text:
The following essay is adapted from our book, A Freedom Budget for All Americans: Recapturing the Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in the Struggle for Economic Justice Today (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013).
"A Freedom Budget for All Americans," published in 1966 by the A. Philip Randolph Institute, demanded that the federal government put in place policies and programs that would eliminate poverty within ten years. Its authors demonstrated with clear and realistic assumptions about government taxes and revenues that this could be accomplished easily. The "Freedom Budget" was a direct descendant of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The organizers of the march and the architects of the "Freedom Budget" – people like A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. – understood that ending poverty, achieving full employment, guaranteeing incomes, winning higher wages and providing good schools, national health care and decent housing would not happen without tremendous struggle, one that challenged not only the federal government but the basic structure of a capitalist economy. Their sensibility was democratic and socialist; it envisioned a society both egalitarian and controlled by the people themselves.
The original "Freedom Budget" contains a section on the economic plight of black men, women and children in the United States. It notes that the civil rights movement was led by black Americans fighting for an end to US apartheid and for political equality with whites. But while they would be the primary beneficiaries of the destruction of Jim Crow, they would also, by making the nation more democratic and its people more equal, improve the quality of life for everyone. Similarly, the "Freedom Budget," while aimed at all poor people – black, white, brown, red and yellow – would benefit black people most. They had the highest unemployment rates, the greatest incidence of poverty, the most substandard housing, the lowest incomes, the poorest health, the least access to social services, the most inferior education. However, the role of black Americans in the "Freedom Budget" would be not just to fight for themselves, but again to act as protagonists in the battle to compel the society to live up to its professed ideals.
There is an absolute analogy between the crusade for civil rights and liberties and the crusade which the "Freedom Budget" represents. This is because the "Freedom Budget" would achieve the freedom from economic want and oppression that is the necessary complement to freedom from political and civil oppression. And just as the progress thus far made on the front of civil rights and liberties has immeasurably strengthened the entire American political democracy, so will the "Freedom Budget" strengthen immeasurably our entire economic and social fabric.
The Negro's greatest role on both of these fronts is not as a beneficiary, but rather as a galvanizing force. Out of his unique suffering, he has gone a long way toward awakening the American conscience with respect to civil rights and liberties. The debt which the whole nation owes him will be increased many times, as he helps to win the battle against unemployment and poverty and deprivation.[i]
During the strike of Memphis sanitation workers in 1968, which Martin Luther King was so eloquently supporting just before he was murdered, the picketers carried signs that read, "I Am A Man." The power of this phrase spoke to the demand by these black laborers, whom white America saw as the least of men, that they and all black men and women be treated as full human beings, equal to everyone else and as deserving of a good life as the rest of us. The subtext of the words spoke to the brutal hypocrisy of US society. How could it claim to be free, a model for the world no less, when so many of its people were denied the most fundamental human rights? However, by struggling so valiantly and with immense courage, black America compelled white America to make it part of the nation, with equal political rights. Our black brothers and sisters remade the country, made it more what the propaganda said it was, a land of free and equal people. The United States was made a better place because this exploited and oppressed minority forced Americans to look in the mirror and ask themselves who they really were.
Similarly, the authors of the "Freedom Budget" said that black Americans should and would be in the forefront of the war to be fought for the right to be free from deprivation. And if they succeeded in achieving the goals set out in the "Freedom Budget," they would have taken another step toward making the United States a model for the world. At the same time, they would help end their own cruel and deadly economic conditions.
Despite endorsements from numerous political, labor, religious, civil rights and education leaders, the "Freedom Budget" was never implemented. The reasons include the co-optation of black leaders by political and economic elites, fissures among potential supporters given the failure of most of the "Budget's" prime movers to join forces with the burgeoning movement against the war in Vietnam and an over-reliance on Democratic Party politicians. On top of this, there was the stagnation that took hold of the nation's economy in the mid-1970s. Still, some of what the "Budget" proposed came to pass. Health care, housing and public assistance for the poor improved. Racial minorities won better access to schooling. Unemployment compensation and social security were made more generous. Environmental protection laws were enacted. Poverty fell dramatically.
