barely gets any traction at all. Why is that?
How many of you are going to specialize in international law so that treaties which are going to be vital for international action have a force of law and operational side to them? Or human rights law, where all signatories to the universal declaration on human rights. We're in the 60th anniversary. Those rights are obviously not observed or operationalized for billions of people on the planet. And that document is viewed not as an instrument of international law which I believe it should be but as something that Eleanor Roosevelt did nicely 60 years ago.
That can't actually be the way we're going to solve problems if we don't take these issues the legal dimensions of these issues with extreme seriousness. Seems to me international law should have the same gravity as domestic law. And the idea that domestic law has real force behind it because of sovereignty and international law does not, I think is actually an exaggerated difference between the two cases, because both of them are sustained by a self-fulfilling belief in their importance. Nothing more. Domestic law can be as useless as international law if you don't believe in it. And international law can be as consequent as domestic law if you do believe in it. And so I do think there is a major challenge here that is unfulfilled by legal scholarship, but also obviously, not just the law. I don't mean to be picking on you.
My own profession is absolutely, completely 100% captivated in the stock market as the central issue of economic analysis and is really wasting a lot of time and human resources on that and taking issues of poverty or environmental sustainability as fringe issues that you might take one course and possibly on the side in one's economics training. And so I think that there's also been an abnegation of responsibility and failure of prioritization there as well.
As I mentioned, a fifth point we need to bring ethics explicitly back into our discussion, in a very formal, self-conscious educated, reflective way. Not just so you stay ethical and stay out of trouble, but the ethics of a global society which needs to exist but doesn't exist right now. We're so interconnected, we can't go on simply just hating each other or ignoring each other or ready to bomb each other, or making the existence of others the existential challenge of our time. And so we need to face up to the kind of ethics that can support the things that will keep us safe, which I think is what ethics is really about in an important way.
And finally, and as a general matter, I think that there is an important, not quite new definition, but a new boldness from universities that's going to be needed. And I see Harvard taking tentative steps in that direction, but I would like to see Harvard do a lot more than it's doing. I think universities actually have a unique role to play in addressing these problems. And that's not pure university chauvinism from someone who has lived within universities for 36 years. Yes, it may be biased, but it is also a considered view of what its going to take to address the kinds of problems that I'm talking about this morning.
First, only universities have the scientific knowledge within them, across the various disciplines, to be able to have a coherent knowledge base to the complex challenges that we face. And that's a wonderful thing. Governments don't for sure. NGO's don't. The general public doesn't. And so if you do believe as I do that understanding the human bio-physical interactions is fundamental for our well-being, universities have necessarily a unique role to play in that. We have that cross-disciplinary capacity that no other institution has. I'd like to think that we are unbiased. Relative at least, to other institutions in society. We're not out for the buck, that's for sure. This can't be the way to go if you're trying to get rich. And so I think universities have a kind of credibility and a neutrality that does not come if you're working for the U.S. State department or if you're working for a business, or most other institutions that are part of this challenge.
Fourth, and Harvard certainly taught me this, institutions are – this institution is – probably almost uniquely here for the long term. And so the ability of universities to think for the long term is also very unusual, and Harvard more than anyone, any other institution on our continent, is certainly reflective of that.
And the fifth point that I think is absolutely fundamental, and it's the reason why I'm so delighted to be here, is that I believe that universities are uniquely inter-generational in ways that are almost not occurring in any other social institutions, of any kind. Students get younger every year I find, and that's an absolutely great thing. There is inherently in the life of the university a rejuvenation of topics, points of view, and capacities every single year. So you literally, not just figuratively, and not just as a nice word from you, reflect the hopes of Harvard by your very being here. You are the embodiment of this institution more than its faculty, I might say. Because you're the ones that are going to carry all of this forward. And this intergenerational uniqueness of the universities I think is extraordinarily important.
I know working as an activist on these issues that there is no way that even people of my generation, if I could put it this way, understand it. Certainly not John McCain's administration. That's not personal, that's the fact of his age and his upbringing, and his knowledge, and it's not what we need for the 21st century. It just isn't. But what we do need is a good intergenerational spread of expertise and an exchange of ideas that's constant and intense.
You people, I mean when I have need for true understanding of the information age that we're living in, I go to my 13 year old daughter. You guys are a little bit out of it. Already a little bit too old. Since I have children that range from 13 to 26 I know their relative capacities, and our 13 year old's absolutely the best at all of this. But the knowledge that you bring and the perspectives are absolutely vital to this. What I find evermore thrilling in the university is the chance to share, interact, and work together to solve these problems.
Thank you very much.
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Part VI of this series will include the question and answer session that followed Professor Sach's lecture. To watch the 90-minute video of Professor Sachs's remarks, click here.


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"Mozilla on Android" talks in London
October 14, 2013
Mark Finkle and Margaret Leibovic are flying to London next week to attend Droidcon and the Mozilla Festival. So we thought it would be a good opportunity to give a series of tech talks on the present and future of Mozilla products and web platform on Android in our London MozSpace.
We'll be talking about Firefox for Android, our beloved mobile browser; GeckoView, the upcoming API for embedding Gecko in Android apps; the latest add-on APIs to extend Firefox for Android; as well as some cool demos of Mozilla's runtime platform and developer tools for Open Web apps on Android.
The talks will be followed by free drinks and pizzas in our community space. Interested? Register now at the event page.
And by the way, if you're attending Droidcon this year, I'll be giving a talk covering some of the most interesting technical details behind Firefox for Android.
Hope to see you next week!

subset: commoncrawl


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Film Review: "Muscle Shoals" – Music Muscle from the Deep South
A 2013 documentary about an Alabama musical legacy, Muscle Shoals brings to light and life a group of musicians who never had their day in the sun.
Two iconic recording studios in the tiny town of Muscle Shoals, Alabama – FAME (est. 1959) and its spin-off Muscle Shoals Sound (1960) – became the "must have" sound for, among others, Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, The Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynrd, Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, Boz Scaggs, Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Bob Seger, Etta James, and many other legendary Rock-and-Roll artists. The magic of a group of background musicians, who called themselves the "Swampers," some of whom were classically trained, were the touchstone of FAME. The Swampers were all white (a fact that was to surprise Paul Simon). Keep in mind this is the early 60's.
Muscle Shoals, which premiered at the Sundance Music Festival in January of 2013, is the love story of America's music roots in the Deep South. For this viewer, some of the most spellbinding scenes focus on Rick Hall, the pioneer and open-minded founder of FAME studio. Hall's own poverty and family upheavals allowed him to empathize with the racial hostility young music artists of color faced in most of the United States, not just the south. Before the Civil Rights Movement became a force shaping our country's history, FAME gave some of our most creative musicians their break in the music business. The film gives the impression that the principals of FAME were unaware of the significance of their race-neutral music production.
Hall was to bring black and white music together. He produced signature music: "I'll Take You There," "Brown Sugar," and "When A Man Loves a Woman". White studio musicians were to make unknown black artists famous.
Muscle Shoals bears witness to how Hall's color-blind passion for music infused a magnetism, mystery, and magic into the music that became known as the Muscle Shoals Sound. The filmmaker allows the key players to speak for themselves, including Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon, and Etta James. On its own, the cinematography of Muscle Shoals, the backwater town along the Tennessee River is an eye opener. And Muscle Shoals is not to be missed for its music history, racial progressiveness, and its imagery. It's a visceral and magical vision!
Highly recommended.
Diana Y. Paul
1.) The original Muscle Shoals Sound Studios building is listed in on The National Register of Historic Places and maintained by the Muscle Shoals Music Foundation. The foundation's goal is to turn the historic building into a music museum.
2.) FAME is still owned by Rick Hall and his son Rodney. Beats Electronics, because of this film, is underwriting the renovation of FAME to support young musicians.
3.) Actor Johnny Depp is developing this movie into a TV series, according to Variety.
You can read more from writer, artist and retired Stanford professor Diana Y. Paul at her blog Unhealed Wound:


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Getting Trashed: New England Fisheries Offer Sustainable Seafood
As global ocean warming hits home, marine biologists, local commercial fisherman, seafood lovers and most importantly, the chefs who serve them throughout New England, are adapting to an influx of warmer water seafood species beginning to flourish up north as traditional cold-water fish stocks thin out.
Enter Eating with the EcoSystem, an educational effort to design and promote a place-based approach to sustainable seafood for New England. By combining science, commerce and culinary arts, the project takes a deeper look at understanding and implementing sustainable seafood practices.
Eating with the Ecosystem's traveling dinner series partners with restaurants in Rhode Island and the Boston area to celebrate and steward the region's unique marine ecosystems, one at a time: Southern New England waters, Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine. Participants learn about how the special habitats and food web relationships in these ecosystems conspire to produce the region's seafood, and what must be done to take care of these food-producing ecosystems for the future.
Events throughout Boston and Rhode Island this fall will feature chefs and guest speakers, diving into the issues surrounding the ocean's fragile ecosystem while still providing a delicious a meal in good conscience.
The "trash fish" eating movement, spearheaded by local chefs in conjunction with local fisherman, nonprofits and marine scientists encourages diners to eat abundant species, rather than endangered seafood such as cod. Chefs and fisherman are also seeking to introduce the "whole animal eating concept" (gills to tail?) to reduce waste and make full use of harvested seafood, such as scallop roe and other typically discarded seafood delicacies.
Eating with the EcoSystem was established by Rhode Island commercial fisherwoman Sarah Schumann and kick-started by a generous grant from Audubon's Toyota Together Green program.
Boston Area Dinner Series
September 10
Southern New England waters at Henrietta's Table
October 8
Gulf of Maine waters at Lumiere
November 4
Georges Bank waters at Tremont 647
Click Here for Boston event details.
Rhode Island Dinner Series
October 15
Gulf of Maine at Hourglass Brasserie
November 26
Georges Bank at Tallulah on Thames
Click Here for Rhode Island event details.
Related Story


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N.C. county moves to limit display of Confederate flags
- The proposal would limit flags of any kind to two at each of the courthouse's memorials
- Sons of Confederate Veterans may challenge any action limiting flag display
- The commission chairman considers the proposal consistent with state law
WAYNESVILLE, N.C. — Confederate flags have been taking root on the Haywood County Courthouse lawn, and county leaders Monday night took a step toward limiting them.
A policy change introduced at a Board of Commissioners meeting would allow for display of the first national flag of the Confederacy only on Confederate Memorial Day, which is May 10 in North Carolina. And policy still might see a legal challenge.
"We believe that it is patently unconstitutional if it's adopted they way they have worded it," said Kirk D. Lyons, chief trial counsel of the Southern Legal Resource Center. Lyons represents the Sons of Confederate Veterans in North Carolina.
The policy would ban the more popular Confederate battle flag altogether and allow for the Stars and Bars only at the Confederate Memorial at the courthouse with permission of the county manager.
Only two flags of any kind would be allowed at each of the courthouse memorials, and that includes those for World War II and Vietnam. The flags could not be larger than 12 by 16 inches.
Lyons told county commissioners during their meeting Monday that requiring a 30-day notice before displaying a flag is unreasonable. The requirement would have a "chilling effect" on free speech, he said.
The government also has no right to say which flags may or may not be displayed on its property, Lyons said.
He took exception to the choice of the flag, saying it was not the official flag of the Confederacy.
"We will oppose this policy as it written today with every fiber in our being," he said.
Lyons has provided legal help to white supremacists and people involved in patriot or militia movements.
Commissioners' Chairman Mark Swanger said before the meeting Monday that the proposal is consistent with North Carolina law.
The board did not vote on the policy. He said the vote probably would be in December.
Earlier this year, the city of Lexington, Va., decided to keep the Confederate battle flag off municipal light poles. The Sons of Confederate Veterans had provided the city about 40 flags and paid to have city workers install them on the light poles for Lee-Jackson Day, a Virginia state holiday honoring Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Sons of Confederate Veterans challenged the law; a federal judge dismissed the suit in June.
The Haywood County policy is needed because of "the proliferation of various materials on the courthouse lawn," including Confederate flags, Swanger said.
County staff has removed flags only to find them replaced.
Swanger said the policy, which applies to all county property, is a good idea.
"I think it's moving in a positive direction," he said.
Confederate flag supporter Larry Bradley said he would like to see more days for the flag to be displayed. He said one of the biggest problems with government is it doesn't listen to the people.
"That's what we are asking you to do: Simply listen," he said.


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by Pink Lady
For this installment of Bulletproof Cocktails, let us give thanks for the highball. It's a drink you've probably been ordering your entire adult life and one that every bartender in the world knows how to make; a drink with such a lively pulse, you may be wondering how it made it onto our endangered beverages list.
A highball consists of a few lumps of ice and a dram of the spirit of choice topped with fizzy water or ginger ale. If Jack & ginger is your jam, well, so are highballs. It's hard to imagine that such an intuitive combination would need to be "invented.," and more curious still that it's younger than complex tipples like the Sazerac or the Crusta.
The original highball was a Scotch whisky-based drink born in the 1890s during a great influx of newfangled Scottish things, like blended Scotches and … golf. Both were enjoyed by the well-to-do, but Prohibition leveled the playing field. While Americans preferred native spirits, bourbon and rye were difficult to come by. The smugglers of "Rum Row," the line of ships that hovered just outside American territorial waters, kept their ships stocked with Scotch. Any port in a storm, as they say. The highball became a go-to drink as Americans waited out the long dry years of Prohibition, eventually developing a taste for the strange, smoky whisky.
American cocktail culture struggled to regain its composure post-Prohibition, but many of the great bartenders had gone abroad or retired, and so companies concocted pre-fab drink mixes to replace that talent. But a highball was a drink you could turn to for simple, delicious consistency. They reigned supreme in the 1950s and 1960s—ask your parents or grandparents.
In this modern age, with great cocktail bars turning out enough fabulous concoctions to make your head spin, sometimes a simple, delicious highball may be all you want.
In this case, hit up highballs! Drink Boston and Trina's Starlite Lounge help you party like it's 1965 this Sunday, May 9th [3 Beacon St., Somerville. 617.576.0006. 7pm/21+/$35 adv, $40 door. trinastarlitelounge.com]. The event includes four highballs, retro delights like pigs in a blanket and DJ-spun, 1960s-era highball-appropriate tunes.
Adapted from THE SAVOY COCKTAIL BOOK by Harry Craddock
2-3 cubes of ice
2 oz of "any Spirit, Liqueur or Wine desired"
Build in—you guessed it—a highball glass. Top with 2-4 ounces of soda water or ginger ale. Add twist of lemon peel if desired.