Sadly, the greater well-being enjoyed by millions of poor and near-poor Americans during the 1960s and 1970s proved short-lived, coming to a halt beginning in the 1980s. Except for a brief period of reversal in the late 1990s, gains made during those earlier decades were not sustained – and for many of those suffering economic want, conditions deteriorated. Nowhere has this been more the case than for black people. This is not surprising; if you are on the lowest rung of the economic ladder, you will benefit relatively more when progressive economic policies are enacted, but you will be harmed the most when these end, or worse yet, as is the case today, austerity rules.
Black people saw improvements in their lives in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement, notably a sharp decline in poverty. They won access to both better job opportunities and political offices. We now see many black faces on television news shows and in mainstream entertainment. Black CEOs, generals and presidential advisers no longer surprise us. We even have a black president.
Yet despite undeniable progress, seemingly intractable racial disparities continue to exist. Consider the following summary of the economic condition of contemporary black America, using many of the categories enumerated in the "Freedom Budget":
1. Income: In 1947, the median black family income was 51.1 percent of the white family income. In 2010, it was 61.0 percent. After the heroic struggles of the Civil Rights Movement and the enactment of numerous civil rights laws, this seems a small gain, smaller even than 61.3 percent in 1967.[ii]
2. Wealth: In 2010, the median net worth (all assets, including homes, minus all debts) of black households (a household is not necessarily a family) was $4,900, 5 percent of that of whites, for whom it was $97,000. If we confine our data to median net financial wealth (assets include mutual funds, trusts, retirement and pension funds, etc.), in 2009, black households had $200, while whites had $36,100 – a ratio of .0056 to 1. In 2009, nearly twice as many black households as white had zero or negative net worth (39.2 percent vs. 20.3 percent).[iii]
3. Wages and Jobs: Black workers earn less than their white counterparts; black men, for example, earn less than three-quarters the wages of white men. The black-white earnings disparity is present at every level of schooling. Part of this is because blacks, no matter their level of schooling, are over-represented in jobs with relatively low wages and under-represented in higher-paying jobs. A report from the Economic Policy Institute tells us that "The average of the annual wages of occupations in which black men are overrepresented is $37,005, compared with $50,333 in occupations in which they are underrepresented." Further, "A $10,000 increase in the average annual wage of an occupation is associated with a seven percentage point decrease in the proportion of black men in that occupation."[iv] Another part of the reason for the relatively low wages of blacks is that they earn less money within the same occupations. A summary of data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that "in 2010, median usual weekly earnings of . . . White men ($1,273) working full time in management, professional, and related occupations (the highest paying major occupation group) were well above the earnings of Black men ($957) in the same occupation group." For women, the numbers were $932 for whites and $812 for blacks. Racial wage discrepancies exist in every occupational category. If, instead of specific occupations, we look just at low-wage work, we find racial disparities. About one-quarter of all jobs in the United States pay a wage that, for full-time, year-round work, would put a family of four below the poverty level of income. But for jobs held by black workers, this figure is nearly 35 percent.[v]
4. Poverty: In 2010, the incidence of poverty for non-Hispanic whites was 9.9 percent; for blacks it was 27.4 percent. The percentage of blacks living at less than one-half of the poverty level was 13.5 percent. For black children younger than 6 years old, the incidence of poverty was 45.8 percent; the rate for white children was 14.5 percent.[vi]
5. Unemployment: The official unemployment rate almost always has been about twice as high for blacks as for whites. In March 2013, these rates were 13.3 percent and 6.7 percent respectively. Double-digit unemployment rates are more common than not for black workers, a condition that would be unacceptable if it were true for white workers. In 2011, the underemployment rate (which includes involuntary part-time workers and all those marginally attached to the labor force) was 13 percent for whites and nearly 25 percent for blacks.[vii]
6. Housing: Homes are the most important form of wealth for most households. Not unexpectedly, there is a racial gap here, too. Whites are 25 percent more likely to own homes than blacks. In addition, the current meltdown in housing prices has disproportionately hurt black homeowners. In connection with housing, it is useful to mention the recent study by the Manhattan Institute, which has received a great deal of media attention, that housing segregation has dramatically declined. The authors use a "dissimilarity index" as a measure of segregation and show that this has fallen. An Economic Policy Institute (EPI) evaluation of the study explains: "They find a national dissimilarity (or segregation) rate of about 55 percent for African Americans – in other words, 'only' 55 percent of African Americans would now have to move to neighborhoods with more non-blacks in order to evenly distribute the black population throughout all neighborhoods in their metropolitan areas. This is a substantial decline from the segregation level of about 80 percent in 1970." Against the optimistic gloss that has been put on the Manhattan Institute analysis, the EPI authors make several salient points. First, a 55 percent segregation rate is nothing to brag about, and it will rise now that black homeowners in white neighborhoods have been experiencing so many foreclosures. Second, the dissimilarity index is a somewhat indirect measure of black and white interaction. By another measure, the typical black person lived in a neighborhood that was 40 percent white in 1940; today this has fallen to 35 percent. And even for the dissimilarity index, some of the decline is the result of an influx of Asians and Hispanics into black localities, while another part of it is the consequence of the greater economic mobility of the black middle class. Poor blacks have been left behind, stuck in almost totally segregated areas, without jobs as manufacturing left town and unable to follow jobs to the suburbs. "High poverty" neighborhoods are home to 40 percent of all poor blacks (only 15 percent of poor whites live in such neighborhoods).[viii]
7. Life Expectancies and Infant Mortality: There is no reason to expect that, other things equal, one group of people in a country should exhibit different life expectancies and infant mortality rates than another. In 2010, blacks could expect to live four years less than whites. Infant mortality rates are more than double for black than for white women.[ix]
8. Prisons and the Criminal Justice System: Here the racial divide is startling. In 2010, 2,226,800 persons were incarcerated in the United States, and an additional 4,887,900 were on probation or parole. So, the United States has a criminal justice system population of over 7 million people. Nearly 40 percent of this population is black; more than triple the black share of the US population. At every step in the criminal justice system – arrest, arraignment, legal representation, plea bargaining, jury selection, verdict, sentencing, chance for parole, prospects after imprisonment – blacks fare worse than whites.[x]
In the 50 years since the "Freedom Budget" was written, the United States has failed miserably to end poverty and deprivation. The black America that made the Civil Rights Movement and developed the "Freedom Budget" still suffers deplorable economic conditions. This means that the goals of the "Freedom Budget" are as relevant as ever. Perhaps it is time to construct A New Freedom Budget, patterned after the original but brought up to date to reflect a changed reality. And perhaps it is time once again for black America to rise up, in concert with all of those who are poor and deprived, and demand that the scourge of economic want be ended, once and for all.
A budget consists of sets of numbers, reflecting receipts and expenditures of money. However, it is always the case that principles underlie the data. What might the principles of A New Freedom Budget be? Here are some suggestions:
Liberty and justice for all: equal rights and equal opportunities, with no exceptions.
Deepening democracy: political, social and economic.
A commitment to future generations.
Comprehensive solutions: We reject tokenism and fragmented remedies.
Harmony with global neighbors.
What should be the objectives of A New Freedom Budget? These cannot be exactly the same as those in the original; economic and social changes have occurred in the past five decades, creating new difficulties for the masses that must be addressed. The following goals are not meant to be final, but they are consistent with those of the first "Freedom Budget" and the fact that today's nation is not the same as that of 1966:
1. Full employment.
2. Adequate income for all who are employed.
3. A guaranteed minimum adequacy level of income for those who cannot or should not work.
4. Adequate and safe housing for all.
5. Health care for all.
6. Educational opportunity for all.
7. Secure and expanded transportation infrastructure.
8. Secure and expanded Social Security.
9. Food security for all.
10. A sustainable environment.
11. Cultural freedom and enrichment for all (arts, parks, sports, recreation).
12. Reduction in the inequality of income and wealth, to ensure the realization of these objectives.
How might these objectives be achieved? Political traction for A New Freedom Budget will require organization around community self-help efforts and political agitation demanding that the federal government begin to act in the interests of the people. With respect to the first, collective self-help measures, these can build cooperative entities inside the shell of capitalism and generate feelings of power, solidarity and self-confidence among participants. For example, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) encampment in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park erected a small-scale society, providing themselves with food, sanitation and housing while debating and implementing a form of democratic self-government. Remarkably, it did this in the face of severe police repression. In terms of the second kind of organization, political agitation, there are hundreds of examples, from the labor movement to anti-war struggles. Even OWS, which was accused of not having a political agenda, made many demands, including an end to police surveillance and brutality. History suggests, in fact, that collective self-help and political activism go hand in hand.