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Table of Contents:
Common organisation of the market in cereals
Outline of the Community (European Union) legislation about Common organisation of the market in cereals
These categories group together and put in context the legislative and non-legislative initiatives which deal with the same topic.
Agriculture > Markets for agricultural products
Common organisation of the market in cereals
The common organisation of the market (CMO) in cereals ensures stable prices by fixing a system of aid and laying down rules for trading with non-EU countries. This Regulation remains in force until 31 June 2008.
Document or Iniciative
Council Regulation (EC) No 1784/2003 of 29 September 2003 on the common organisation of the market in cereals [See amending acts].
From 1 July 2008, products falling within the scope of this Regulation will be subject to the common organisation of agricultural markets.
This Regulation forms part of the 2003 reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP) and substantially amends the CMO for cereals, previously governed by Regulation (EEC) No 1766/92.
This CMO provides for a system of intervention within the framework of the internal market and certain support measures for European products when they are traded on the world markets.
The common organisation of the market in cereals governs:
- different qualities of maize (including sweet and seed maize);
- common and durum wheat;
- spelt;
- rye, barley and oats;
- grain sorghum;
- buckwheat;
- wheat and rye flour;
- groats and meal of rice,
- malt.
The marketing year for these products runs from 1 July to 30 June of the following year.
Internal market
Intervention in cereals is managed by the Commission, assisted by the Management Committee for Cereals (FR).
The intervention price, at the wholesale stage, is €101.31 per tonne and is subject to variable monthly increases depending on the month. The intervention agencies designated by Member States (see "Authorised intervention centres" in the related acts below) buy in common wheat or durum wheat, barley, maize and sorghum at that price, which may vary in certain circumstances. Buying-in may take place only during certain periods fixed for each Member State.
From the 2009/10 marketing year, maize will no longer be subject to intervention and for the 2007/08 and 2008/09 marketing years the intervention agencies may buy in limited quantities (1 500 000 tonnes for 2007/08 and 700 000 tonnes for 2008/09.
Special intervention measures may also be adopted if the market situation so requires. There is also provision for a production refund, fixed periodically, for certain products.
Trade with non-EU countries
Cereal imports and exports are subject to presentation of an import or export licence issued by Member States to all operators.
Cereal imports are subject to rates of duty in the common customs tariff and, under certain conditions, to additional duties. The latter must be paid, for example, on imports carried out at a price below the level notified by the Community to the World Trade Organization, and on products which may adversely affect the Community market.
The Commission, assisted by the committee, may allocate tariff quotas to certain imports. This may be done in several ways, taking into account the Community market's supply needs and balance.
Cereal exports, either raw or in certain processed forms (listed in Annex III), may be supported by export refunds. These may be granted at regular intervals or by tendering procedure, using methods which avoid any discrimination between the operators concerned.
If there is a risk of the Community cereals market being disrupted, the institutions may ban the application of inward or outward processing arrangements and introduce other measures as necessary. Exceptional measures may also be taken if world market prices pose a threat to supplying the Community.
The first common organisation of the market in cereals dates from 1962, in the form of Regulation (EEC) No 19. Since coming into force it has been reformed on several occasions, in 1967, 1975 and 1992. The reform of the CMO for cereals introduced by this Regulation in 2003 is intended to observe the spirit of the 1992 Regulation, which provided for reducing the dependence of the cereals CMO on Community intervention while lowering the intervention price.
In 2007, the current common organisation of the market was supplemented by the rules governing the single CMO which replaced the 21 sectoral common organisations, simplifying the legal framework of the Common Agricultural Policy.
| align="center/">
| align="center/">
Entry into force
| align="center/">
Deadline for transposition in the Member States
| align="center/">
Official Journal
|Regulation (EC) No 1784/2003
|align="center/">OJ L 270, 21.10.2003
| align="center/">
Amending Act(s)
| align="center/">
Entry into force
| align="center/">
Deadline for transposition in the Member States
| align="center/">
Official Journal
|Regulation (EC) No 1154/2005
| align="center/">
|align="center/">OJ L 187, 19.7.2005
|Regulation (EC) No 735/2007
|align="center/">OJ L 169, 29.6.2007
Successive amendments and corrections to Regulation (EC) No 1784/2003 have been incorporated into the basic text. This consolidated version (pdf ) is intended purely as a documentation tool.
Related Acts
Sale procedures and conditions
Regulation (EEC) No 2131/93 [Official Journal L 191 of 31.7.1993].
This Regulation lays down the rules for resale of cereals bought in by intervention agencies. Under this Regulation, these products must be allocated to whoever submits the most favourable bid under a public tendering procedure in which all interested parties compete. The Regulation lays down the public tendering procedure and repeals the previous procedure, governed by Regulation (EEC) No 1836/82.
See consolidated version (pdf ).
Regulation (EC) No 712/2007 [Official Journal L 163, 23.6.2007].
This Regulation contains the quantities made available, for each intervention agency in the Member States, for sale on the Community market following partial tendering procedures between 4 July 2007 and 25 June 2008. This list is updated on a regular basis.
See consolidated version (pdf ).
Imports and exports
Regulation (EC) No 2133/2001 [Official Journal L 287, 31.10.2001].
This Regulation fixes the Community tariff quotas for the cereal quota periods and tariff ceilings. It also lays down a number of minimum quality criteria for wheat to be imported into the Community.
See consolidated version (pdf ).
Regulation (EC) No 1342/2003 [Official Journal L 189, 29.7.2003].
This Regulation lays down special detailed rules for the application of the system of import and export licences for cereals and rice. It lists the references which such a licence must contain.
See consolidated version (pdf ).
Regulation (EC) No 824/2000 [Official Journal L 100 of 20.4.2000].
This Regulation establishes procedures for the taking-over of cereals by intervention agencies and lays down methods of analysis for certifying that cereals are sound, fair and of marketable quality. For each cereal product, the Regulation lays down parameters such as the maximum moisture content, the maximum percentage of impurities and the minimum specific weight.
See consolidated version (pdf ).
Directive 86/362/EEC [Official Journal L 221 of 7.8.1986].
This Directive is intended to protect consumers' health from possible harmful effects resulting from the presence of pesticides in cereals. To that end, it lays down the maximum tolerated quantity for residues of a set of classified pesticides.
See consolidated version (pdf ).
Annual statistics on cereals
Regulation (EEC) No 837/90 [Official Journal L 88 of 3.4.1990].
This Regulation sets out the statistics which Member States must provide to the Statistical Office of the European Communities.
See consolidated version (pdf ).
Authorised intervention centres
Regulation (EEC) No 2273/93 [Official Journal L 207 of 18.8.1993].
This Regulation contains the list of cereal intervention centres in all the Member States.
See consolidated version (pdf ).


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Cyber Warriors
When will China emerge as a military threat to the U.S.? In most respects the answer is: not anytime soon—China doesn't even contemplate a time it might challenge America directly. But one significant threat already exists: cyberwar. Attacks—not just from China but from Russia and elsewhere—on America's electronic networks cost millions of dollars and could in the extreme cause the collapse of financial life, the halt of most manufacturing systems, and the evaporation of all the data and knowledge stored on the Internet.
Early in my time in China, I learned a useful lesson for daily life. In the summer of 2006, I saw a contingent of light-green-shirted People's Liberation Army soldiers marching in formation down a sidewalk on Fuxing Lu in Shanghai, near the U.S. and Iranian consulates. They looked so crisp under the leafy plane trees of the city's old colonial district that I pulled out a camera to take a picture of them—and, after pushing the button, had to spend the next 60 seconds running at full tilt away from the group's leader, who pursued me yelling in English "Stop! No photo! Must stop!" Fortunately he gave up after scaring me off.
The practical lesson was to not point a camera toward uniformed groups of soldiers or police. The broader hint I took was to be more careful when asking about or discussing military matters than when asking about most other aspects of modern China's development. I did keep asking people in China—carefully—about the potential military and strategic implications of their country's growing strength. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union and consequent disappearance of the U.S. military's one superpower rival, Western defense strategists have speculated about China's emergence as the next great military threat. (In 2005, this magazine published Robert Kaplan's cover story "How We Would Fight China," about such a possibility. Many of the international-affairs experts I interviewed in China were familiar with that story. I often had to explain that "would" did not mean "will" in the article's headline.)
The cynical view of warnings about a mounting Chinese threat is that they are largely Pentagon budget-building ploys: if the U.S. military is "only" going to fight insurgents and terrorists in the future, it doesn't really need the next generation of expensive fighter planes or attack submarines. Powerful evidence for this view—apart from familiarity with Pentagon budget debates over the years—is that many of the neoconservative thinkers who since 9/11 have concentrated on threats from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran were before that time writing worriedly about China. The most powerful counterargument is that China's rise is so consequential and unprecedented in scale that it would be naive not to expect military ramifications. My instincts lie with the skeptical camp: as I've often written through the past three years, China has many more problems than most Americans can imagine, and its power is much less impressive up close. But on my return to America, I asked a variety of military, governmental, business, and academic officials about how the situation looks from their perspective. In most ways, their judgment was reassuringly soothing; unfortunately, it left me with a new problem to worry about.
Without meaning to sound flip, I think the strictly military aspects of U.S.-China relations appear to be something Americans can rest easy about for a long time to come. Hypercautious warnings to the contrary keep cropping up, especially in the annual reports on China's strategic power produced since 2000 by the Pentagon each spring and by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission each fall. Yet when examined in detail, even these show the limits of the Chinese threat. To summarize:
• In overall spending, the United States puts between five and 10 times as much money into the military per year as China does, depending on different estimates of China's budget. Spending does not equal effectiveness, but it suggests the difference in scale.
• In sophistication of equipment, Chinese forces are only now beginning to be brought up to speed. For instance, just one-quarter of its naval surface fleet is considered "modern" in electronics, engines, and weaponry.
• In certain categories of weaponry, the Chinese don't even compete. For instance, the U.S. Navy has 11 nuclear-powered aircraft-carrier battle groups. The Chinese navy is only now moving toward construction of its very first carrier.
• In the unglamorous but crucial components of military effectiveness—logistics, training, readiness, evolving doctrine—the difference between Chinese and American standards is not a gap but a chasm. After a natural disaster anywhere in the world, the American military's vast airlift and sealift capacity often brings rescue supplies. The Chinese military took days to reach survivors after the devastating Sichuan earthquake in May of 2008, because it has so few helicopters and emergency vehicles.
• For better and worse, in modern times, American forces are continually in combat somewhere in the world. This has its drawbacks, but it means that U.S. leaders, tactics, and doctrine are constantly refined by the realities of warfare. In contrast, vanishingly few members of the People's Liberation Army have any combat experience whatsoever. The PLA's last major engagement was during its border war with Vietnam in February and March of 1979, when somewhere between 7,000 of its soldiers (Chinese estimate) and 25,000 (foreign estimates) were killed within four weeks.
Beyond all this is a difference of military culture rarely included in American discussions of the Chinese threat—and surprising to those unfamiliar with the way China's Communist government chose to fund its army. The post-Vietnam American military has been fanatically devoted to creating a "warrior" culture of military professionalism. The great struggle of the modern PLA has been containing the crony-capitalist culture that comes from its unashamed history of involvement in business. Especially under Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese military owned and operated factories, hotels and office buildings, shipping and trucking companies, and other businesses both legitimate and shady. In the late 1990s President Jiang Zemin led a major effort to peel the PLA's military functions away from its business dealings, but by all accounts, corruption remains a major challenge in the Chinese military, rather than the episodic problem it is for most Western forces. One example: at a small airport in the center of the country, an airport manager told me about his regular schedule of hong bao deliveries—"red envelopes," or discreet cash payoffs—to local air-force officers, to ensure airline passage through the sector of airspace they controlled. (Most U.S. airspace is controlled by the Federal Aviation Administration; nearly all of China's, by the military.) A larger example is the widespread assumption that military officials control the vast Chinese traffic in pirated movie DVDs.
The Chinese military's main and unconcealed ambition is to someday be strong enough to take Taiwan by force if it had to. But the details of the balance of power between mainland and Taiwanese forces, across the Straits of Taiwan, have been minutely scrutinized by all parties for decades, and shifts will not happen by surprise. The annual reports from the Pentagon and the Security Review Commission lay out other possible scenarios for conflict, but in my experience it is rare to hear U.S. military or diplomatic officials talk about war with China as a plausible threat. "My view is that the political leadership is principally focused on creating new jobs inside the country," I was told by retired Admiral Mike McConnell, a former head of the National Security Agency and the director of national intelligence under George W. Bush. Another former U.S. official put it this way: "We tend to think of everything about China as being multiplied by 1.3 billion. The Chinese leadership has to think of everything as being divided by 1.3 billion"—jobs, houses, land. Russell Leigh Moses, who has lived in China for years and lectures at programs to train Chinese officials, notes that the Chinese military, like its counterparts everywhere, is "determined not to be neglected." But "so many problems occupy the military itself—including learning how to play the political game—that there is no consensus to take on the U.S."
Yes, circumstances could change, and someday there could be a consensus to "take on the U.S." But the more you hear about the details, the harder it is to worry seriously about that now. So why should we worry? After conducting this round of interviews, I now lose sleep over something I'd generally ignored: the possibility of a "cyberwar" that could involve attacks from China—but, alarmingly, could also be launched by any number of other states and organizations.
The cyber threat is the idea that organizations or individuals may be spying on, tampering with, or preparing to inflict damage on America's electronic networks. Google's recent announcement of widespread spying "originating from China" brought attention to a problem many experts say is sure to grow. China has hundreds of millions of Internet users, mostly young. In any culture, this would mean a large hacker population; in China, where tight control and near chaos often coexist, it means an Internet with plenty of potential outlaws and with carefully directed government efforts, too. In a report for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission late last year, Northrop Grumman prepared a time line of electronic intrusions and disruptions coming from sites inside China since 1999. In most cases it was impossible to tell whether the activity was amateur or government-planned, the report said. But whatever their source, the disruptions were a problem. And in some instances, the "depth of resources" and the "extremely focused targeting of defense engineering data, US military operational information, and China-related policy information" suggested an effort that would be "difficult at best without some type of state-sponsorship."
The authorities I spoke with pooh-poohed as urban myth the idea that an electronic assault was behind the power failures that rippled from the Midwest to the East Coast in August of 2003. By all accounts, this was a cascading series of mechanical and human errors. But after asking corporate and government officials what worried them, I learned several unsettling things I hadn't known before.
First, nearly everyone in the business believes that we are living in, yes, a pre-9/11 era when it comes to the security and resilience of electronic information systems. Something very big—bigger than the Google-China case—is likely to go wrong, they said, and once it does, everyone will ask how we could have been so complacent for so long. Electronic-commerce systems are already in a constant war against online fraud. "The real skill to running a successful restaurant has relatively little to do with producing delicious food and a lot to do with cost and revenue management," an official of an Internet commerce company told me, asking not to be named. "Similarly, the real business behind PayPal, Google Checkout, and other such Internet payment systems is fraud and risk management," since the surge of attempted electronic theft is comparable to the surge of spam through e-mail networks.
At a dinner in Washington late last year, I listened to two dozen cyber-security experts compare tales of near-miss disasters. The consensus was that only a large-scale public breakdown would attract political attention to the problem, and that such a breakdown would occur. "Cyber crime is not conducted by some 15-year-old kids experimenting with viruses," Eugene Spafford, a computer scientist at Purdue, who is one of the world's leading cyber-security figures (and was at the dinner), told me later via e-mail.
It is well-funded and pursued by mature individuals and groups of professionals with deep financial and technical resources, often with local government (or other countries') toleration if not support. It is already responsible for billions of dollars a year in losses, and it is growing and becoming more capable. We have largely ignored it, and building our military capabilities is not responding to that threat.
With financial, medical, legal, intellectual, logistic, and every other sort of information increasingly living in "the cloud," the consequences of collapse or disruption are unpleasant to contemplate. A forthcoming novel, Directive 51, by John Barnes, does indeed contemplate them, much as in the 1950s Nevil Shute imagined the world after nuclear war in On the Beach. Barnes's view of the collapse of financial life (after all, our "assets" consist mostly of notations in banks' computer systems), the halt of most manufacturing systems, the evaporation of the technical knowledge that now exists mainly in the cloud, and other consequences is so alarming that the book could draw attention in a way no official report can.
Next, the authorities stressed that Chinese organizations and individuals were a serious source of electronic threats—but far from the only one, or perhaps even the main one. You could take this as good news about U.S.-China relations, but it was usually meant as bad news about the problem as a whole. "The Chinese would be in the top three, maybe the top two, leading problems in cyberspace," James Lewis, a former diplomat who worked on security and intelligence issues and is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, told me. "They're not close to being the primary problem, and there is debate about whether they're even number two." Number one in his analysis is Russia, through a combination of state, organized-criminal, and unorganized-individual activity. Number two is Israel—and there are more on the list. "The French are notorious for looking for economic advantage through their intelligence system," I was told by Ed Giorgio, who has served as the chief code maker and chief code breaker for the National Security Agency. "The Israelis are notorious for looking for political advantage. We have seen Brazil emerge as a source of financial crime, to join Russia, which is guilty of all of the above." Interestingly, no one suggested that international terrorist groups—as opposed to governments, corporations, or "normal" criminals—are making significant use of electronic networks to inflict damage on Western targets, although some groups rely on the Internet for recruitment, organization, and propagandizing.
This led to another, more surprising theme: that the main damage done to date through cyberwar has involved not theft of military secrets nor acts of electronic sabotage but rather business-versus-business spying. Some military secrets have indeed leaked out, the most consequential probably being those that would help the Chinese navy develop a modern submarine fleet. And many people said that if the United States someday ended up at war against China—or Russia, or some other country—then each side would certainly use electronic tools to attack the other's military and perhaps its civilian infrastructure. But short of outright war, the main losses have come through economic espionage. "You could think of it as taking a shortcut on the 'D' of R&D," research and development, one former government official said. "When you create a new product, a competitor can cherry-pick the good parts and introduce a competitive product much more rapidly than he could otherwise." Another technology expert, who serves on government advisory boards, told me, when referring to the steady loss of technological advantage, "We should not forget that it was China where 'death by a thousand cuts' originated." I heard of instances of Western corporate officials who arrived for negotiations in China and realized too late that their briefing books and internal numbers were already known by the other side. (In the same vein: I asked security officials whether the laptops and BlackBerry I had used while living in China would have been bugged in some way while I was there. The answers were variations on "Of course," with the "you idiot" left unsaid.)
The final theme was that even though these cyber concerns are not confined to China, the Chinese aspects do deserve consideration on their own, because China's scale, speed of growth, and complex relationship with the United States make it a unique case. Hackers in Russia or Israel might be more skillful one by one, but with its huge population China simply has more of them. The French might be more aggressive in searching for corporate secrets, but their military need not simultaneously consider how to stop the Seventh Fleet. According to Mike McConnell, everything about China's military planning changed after its leaders saw the results of U.S. precision weapons in the first Gulf War. "They were shocked," he told me. "They had no idea warfare had progressed to that point, and they went on a crash course to take away our advantage." This meant both building their own information systems—thus China's aspiration to create a Beidou (the Chinese name for the Big Dipper) system of satellites comparable to America's GPS—and being prepared in time of war to "attack what they see as our soft underbelly, our military's dependence on networking," as McConnell put it, noting the vast emerging PLA literature on defending and attacking data networks.
Ed Giorgio, formerly of the NSA, has prepared charts showing the points of "asymmetric advantage" China might have over the long run in such competition. Point nine on his 12-point chart: "They know us much better than we know them (virtually every one of their combatants reads English and virtually none of ours read Mandarin. This, in itself, will surely precipitate a massive intelligence failure)." But James Lewis, of CSIS, pointed out an "asymmetric handicap": "For all the effort the Chinese put into cyber competition, external efforts"—against a potential foe like the United States—"are second priority. The primary priority is domestic control and regime survival. The external part is a side benefit." For many other reasons, the China-cyber question will, like the China-finance and China-environment and China-human-rights questions, demand special attention and work.
The implications of electronic insecurity will be with us in the long run, among the other enduring headaches of the modern age. The "solution" to them is like the solution to coping with China's rise: something that will unfold over the years and require constant attention, adjustments, and innovations. "Cyber security is a process, not a patch," Eugene Spafford said. "We must continue to invest in it—and for the long term as well as the 'quick fix,' because otherwise we will always be applying fixes too late."
No doubt because I've been so preoccupied for so long with the implications of China's growth, I thought I heard a familiar note in the recommendations that many of the cyber-security experts offered. The similarity lies in their emphasis on openness, transparency, and international contact as the basis of a successful policy.
In overall U.S. dealings with China, it matters tremendously that so many Chinese organizations are led or influenced by people who have spent time in America or with Americans. Today's financial, academic, and business elite in China is deeply familiar with the United States, many of its members having studied or worked here. They may disagree on points of policy—for instance, about trade legislation—but they operate within a similar set of concepts and facts. This is less true of China's political leaders, and much less true of its military—with a consequently much greater risk of serious misunderstanding and error. The tensest moment in modern China's security relationship with the outside world came in January of 2007, when its missile command shot one of its own weather satellites out of the sky, presumably to show the world that it had developed anti-satellite weaponry. The detonation filled satellite orbits with dangerous debris; worse, it seemed to signal an unprovoked new step in militarizing space. By all accounts, President Hu Jintao okayed this before it occurred; but no one in China's foreign ministry appeared to have advance word, and for days diplomats sat silent in the face of worldwide protests. The PLA had not foreseen the international uproar it would provoke—or just didn't care.
Precisely in hopes of building familiarity like that in the business world, the U.S. Navy has since the 1980s taken the lead in military-to-military exchanges with the PLA. "I think both sides are trying to figure out what kind of a military-to-military relationship is feasible and proper," David Finkelstein, of the Center for Naval Analyses, in suburban Washington, D.C., told me. "We have two militaries that, in some circumstances, see each other as possible adversaries. At the same time, at the level of grand strategy, the two nations are trying to accommodate each other. There is a major chasm, but both sides are working hard to bridge it." Such exposure obviously doesn't eliminate the real differences of national interest between the two countries, but I believe it makes outright conflict less likely.
A similar high-road logic seems to lie behind recommendations for cyber security in general, and for dealing with the Chinese cyber threat in particular. The NSA, which McConnell directed and where Giorgio worked, is renowned for its secrecy. But both men, along with others, now argue that to defend information networks, the U.S. should talk openly about risks and insecurities—and engage the Chinese government and military in an effort to contain the problem.
As a matter of domestic U.S. politics, McConnell argues that we now suffer from a conspiracy of secrecy about the scale of cyber risks. No credit-card company wants to admit how often or how easily it is cheated. No bank or investment house wants to admit how close it has come to being electronically robbed. As a result, the changes in law, regulation, concept, or habit that could make online life safer don't get discussed. Sooner or later, the cyber equivalent of 9/11 will occur—and, if the real 9/11 is a model, we will understandably, but destructively, overreact.
While trying to build bridges to the military, McConnell and others recommend that the U.S. work with China on international efforts to secure data networks, comparable to the Chinese role in dealing with the world financial crisis. "You could have the model of the International Civil Aviation Organization," James Lewis said, "a body that can reduce risks for everyone by imposing common standards. It's moving from the Wild West to the rule of law." Why would the Chinese government want to join such an effort? McConnell's answer was that an ever-richer China will soon have as clear a stake in secure data networks as it did in safe air travel.
We're naturally skeptical of abstractions like "cooperation" or "greater openness" as the solutions to tough-guy, real-world problems. But in making the best of a world that will inevitably be changed by increasing Chinese power and increasing electronic threats from many directions, those principles may offer the right, realistic place to start.