There is good reason to think that black America could once again spearhead the fight for A New Freedom Budget. As the data above tell us, black men, women and children are still the least of Americans. They have the most to gain from the achievement of the budget's goals, and their participation in and leadership of the drive to implement it would once again force the nation to confront the chasm between ideology and reality. And as past collective self-help and political movements make clear, black America has a history replete with concrete achievements. In the 1960s, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's Mississippi Freedom Summer Project combined self-help and political action efforts. The voter registration drives were political confrontations with a vicious white state government, aimed not only at winning the right to vote in Mississippi but also to pressure the federal government to enact voting rights legislation. These voting drives were combined with Freedom Schools, in which students were taught traditional subjects like reading and mathematics, as well as black history and constitutional rights. Among black liberation efforts embracing a more nationalist path for struggle, the same kind of dynamic emerged. The Black Panther Party established "survival programs," such as the Free Breakfast for Children Program and a large number of free services such as "clothing distribution, classes on politics and economics, free medical clinics, lessons on self-defense and first aid, transportation to upstate prisons for family members of inmates, an emergency-response ambulance program, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and testing for sickle-cell disease." The Nation of Islam ran schools and day care services, operated a food distribution network, and established farms.[xi] Both groups in their "Ten Point Programs" also demanded that the federal government guarantee full employment, access to land, decent housing, good education, an end to police brutality in black communities and an end to an unjust criminal justice system.[xii] Especially with the Black Panthers, community self-help activities were combined with active political struggles.
Black communities today have ready-made allies to help them win support for A New Freedom Budget. They could be joined by a growing population of oppressed minorities – American Indians and recent immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, South and Southeast Asia, China and the Middle East – to form a massive coalition leading all poor and deprived persons, as well as the rest of the working class, in building a society that guarantees lives free from want to all. Our political and economic elites caution patience and say that tremendous progress has been made in making opportunities available to all. This is simply not true. Most of our economic growth has been siphoned off by the very rich, while the lives of the majority of Americans become more insecure and less hopeful every day. We need immediate, radical change, and we must demand this right now.
[i]A. Philip Randolph Institute, "A Freedom Budget for All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-1975 to Achieve Freedom from Want" (New York: A. Philip Randolph Institute, 1966), 19-20.
[ii]Lawrence Mishel, Josh Bivens, Elise Gould and Heidi Shierholz, The State of Working America, Chapter 2, "Income," available at https://stateofworkingamerica.org/subjects/income/?reader.
[iii]Ibid., Chapter 6, "Wealth," available at https://stateofworkingamerica.org/subjects/wealth/?reader
[vi]Lawrence Mishel, Josh Bivens, Elise Gould and Heidi Shierholz, The State of Working America, Chapter 7, "Poverty," available at https://stateofworkingamerica.org/subjects/poverty/?reader
[vii]See https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm and https://stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/underemployment-by-race-and-ethnicity/
[ix] https://www.ecology.com/2013/04/01/us-life-expectancy-mortality-rates/, and for infant mortality, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6205a6.htm
[x]See https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/job-crisis-black-unemployment-rates?page=2, and https://bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus10.pdf.
[xi]Bruce Watson, Freedom Summer: The Savage Season of 1964 That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy (New York: Penguin, 2010); on the programs of the Black Panther Party, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party#Survival_programs, and Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013); on the Nation of Islam's substantial economic plan based on collective self-help https://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/Columns_4/article_6680.shtml;
[xii]Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, Kindle Edition, 70-71.
Not everyone can pay for the news. But if you can, we need your support.
Truthout is widely read among people with lower incomes and among young people who are mired in debt. Our site is read at public libraries, among people without internet access of their own. People print out our articles and send them to family members in prison — we receive letters from behind bars regularly thanking us for our coverage. Our stories are emailed and shared around communities, sparking grassroots mobilization.
We're committed to keeping all Truthout articles free and available to the public. But in order to do that, we need those who can afford to contribute to our work to do so — especially now, because we have just 1 day left to raise $27,000 in critical funds.
We'll never require you to give, but we can ask you from the bottom of our hearts: Will you donate what you can, so we can continue providing journalism in the service of justice and truth?


text:
There appears to be an error with the database.
You can try to refresh the page by clicking here.