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Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer and Tommy Lee Jones revisit some blasts from their pasts in "The Family," a violent action comedy about a mob family in France because of the witness protection program.
De Niro does a little "Analyze This" as Giovanni Manzoni, who ratted out his mob pals back in Brooklyn and now has a $20 million price on his head. He is, he narrates, "a nice guy" who just has to control "my sadistic urges" better. He's prone to beating people senseless or to death over things like poor service, "disrespect" and the like. And he's in France.
Rated: R
Opens today
Pfeiffer tones down her "Married to the Mob" turn as Maggie, the long-suffering wife, moving to yet another town where these people — "The Blakes," they're called this time — need to fit in. But her encounters with rude French salesclerks bring out the practicing pyromaniac in her.
Their kids — Belle (Dianna Agron) and Warren (John D'Leo) — have another high school to reconnoiter, master and have their way with.
And Jones is a milder-mannered version of his U.S. marshal characters as a government agent who tries to keep these four alive, and keep the incidents with the locals to a minimum.
As the Blakes set up shop in small-town Normandy, Gio, or "Fred," decides he'll write his memoirs. His cover story now is that he's "a writer." Silly Fred — he says he's doing a D-Day book when he doesn't know a thing about the subject. ("It's about the Marines on D-Day." Every Frenchman in Normandy knows there were no Marines there.)
Maggie finds a charming, ancient church, and curdles the blood of the local priest with her confession (which we don't hear).
Warren, 14, is bullied, but born to work the angles until he's had his revenge. And Belle is a streetwise bombshell who sets her sights on a student teacher as her first-ever sexual conquest.
Gio narrates as he types up his book, detailing his family history, papering over his sadistic impulses even as he sets out to find out why their old house has brown water coming out of the tap.
Everybody speaks English, which helps the kids and their "fuggedaboutit" parents adjust. Except they don't. The movie also lacks much in the way of "Frenchness," which is a pity.
And even though the cast is first-rate, "The Family" tends to lurch between laughs, with the most reliable humor coming from the Blakes' over-the-top violence as a way of solving every problem.
De Niro is the funniest he's been since the "Analyze" series, and one scene — he's invited to be a guest speaker at a film society — manages huge laughs based on his past filmography.
Director Luc Besson established his action cred decades ago with "La Femme Nikita" and "The Professional," and he wrote and produced "The Transporter" and "Taken" movies. But nobody ever accused Monsieur Luc of having any flair for comedy. The backhanded slaps at French snootiness, softness and overrated cuisine, and his idea of this sort of mob folk — adept at violence and quick to use it — aren't particularly funny.
Whatever the source material (Tonino Benacquista's novel "Malavita"), this feels inspired by Netflix's "Lilyhammer," about a mobster hiding out in Norway. Besson & Co. should have learned from that series that the fish out of water/culture clash stuff is where the fun comes from. The violence is rare, for shock value.
Here, the mayhem is personal, plentiful and graphic enough to make you wince. Just a bit.
The beat-downs are funny enough in their excess, but nobody in this film "gets what he deserves." And none of the bystanders in the film's quite high body count earn their fate.
Besson aims his movie at anyone who's ever held a grudge at an ill-mannered French waiter or clerk (haughty, and by the way, they would never condescend to speak to you in English). If you like your wish fulfillment payback served with a baseball bat, "The Family" is the French travelogue for you.
Roger Moore, McClatchy Newspapers


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April 10th, 2013
Soldier priest receives ultimate medal
By Larry Shaughnessy, CNN Pentagon Producer
Washington (CNN)–Capt. Emil Kapaun served in the U.S. Army in World War II and Korea, but he didn't carry a rifle and never fired a shot. His weapons were a Bible and his faith.
He was also Father Kapaun, a Roman Catholic chaplain who received the Medal of Honor on Thursday, 60 years after his death while a North Korean prisoner. The medal is the highest award for valor in the U.S. military.
President Barack Obama, in a White House ceremony, recounted Kapaun's efforts, at risk of his own life, to help wounded and captured troops.
"This is an amazing story," said Obama. "Father Kapaun has been called a shepherd in combat boots. His fellow soldiers who felt his grace and his mercy called him a saint, a blessing from God."
In June 1950, Kapaun was ordered to Korea as the war was in its earliest stages.
Supporting the soldiers of the 8th Infantry Regiment, Kapaun found himself in the heavily contested Pusan perimeter. Army documents supporting his nomination for the medal say he would bike from position to position so he could minister to soldiers, hearing confessions, performing last rites or administering Holy Communion.
Army photos from the war show he often celebrated Mass using the hood of a Jeep as an altar.
The Medal of Honor: What is it?
Three months after arriving in Korea, Kapaun was awarded the Bronze Star for valor for running through enemy fire to carry wounded soldiers to safety.
In November 1950, his unit went on the move. But Kapaun stayed behind to minister to the wounded soldiers, knowing he was putting himself in danger of capture by the enemy, said his nephew, Ray Kapaun, who represented the family at Thursday's ceremony.
Father Kapaun came to the aid of a wounded American soldier after U.S. troops surrendered in a battle.
"An enemy soldier was standing over (the soldier), rifle aimed at his head ready to shoot," said Obama. "And Father Kapaun marched over and pushed the enemy soldier aside. And then as the soldier watched stunned, Father Kapaun carried that wounded American away. "
The chaplain carried the GI four miles on a death march.
North Korean and Chinese troops marched Kapaun and the other captured troops nearly 100 miles north in the bitter winter weather. When Chinese soldiers tried to kill wounded POWs who were slowing the march, Kapaun risked his own life to stop them, and then persuaded unwounded POWs to help the wounded, according to his nephew.
Kapaun was imprisoned with 200 other soldiers at a camp near Pyoktong, North Korea. While there, he would sneak through the camp ministering to other prisoners.
"He would come around, saying, 'Hot coffee,' and give hot water to all of us," said Mike Dowe, a fellow prisoner at Pyoktong. "That may not sound like much today but it sure meant a lot under those circumstances."
To keep his fellow POWs from starving, Kapaun would break out of the camp at night, steal food and sneak back in to give it to those who needed it the most, his nephew said.
That earned him the nickname "The Good Thief" from the other POWs.
CNN Belief: Preparing clergy for combat
Eventually, the people who ran the camp took action to move him to a nearby hospital. Whether it was for treatment for an injured leg or to remove his influence over the prisoners will never be known, but Dowe and others tried to stop the North Koreans from taking him away.
"The Koreans came and they said that they have to take him to the hospital and the hospital, you can ask all the guys, I mean the hospital was a death house, it was where you go and you never come back, and everybody knew that," Dowe said. "All the guys tried to stop (them) from taking him there, even at one point a fight broke out."
Kapaun was taken away in the end. He died May 23, 1951, and his body was buried in a mass grave, where it remains.
After the war ended, a group of POWs emerged with a wooden crucifix nearly 4 feet tall.
"They had spent months on it, secretly collecting firewood, carving it - the cross and the body - using radio wire for a crown of thorns," said Obama. "It was a tribute to their friend, their chaplain, their fellow prisoner who had touched their souls and saved their lives, Father Emil Kapaun."
Kapaun was born and raised in Pilsen, Kansas. After high school, he attended Conception Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Missouri.
After the abbey, he studied for the priesthood at Kenrick Seminary in St. Louis. Kapaun was ordained in 1940 and that same year became a U.S. Army chaplain.
After serving at several posts in the United States and India, he left the Army and went to the Catholic University of America in Washington to earn a master's degree in education. After getting the degree in 1948, he returned to the Army.
CNN's Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories
The Vatican named Kapaun a servant of God in 1993, an early step that could lead to canonization.
For now, his nephew said, the family just wants his remains returned from North Korea.
Obama told the White House audience that Kapaun provided an example for people in uniform and not.
"Father Kapaun's life, I think, is a testimony to his human spirit, the power of faith, and reminds us of the good that we can do each and every day regardless of the most difficult of circumstances," said the president.
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About this blog
The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.


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Derby #217: Hipster Animals
Hey, this Derby's over. When you're finished reliving past glories, check out what's going on in the Derby right now. It's probably even cooler. Or at least newer.
Ah, the Hipster. Hated universally, defined only vaguely, they exist to occupy the same space Yuppies once did in the zeitgeist: as a generalized boogeyman of consumption and enthusiasm for all the wrong things. Someone who spends $2,000 on a platinum corkscrew might be a Yuppie. Make it instead a collection of indie band albums on vinyl and you've got a hipster. No one really knows what makes a hipster until they see someone who's really into something that seems kind of dumb. But we're not here to argue the distinction, we're here to mash it up and ask you to give us your best crossover designs showing the biggest hipster stereotypes, but on animals. Think Hipster Kitty, but funny and original. Maybe you'll draw a dog on a fixie or some lizards wearing skinny jeans or a salmon posting to a Tumblr blog of ironic photos that no one reads. The choices are limitless! Except for these limits:
- No text.
- No memery. We don't want your Hipster Kitties, Socially Awkard Penguins, etc.
- No video games.
- No Star Wars.