Error Returned
mySQL query error: SELECT * FROM ibf_cache_store WHERE cs_key IN ( 'ranks','profilefields','rss_calendar','rss_export','components','banfilters','settings','group_cache','systemvars','skin_id_cache','forum_cache','moderators','stats','languages' )
SQL error: Query execution was interrupted, maximum statement execution time exceeded
SQL error code:
Date: Sunday 02nd 2023f April 2023 05:45:34 AMWe apologise for any inconvenience

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Have questions? Please contact us.
From gut feeling to projects! SAP CEC in Higher Education
Do you know the Taylor Swift fan story? A Short summary: Fan Stepanie twitters in tears she will miss a concert from her big idol. Taylor Swift with the help of an Airline Company who picked up the tweets, succeeded to provide Stephanie her best evening ever! @StephanieBe is the classic digital customer of today — she is digitally connected, socially networked and well informed. The Airline Company and Taylor Swift did a fantastic job in customer engagement!
Companies need to be ready to cater and support this new world customer. We at NTT DATA Business Solutions, asked ourselves how Universities are dealing with empowered students. With support of our Higher Education Business Consultants, SAP and me as 'Evangelist' in Customer Engagement and Commerce (SAP CEC), I started a journey. A short story…
First let me shorten the SAP Customer Engagement and Commerce portfolio (CEC). SAP CEC contains three solutions:
- CRM (Cloud 4 Customer)
- hybris marketing
- hybris commerce.
On September 15th SAP announced to upgrade the portfolio to "Simplified Front Office"
SAP : "In today's digital world, businesses need to connect the front office and back office in real time — linking people, products, pricing and customers together. This means that the new front office must go beyond the traditional marketing, sales and service automation functions and include integrated, real-time personalization, Web and mobile commerce, social customer service and more. Planned tools from SAP are envisioned to simplify the front office, helping businesses get a single, contextual view of their customers while giving each customer a consistent, personalized experience across all channels." http://news.sap.com/sap-announces-simplified-front-office/
So is this SAP offering relevant for universities at all? To answer this questions we did a market research, had several customer interviews and went through the process of a successful product development.
Trends in Higher Education
Before I will explain how we organized product development, let me share some market trends in Higher Education. There are several reasons why customer engagement and commerce is highly relevant to Universities:
- Growing competition. To keep and win market share an institute has to be competitive and attractive. A university needs deep, real time insights to be attractive and relevant during the complex and dynamic student journey; from prospective student to alumni.
- Lifelong Student Journey becomes reality. Adults are a lucrative market for universities – the target age is not only 18–25 , but 18–99. These students are generally older, and require flexibility to design their education around their job and lifestyle. Degree may even be spread across multiple universities.
- Empowered students. Many of today's students are digital natives, and they expect their university to be able to keep up with them. Students go to universities to expand their knowledge – what kind of an image does it project if students are more technologically savvy than the institute they are paying to learn from? These digital natives are always on: they want information on demand, 24/7. They want to interact with the university on the channels of their choice. By simultaneously using many different online and social media channels such as twitter, blogs, email, mobile devices, etc. students have become all-important opinion formers and leaders – they become brand ambassadors for the university
In this highly competitive market and in today's omni-channel environment where #lifelong learning is a trending topic, Universities should be using solutions to develop a real time dynamic student profile for better understanding. And yes, it would make sense if institutes look for agility in delivering the best cross touchpoints experiences.
How did we organize product development and how did we set-up the interviews?
We asked some customers if we could involve them in a Product – Market analysis. Our main question was: are these products relevant to Universities? They all agreed and had an open mind during the meetings.
So we organized a workshop session, invited several roles and explained on high level and step by step the solution. After a short discussion on the solution we asked the audience to score the solution on 'relevance' and 'expect to investment in'. They could also write down suggestions and remarks. We really captured their feeling, their view on the solution!
Based on the first positive results we started developing, and are still developing, Higher Education focused scenario's and examples. Internally, we take a step-by-step approach with transparent planning and deliverables. In this process we are helped by the market. In Request For Proposals, Universities are describing recruitment and engagement scenario's which we have to answer.
Next steps: A white paper will be launched in October and other actions are planned
Over the last few months we had several very successful presentations and meetings with Universities that resulted in projects! Through amongst others an inspirational whitepaper named "Fly Like an Eagle – How Institutions for Higher Education Can Reach New Heights in the Digital Age" that will be published soon, we will positon SAP CEC in this market.
Supported by market signals, state-of-the-art solutions and very talented consultants, we are confident that NTT DATA Business Solutions will support many Universities in reaching their ambitious goals.