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*** If you prefer, there is a short version of this article on my church's website here.***
It seems everyone has an opinion about Jesus. Some say he was a wise, moral man; some say he was a myth; some say he was God in the flesh.
But first, how do we even know about Jesus? This seems like a pretty basic question, but before we can answer who Jesus ain't, we need to understand how we know about him in the first place.
We learn about specific people in the past by documentation, by records that bear witness to that person's life, and sometimes other archaeological evidence. Obviously, the farther back in history we go, the more difficult it is to prove the existence of a particular person, even someone as famous and powerful as a king or emperor, let alone a poor rabbi from the backwaters of the Roman empire.
So, why is it so hard to conclusively prove the existence of a person from ancient times, even someone as famous and influential as Alexander the Great or Caesar Augustus? First, empirical science is little help; even if we had the assumed body of the ancient person, it's not like there's a DNA database we can reference.
Further, there are two types of science: empirical and forensic. Empirical science is used to study present, repeatable events. These events can be replicated in studies and witnessed through our senses. Empirical science doesn't help us with historical events because those events cannot be repeated. For instance, we can't use empirical science to prove the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. On the other hand, forensic science is used to study past, unrepeatable events. With forensic science, one must look at evidence and use logic to draw conclusions. Forensic science is used in archaeology, criminal investigations, cryptology (the study of codes), and even SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence).
In proving the existence of a historical figure, it all comes down to documentation – historical records. Alexander the Great and Caesar Augustus lived before the invention of the printing press and the modern information age. Ancient manuscripts were written on papyrus, made from plant reeds, which lasted only about 10 years before falling apart. Later, ancient manuscripts were written on parchment or vellum, both made from animal skins, which could last much longer than papyrus but were still fragile.
Additionally, a shortage of ancient manuscripts can be partially blamed on the many conflicts and wars of ancient times. Fire was a common weapon for ancient armies. For example, the ancient library of Alexandria, Egypt was renowned for its collection of manuscripts but much of the library was destroyed during several conflicts. Because of the lack of modern means of copying and saving information, sadly, many ancient manuscripts have been lost to us forever.
When we turn to the New Testament, the ancient records about Jesus, we find the individual "books" that compose the New Testament have survived remarkably well compared to other ancient manuscripts.
To start, let's compare the sources for our information about Jesus to sources for two other famous ancient people: Alexander the Great and Caesar Augustus. Interestingly, no one raises questions about whether Alexander the Great or Caesar Augustus existed like they do about Jesus, but, as we'll see, the sources for our information about Jesus compare extremely well against the sources for these two other famous men from ancient times.
Furthermore, Alexander the Great and Caesar Augustus were rulers and conquerors of great empires — the most powerful, famous men of their time period — the exact type of persons ancient historians wrote about. The fact that we know anything today about a rabbi from Nazareth is incredible.
We have two sources for our information about Alexander the Great. Both of these sources were written about 400 years after Alexander the Great lived.
We have five sources that give us the information we know about Caesar Augustus. One is a funeral writing, written at his death. One was written 50-100 years after his death. The last three were written 100-200 years after his death.
For Jesus, we have four sources — the four Gospels found in the New Testament, each individually investigated, each containing both complementary and unique information. The four Gospels were written 25-60 years after Jesus' crucifixion, which means within the lifetime of those who knew Jesus and witnessed his ministry. (Jesus was crucified in about 30-33 AD, and all of the Gospels were written before 100 AD.) Two of the Gospels – Matthew and John – were written by two of Jesus' actual original twelve disciples, where the other two – Mark and Luke – were written by disciples of Jesus' original apostles, Paul and Peter. This means the four sources we have for knowing about Jesus' life come from eyewitnesses.
Further, we also have Paul's letters, which are collected in the New Testament, which attest to Jesus' ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, and deity. The majority of Paul's letters, historians agree, were written before the four Gospels.
Historians also agree that Paul recorded several creeds of the early church that existed before he wrote them down in his letters. The earliest is found in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
This creed is widely accepted by scholars as being dated – at most! – two to five years after Jesus' crucifixion. Even atheist New Testament scholar Gerd Ludemann believes the creed was created before the appearance of the resurrected Jesus to Paul. Further, some scholars believe the creed appeared within months of Jesus' crucifixion.
Another early creed appears in Paul's letter to the Philippians:
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)
But what about actual physical manuscripts – I mean, manuscripts we can actually hold in our hands and read with our own eyes today. Since we already covered how perishable these ancient manuscripts were, how many have survived until this day?
First, because of the fragileness of ancient manuscripts, as far as we know, no original ancient manuscripts have survived to this day. Meaning, we don't have the actual first manuscripts written in the hands of the New Testament authors – or any other originals from any other ancient writers for that matter. These ancient writings have survived through the tedious work of scribes, who copied them by hand to preserve these important works for future generations. We do have actual ancient manuscripts that have survived until today, but just not the originals.
So, how does the New Testament compare to other ancient manuscripts?
For Aristotle, we have 49 ancient manuscripts.
For Sophocles, we have 193 ancient manuscripts.
For Plato's tetralogies, we have 7 ancient manuscripts.
For Homer's The Iliad, we have 643 ancient manuscripts.
For the New Testament, we have about 5,686 ancient manuscripts in the original Greek, either in part or in whole. Plus, there are about 9,000 other ancient manuscripts of the New Testament books in other languages.
The earliest ancient manuscript piece of the New Testament we have today is a fragment from the Gospel of John (18:31-33, 37-38). This fragment was found in Egypt and has been dated about 125-130 AD, but could be as early as 90 AD. The dating puts it within 40 years of the original writing of the Gospel of John, and the fragment shows that the Gospel had spread as far as Egypt in that short period!
New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce wrote, "There is better evidence for the New Testament than any other ancient book."
Because of this wealth of manuscripts, scholars can easily compare the ancient New Testament manuscripts through a process called textual criticism and easily identify errors and variants made by the scribes. Expectantly, the scribes, who copied texts by hand, were not perfect, but most mistakes are nothing to be concerned about. The vast majority are spelling mistakes or other simple copying mistakes (like omitting or adding small words or reversing the order of words), which have no effect on how the New Testament is understood.
Often skeptics try to portray the passing on of the New Testament over time like the Telephone Game that you may have played in school as a child. In the Telephone Game, someone whispers a sentence into someone's ear, and then the second person whispers the sentence into another person's ear, and so on down the line. When the last person receives the sentence, he says it out loud for all to hear. In the vast majority of cases, the sentence is severely corrupted and changed by the time it reaches the end of the line. But this analogy is downright inaccurate. Anyone who claims this is how the New Testament was passed on to us today is basing that belief on assumption and not research, and they're illustrating their ignorance of textual criticism.
Instead of thinking of the passing on of the New Testament as a straight telephone line, think of it as a family tree with many branches giving birth to many more branches. A family tree spreads in many directions as it multiplies; it doesn't move in a straight line. Thus, if one branch becomes corrupted, the many other branches will not be corrupted in the same way.
Further, the Telephone Game analogy utterly fails because the message is only whispered and it cannot be repeated. The New Testament, on the other hand, is a written document; it can be reread and rechecked.
To sum up, the Telephone Game has only one line of transmission; the message is only whispered; and repeating is not allowed. On the other hand, the New Testament was passed on through many lines of transmission; it was written; and, therefore, it can be reread, examined, and compared.
Hey, Here's a Helpful Illustration
Imagine we had five ancient manuscripts and we notice variations among all five of them in the same sentence. This sounds like a big problem, but see if you can pick which line is the original:
- Christ Jesus is the Savior of the world.
- Jesus Christ is the Savior of the word.
- Jesus is the Savior of the word.
- Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world.
- Jesus Christ is Savior of the world.
Highlighting and underlining the differences between each sentence will help us narrow the choices down:
- Christ Jesus is the Savior of the world.
- Jesus Christ is the Savior of the word.
- Jesus [Missing: Christ] is the Savior of the word.
- Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world.
- Jesus Christ is [Missing: the] Savior of the world.
First, we can conclude that the original sentence started with "Jesus Christ," since only Sentence #1 starts with "Christ Jesus." Likewise, we can easily conclude Sentence #3 should include the word "Christ" and Sentence #5 should include the word "the" since all the others do.
Notice none of these variations so far affect the meaning of the sentence. Though we don't show this in this illustration, let me point out again, the vast majority of mistakes in the manuscripts by the scribes are simple spelling and grammar mistakes in the original language of the New Testament, ancient Koine ("common") Greek, which make no difference when the Greek is translated into English or any other language.
Finally, we have the variation of "world" versus "word." This is a tougher challenge to solve because this variation does affect the sentences' meanings and three of the sentences read "world" and two read "word." If it were the case that some of the manuscripts contained a nonsense word instead, like "Savior of the worl," the correct choice would be easy. In this case, I think most would agree "world" makes more sense than "word," and since more manuscripts have "world" than "word," it's the safer bet. But how can we be certain?
This is why we're fortunate to have many, many, many other manuscripts to compare than just these five! Specifically, we can look at those that were written before these manuscripts. The variation or mistake shouldn't have appeared yet in many of the earlier copies. In textual criticism, the rule of thumb is generally the older the manuscript, the better. In our illustration, it's likely the vast majority of the manuscripts will read "world." Thus, we can be confident that the original, correct sentence is Sentence #4: Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world.
This is how textual criticism works. Of course, this is simplified for the sake of illustration, but, as you can see, it's not all that hard spotting the original wording by comparing the manuscripts.
There was no central power controlling the copying of the New Testament. Churches were simply sharing the writings with other churches, and they would copy them and pass them on and on and on. One church may have the Gospel of Mark, and another church may have three of Paul's letters, so they would share and copy and pass on. Archeological evidence proves the New Testament spread rapidly across the ancient world. Thus, in ancient terms, this means the New Testament went viral! And because of this, we have a wealth of ancient manuscripts that can be compared to and contrasted against each other.
Textual criticism has found only 1% of the variants have any effect on the meaning of the text, and none of these come close to affecting any Christian beliefs. Textual critics are positive the New Testament we read today is 99% accurate to the originals.
Further, the early church fathers, who lived between 90-160 AD shortly after the events recorded in the New Testament, quoted the New Testament so extensively that the majority of the New Testament can be reconstructed from their sermons and writings alone. So, even if we had no ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, we'd still have much of it preserved in the writings of the early church fathers. Obviously, these early church fathers were quoting from manuscripts written earlier than their own writings.
First, our current New Testament is faithful to the originals. Despite a lot of assumptions about the Bible being corrupted over time, the evidence says otherwise.
Secondly, even secular historians consider the New Testament an excellent historical source, but the supernatural events the New Testament reports make them skeptical of its historical accuracy. Because of this, many non-Christian historians gladly use it to learn of Jesus and the time period but ignore the supernatural aspects of it. You see, their view of the New Testament has nothing to do with the evidence itself, but with their way of understanding the world, their worldview. If someone's worldview is that God doesn't exist, then of course he's not going to believe in the supernatural parts of the Bible. But if someone does believe in God, then believing in the miracles of the Bible isn't difficult at all.
Interestingly, scholars say that the time between the events of Jesus' life and the writing of the New Testament is much too short to allow legends and myths to develop, especially considering that people who witnessed Jesus were still living at the time of the writing of the New Testament. The writers present the New Testament as a historical record and provide names and other information so their contemporaries could investigate and confirm their claims about Jesus.
Where one can argue that this alone doesn't prove the truth of the New Testament, it must be recognized that the New Testament doesn't have the unspecific, "other-world-ness" of mythology; it is grounded in a historic time and place.
Lastly, no evidence of an early record of a strictly "human-only" Jesus or any other alternative view of Jesus exists. I've often heard skeptics say they don't believe in God because of a lack of evidence. Yet, when it comes to Jesus, many people (even some professing Christians) ignore the best evidence and base their ideas about who Jesus is on creations of their own mind.
There is also mention of Jesus outside of the Bible in ancient writings by non-Christians, but these were all written later than the New Testament. Even if someone doesn't believe in God or that Jesus is the Son of God or that the New Testament is the inspired Word of God, he or she – after evaluating the evidence – should still recognize that the New Testament is our best, most reliable source for learning about Jesus.
How do we know about Jesus?
We know about Jesus from the reliable, well-preserved record of the New Testament.
This is an excerpt from Who Jesus Ain't by Steve DiSebastian:
Is the Bible Any More Accurate than Other Religious Texts?
Has the Bible Been Lost in the Translation? How Do We Know the Words in Our Bibles Today are the Original Words?
How Do We Differentiate Between What is Scripture & Other Ancient, Religious Writings?
Who Jesus Ain't: Jesus Ain't a Hippy, Your Homeboy or a Wimp


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Ethnic Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
228 Shatzel Hall, 419-372-2796
The department of Ethnic Studies offers an interdisciplinary curriculum designed to foster an understanding of the histories and cultures of racial and ethnic groups in their local, national, and global contexts. The program emphasizes studies of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and the historical processes of slavery, colonial conquest, immigration, and globalization, among other subject areas.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of the baccalaureate degree, students in ethnic studies are expected to:
- Comprehend how racial and ethnic identities are constructed, negotiated, or contested over time, cultures, and geographical space;
- Employ diverse analytical resources, case studies, and comparative modes of study as critical cognitive tools to address issues of difference;
- Articulate general principles that shape ethnic relations and their intersections with gender, sexuality, and class in structural contexts of power;
- Draw larger theoretical lessons from comparisons among ethnic groups in the U.S. and in other diasporic sites;
- Effectively communicate and address issues of race and ethnicity, especially in multicultural environments.
Major, Bachelor of Arts (33 hours) - minor required - Fall 2022 course requirements
Minor (21 hours)
Ethnic Studies minors will take a total of 21 hours of Ethnic Studies courses selected in consultation with Director of Undergraduate Studies. These must include one 3000-level course and two 4000-level courses. 3 credits of CCS 4890 may be included as one of these courses.
Updated: 03/07/2023 11:32AM


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Hello everyone,
if you have been a member of the Treeleaf Google+ Community before you should have gotten an invitation to the ***NEW*** Treeleaf community
1) Why do we need a new "Google+ Community" ?
By the time we created the first community we set it up as public (because at that time "public" meant people outside the community can find the community. It not meant everyone can join our hangouts). Google a few weeks ago decided that "pubic" also needs to mean everyone can join your hangout. As our frequent sitters know this lead to some surprising visitors during our zazen.
The "new" community is "private", thus no one can join our hangouts but your fellow treeleafers who are also in the community.
2) Where is the invitation ?
Depending on your settings at Google+ you may have gotten it via email, as sms on your phone or it may appear in your stream at Google+, or any mixture of these. if you not got it or accidentally deleted it, please proceed as described in 4) below.
3) Has this change being discussed before ?
yep, here:
4) I've not being a g+ community member before, but want become one
You can apply for being included here
Please also pm me here at treeleaf (Menu Forum / Private Messages / Send new Message) including your Google+ Username so I can approve you.
To "apply" and to be "approved" is only a formal act, making sure that we not add anyone from outside treeleaf.
Feel free to post any questions in this thread.


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Eco Eat
More Home Delivery
It just keeps getting easier in Japan to have fresh organic foods delivered straight to your door. Daichi Wo Mamoru Kai is another online catalog offering a wide variety of naturally grown fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood and dairy products. Their selection of healthy and responsibly produced foods is impressive. The site is only in Japanese, so drop the URL into Google translate if you are not in the mood for practicing kanji.
Eco Farm
Toziba Daizu Revolution
The Japanese daizu soybean is a renewable resource for the 21st century; used for food, fuel and plastics. Toziba's Daizu Revolution has 23 partnership farms around Japan, which you can join as a co-owner. Visit the farm and help with the farming and for ¥5,000 you can buy a share. At the end of the season, the harvest is divided and members split the proceeds. Great way to get out of the city and be part of the new green economy too.
Eco Groove
Parties 4 Peace
Parties 4 Peace raises awareness for global issues while bringing together top DJs. The group donates funds for conservation in Patagonia, community building in El Salvador, education in Cambodia and more. The Tokyo events and ski weekends are great for networking with like-minded people and meeting some leaders of the green movement in Japan…while getting your eco-groove on.
Eco Training
Green Business Seminars
Explosive population growth, climate change, a global food crisis, peak oil, corporate greed…the list goes on. So how can you help find solutions? eQualC Sustainability Communications provides monthly Green Business Seminars with sustainability leaders from the public and private sectors to give you the tools and resources to "green" your company, your career and your lifestyle.
The Green Space a blog with a conscience
Filmmaker Youki Mikami recently presented the short film Ways of Experiencing Wood for a Patagonica Event at the cozy Brazilian lounge Favela in Gaienmae. Working with Friends of the Earth, Mikami shot deforestation in Russia and a neglected but viable sustainable forestry industry in Japan. Their team operates Fairwood Partners to promote the use of traceable and sustainable timber. See the film on YouTube, search "ways of experiencing wood."
After a delicious buffet, the DJs played until dawn. Sponsored by Peace Boat and Patagonia, proceeds from the event support conservation in Chile. Next event is Earth Groove, Dec. 11 at Favela. ¥3,000 w/ drink and food.
Web Links:
Jacob Reiner is an Eco Architect and director of Earth Embassy and the Solar Café. For more information on sustainable life-styles and eco living, visit www.earthembassy.org.


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Arsenal Crest Stool
- Arsenal F.C. Official Merchandise
This Arsenal F.C. stool is great as a standalone seat to complete a space or can be used as a companion to one of our gaming chairs. With its unique shape, it has a solid base for rock steady sturdiness, and rapidly inflates so you're ready to go in seconds.
The stool comes with a machine washable, interchangeable cover, with a design ideal for kids rooms, man-caves, and can even be used outdoors.Pump not included. We stock a 230V electric pump which can be purchased here
Size Guide
Fan-Seats Large Stools stand at:
Height - 55cm
Width - 45cm
Suited for 11+
How is it Made?
Fan-Seats Large Stools consist of:
- An inflatable inner
- A machine washable fabric cover
- A hard sturdy base
The seat comes flat-packed, for easiy assembly and storage.
different by design
the new normal.
We've engineered new vinyl inners for seats, which result in a unique and comfortable shape. A rapid setup means it's ready in seconds, or can also be packed away when needed.
stitched to perfection.
Every stitch, seam, and zip is made meticulously, then quality checked to give you a seat that's made specifically to support you through the highs and lows of any match.
with our printing power.
Using the latest printing technology, every Arsenal F.C design cover is interchangeable and made to endure spillages and kickabouts - easily remove and machine wash to keep your seat looking sharp.


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By Caitlin Kelly
I don't normally look to the sober-sided Financial Times for career advice, especially on the value of sport(s) for women who aim high professionally. But here's Gillian Tett:
In recent months Ernst & Young, the American consultancy, has been analysing sporting activity among senior female executives and leaders. And it has discovered that the higher the executive level, the more
likely it is that a woman played sport at high school or college. Most notably, some 19 out of 20 women who sit in the "C-suite" – holding the title "chief something" – were sporty as a teenager; indeed, seven out of 10 still play sport as a working adult, while six out of 10 played sport at university. One in eight C-suite executives played sport professionally. However, among the middle levels of working women, athletic skill was lower: just a third of mid-level women, for example, played sport at university..
A few examples:
IMF head Christine Lagarde (a former member of France's synchronised swimming team), Condoleezza Rice (a keen figure skater in her youth) and Hillary Clinton (school baseball). Or Dilma Rousseff (the Brazilian president, who played volleyball to a high level), Indra Nooyi (the CEO of PepsiCo was a keen cricket player), Ellen Kullman (CEO at Dupont, who played basketball to a high level at college)…
Girls who play sport at school learn at a young age that it is acceptable to compete aggressively. They also discover that success does not depend on looking good and that it can be acceptable to take pleasure in winning. ..Being an athlete is one of the few socially accepted ways for teenage girls to compete, without peer criticism.
I'm such a huge fan of girls and women being athletic!
I've been sporty since childhood — when I had no choice in the matter, because we did sports after school every day at boarding school and all day long at summer camp.
Some of the sports I've played, and some I continue to play:
softball, hiking, cycling, downhill and cross-country skiing, kayaking, canoeing, ice skating, fencing, golf, tennis, squash, badminton, volleyball, basketball, swimming (competitive), diving, snorkel, horseback riding, sailing, solo and in a racing team (12 f00t to 60 foot boats).
I also studied ballet from the age of 12 to my late 20s, jazz dance in my 20s, and I still do a jazz dance class every Monday morning.
I include yoga and any form of dance in the same category of "sports" — requiring discipline, flexibility, training, practice, strength and determination to master them.
For all the endless paranoia/obsession about the size and shape of our bodies, what we really need is to be strong and limber, at 5, 15, 45 or 65.
If it weren't for my athletic activities, I wouldn't be able to control my weight, manage my stress, tap into my creativity or relate nearly as easily to the many men and women I meet who are sporty. I can always find someone to go for a hike with or play golf with my husband or take a jazz, modern or ballet class. For many years, I crewed every summer on more than a dozen racing sailboats on Long Island Sound, often trimming jib, a job requiring lightning reflexes and strong arms, shoulders and hands.
I moved to New York when I was 30, knowing no one, with no formal American education, no friends, relatives or a job. To stay busy while re-making my life, I took up saber fencing, coached by a two-time Olympian, and was nationally ranked for four years.
I learned a tremendous amount in the salle and on that narrow strip, all of which has helped me in life, work and relationships:
How to control my temper (at least during a bout!)
How to stay focused for 20 minutes, crouched in en garde, on a minute object to the exclusion of all distractions
How to compete with confidence against opponents far bigger, stronger, taller and more experienced
How to lose (and not freak out)
How to win (and not gloat)
How to buy a bit of time, even at nationals in the direct elimination round (tie your shoe)
How to control an opponent
How to stay focused and compete effectively even when injured and in pain
How to accept criticism and feedback from my coach
How to initiate an attack quickly and decisively
There is no doubt that my strength, stamina and flexibility still help me stay fit and strong in a crazy business in a difficult economy.
On the crummiest day I know I can still shoot hoops or swing a driver with the young 'uns. I can hit to the outfield and pop a golf ball 150 yards.
Do you play sports? Do your daughters?
How do you think it has affected them or changed their lives?