If you have questions on this topic, please contact Marc van den Berk


text:
Just a quick thought.
Perception based loosely on facts:
A lot of language documentation money gets pushed towards endangered languages or languages with very few speakers. Is often endowed upon the aspiring academic, who may be promising to create a grammar for a previously un-written or undescribed language.
Sometimes I have the opportunity to read grammars. I read them and have questions about how the described data sounds. Both In context and as elicited. To that end I wonder if it wouldn't be money better spent for language documentation and benefit to the academy, if organizations funding language documentation research for the academy would rather fund the collection of audio texts and video texts of data already described in grammars. In a way provide the support that modern grammars should have.
That is, I find that often the state of grammars about languages (often about African languages) are so fraught with errors, or jaded with theoretical disposition, that it would be immensely helpful if these grammars were supported with audio texts. It seems that the focus on small, often dying, languages, requiring an impetus of "adequate" endangerment for funding, shows a predisposition to try and collect specimens of some exotic language. While the collection of rare specimens is good in some sense, it is not always the most gentrifying for the language speakers, nor is it really the most helpful for academic pursuits.


text:
Wednesday's comic round-up gives us Richard Corben drawing Hellboy, some newly reprinted 2000 AD work from Gorillaz maven Jamie Hewlett, and the Scott Pilgrim boxed set. A motley crew if ever there was one!
One big reason to get excited this week is Mike Mignola and Heavy Metal illustrator Richard Corben's Hellboy: Double Feature of Evil (Dark Horse). Mignola has been punching out some strong Hellboy one-shots as of late (such as the Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson team-up with Beasts of Burden), so this should be equally entertaining. Over at Marvel, another big crimson fellow, the Red Hulk, joins the Avengers in Avengers 7, and some deceased Earth's Mightiest Heroes' (paging all Dr. Druid fans) make a comeback in Chaos War: Dead Avengers 1 (Marvel). Also, the 64-page Heroic Age: Villains 1 (Marvel) should fill you in on the vagaries of Marvel's bad guys.
There's a reprinting of Peter Milligan and Ted McKeever's 1993 espionage-and-sex-clubs miniseries The Extremist (DC/Vertigo). IDW's got a duo of titles from high-profile prose authors — first off is George R.R. Martin's Doorways which is about transdimensional portal traveling. There's also a new issue of Harlan Ellison's Phoenix Without Ashes 4 (IDW).
Apple MacBook Air Laptop
Powerful performance
The M1 chip delivers 3.5x faster performance than the previous generation all while using way less power. Get up to 18 hours of battery life.
Kelly Sue DeConnick and Warren Ellis tackle the Marvel Universe's most notorious sociopath in Osborn 1 (Marvel), and Araña takes over the Spider-Girl mantle in the aptly titled Spider-Girl 1 (Marvel). If DC's Bat-books are more your taste, Grant Morrison's Batman Inc. begins this week, as does Tony Daniel's run on Batman. We also see a White Lantern Batman in Brightest Day 14, and DC Comics Presents: Batman 2 reprints some of Ed Brubaker's lesser known Bat-adventures.
There's a hodgpodge of graphic novels this week that look interesting. Grant Morrison tackles the Sankrit epic Mahabharata in 18 Days (Dynamite), and there's reprints of 1982's Legion's Great Darkness saga by Paul Levitz, Tony Millionaire's collection of Little Maakies on the Prairie (Fantagraphics), the surrealist 2000 AD trade paperback Hewligan's Haircut (Rebellion, below) by Peter Milligan and Jamie Hewlett, and Pat Mills Sláine (Rebellion), a 2000 AD series that was pure swords-and-loincloths.
Other eclectic fare includes the Scott Pilgrim boxed set (Oni), which collects every one of Bryan Lee O'Malley's SP books, a reprint of classic horror mag Eerie Volume 5 (Dark Horse), and a collection of cartoonist Jason's tales in What I Did (Fantagraphics). As usual, here's the list of everything being released to comic stores tomorrow, and you can find your nearest comic retailer here. Happy reading, gang!


text:
Our baluster and newel patterns were
designed to be used in a variety of applications. On most
designs we can alter the height of the squares or turned
area to suit your taste or assembly requirements.
Balusters are available in any size you
want. You can choose from squaretop or pintop balusters, as shown in the photo. The examples that follow range from 1-5/8 to 5-1/2
inches square and from 20- to 36-inches tall. Newels shown
are 5-1/2 inches square and 48- or 53-inches tall.
Newels come with the newel caps shown
in the illustrations. However, you can specify a different newel
cap design, either from our designs or as a custom design. If you specify the top square height on newel
posts we can ease the top corners for you, making a nicer
transition from post to cap. Interested in custom design?
Just give us a call, we'd be happy to work with you.
Click for details on baluster spacing and installation
| Wood Turning
| About Wood Turning | Craftsmanship | Wood Catalog | Price Guide | Custom Wood Work |
| Order | FAQ's | Contact US
| Architectural Wood
Products | Site Map |
Copyright � 2005-Pagliacco. All rights
P.O. Box 225, Woodacre, CA
94973-0229 415-488-4333 415-488-9372 fax


text:
Back in mid-2012, for four minutes and six seconds, I thought the coolest big-budget video game I'd seen in years didn't have guns. I was wrong.
I don't mind guns in games. I mean, I don't want them in my Zeldas or my Donkey Kongs, but guns can be fun in plenty of others: from Borderlands and BioShock to Bastion and Bulletstorm.
I understand what guns can do in games. I believe that they are great at connecting one player to another player or one player to a computer-controlled character. I appreciate how they let me have an impact on another player—or a character in the digital world—in the simplest my-pixels-negating-your-pixels kind of way. For better or worse, shooting a gun in a game is still the purest—and easiest—way to feel that a video game is interactive. The people who make games know this. They've known this since before Space Invaders. It is one of the reasons why shooting in games works so well.
There's something disappointing about guns in games. There's something disappointing about how the presence of guns often brings in an entourage of tiresome, dreary tropes: the badass hero, the glory of obliteration, the expression of excellence and power through the shooting of someone else.
Think about it.
Think about what having a gun in a game usually means.
Having a gun in a game seldom means that one shot gets fired. It means that thousands do. It means that, when we play in these gun-filled game worlds, we live in places where our heroes are merciless, where we/they aim for the head, where everyone we see is defined, at first glance as 1) a person to shoot or 2) a person to spare. There's a heat to these worlds and a hostility. These gun-filled game worlds feel cynical, angry and, worst, reduced. So little feels possible. When two people see each other in these worlds, most likely, one will shoot the other to death.
It's not always a problem to have a video game world where shooting is pretty much all that you do. It's often all that a game needs. It works for Halo. It works for the kind of adventures they make for Call of Duty. It works when the enemies are zombies or Nazis or other players with guns. It works for simple worlds where there is no complicated story to tell or anyone interesting to meet.
And in the more interesting game worlds? Maybe we can find an Ellie or an Alyx or an Elizabeth in one of these gun-filled game places. Maybe we can find a computer-controlled character who is there for us to talk to or hang out with, a character who is programmed to help generate feelings other than fear or anger or vengefulness or superiority or whatever it is you experience when you look back at a lawn you just mowed.
If we cock our head and think about how these gun-filled game worlds are made, we'll recognize how much harder it always seems to be for game makers to make that one character we can sort of talk to or emote with than it is to make all those characters we can just fill with lead. Guns and shooting... they're the easy path.
So, really, I get that games often need to have guns. Again: interactivity. But all that baggage they come with? All of that kill-or-be-killed hostility they bring to their gaming worlds? It feels so limiting.
Back on June 4, 2012, however, I experienced those four wonderful minutes. For four minutes I thought I was seeing a game world that would normally have guns in it but for some excellent reason didn't. Or maybe it did but it wasn't contaminated by them.
For four minutes I thought I was seeing a wonderful, gun-free expansion of ways to interact with people and things in a video game city. There were four minutes of so many possibilities. Maybe, just maybe, no guns were needed for this new game to seem appealing and for the game to be fun.
Let's go back to those four minutes and what everyone who was watching Ubisoft's E3 2012 press conference saw displayed on a massive screen.
At first, I didn't know what this new game was:
This wasn't a new Assassin's Creed or Far Cry. What could it be? Some Tom Clancy thing?
It probably wasn't a racing game. It didn't seem like a first-person shooter.
I saw this guy. And I saw the first sign of interactivity. He didn't pull a gun. Instead, we got a circle of options. Trains? Cars? Hacking? What could we do in this world?
What kind of people were we going to be meeting here? How would be interacting with them?
And why wasn't there any shooting?
But four minutes in, we got a gun.
Of course we got a gun.
At least our hero didn't shoot the gun right away. Instead, he hacked...
He disarmed the bad guys...
He shut off traffic lights using his phone!
I was loving this. It felt so fresh.
Seconds later...
And this...
It was a shooting game, after all. So much for that. The game still did look pretty cool.
That was two years ago.
Like many other gamers, I've been eager for Watch Dogs to come out. I've been looking forward to it and am eager to finally play through it this May.
I'm excited to play an open-world game starring a hacker who can use his phone to raise drawbridges during a police chase and who can snoop through webcams to gather important information. Watch Dogs seems modern and unsettling, fertile and relevant—an interactive adventure tuned to the age of Edward Snowden, the NSA and urban terrorists who use phones to set off bombs.
I've seen a pre-release version of the game a couple of times and, each time, I've been excited about the Watch Dogs' potential to be a Grand Theft Auto of hacking. I've been disheartened whenever it devolves, before my eyes, into an open-world shooter, a Grand Theft Auto of guns. We already have that. I've already played and enjoyed that.
Each time I see Watch Dogs, I can't help but think about what I briefly thought the game was going to be. I remember how broader my expectations were, how excited I was to interact with a gritty urban video game metropolis with something other than a gun as my primary tool to touch a virtual world.
Yesterday, the makers and marketers of Watch Dogs released a new trailer for the game. They also gave some interviews. The game's producer told a colleague that the heart of the game is still hacking.
Hacking has always been our core focus. We always made sure that most of our missions could be done through hacking and stealth. Obviously you can always take a violent approach if that's the way you want to do it. There are a lot of gamers who want to play with a very aggressive approach, who want to rush in guns-blazing. And when they did that hacking, became less useful. Especially if you were on the ground. If you weren't in cars, for example, or traveling through the city. We had a lot of ideas for that. Some were there and sometimes we just needed little hooks to connect certain systems together. We did that in a couple of weeks and all of a sudden we saw the best players were now the ones who could mix combat with hacking.
But again the game teeters. It tips and tilts under the weight of those guns and their baggage. One gun leads to many guns. Shots fired everywhere in a city of nastiness and hostility.
Look at the scenes from the new trailer. What do they tell you? They tell you that you are a hacker, that your daughter was killed, that you are angry and that you are not necessarily a nice person in this game. You will defend yourself.
But why isn't one shot enough?
Is it cooler to shoot twice? More exciting? More badass?
Isn't a phone a more interesting weapon?
Isn't a phone more interesting, for once in a game, than a gun?
This is the Watch Dogs that excites me...
This is the one that feels liberated from the same-old, same-old ways of video game gun violence...
The Watch Dogs trailer nearly ends with this...
I'd be thrilled if it really did end there. I can black out a skyscraper? I think I'm sold!
But the makers or the marketers behind Watch Dogs decided that that wasn't exciting enough. You can do that in a video game? Sure, the trailer seems to say. The trailer won't leave you with that. There's a final image to show, a piece of punctuation.
The trailer ends with this...
To contact the author of this post, write to email@example.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo.


text:
The Hottest Ticket in Town: the Blue Jays Home Opener
|Image courtesy of Peaceful Pixel
For a team that was heavily scrutinized for failing to make a big splash in the free agent market, they certainly know how to sell tickets to their Home Opener.
The Blue Jays may not have signed a flashy big name free agent this off-season, and yet interest in the club is higher than it has been in years. Subsequently, trying to find a seat to the Home Opener has suddenly become the hottest ticket in town.
This coming off the heels of news that the Blue Jays Home Opener sold out in a mere 90 minutes after single game tickets went on sale. One might wonder how 48,000 tickets could go that quickly, but truth be told there was only around 6,000 tickets or so available once 10am hit last Friday.
In speaking with my Blue Jays ticket rep, he informed me last Wednesday that there were already 42,500 sold for the Home Opener. And even as early as February 8th, there were 30,000 tickets sold. So it only seemed like it was only a matter of time before the Home Opener sold out.
With the bevvy of pre-sales prior to the official single game ticket sale date, there really weren't all that many tickets available anyway. Most of them had been snatched up by season ticket holders, flex pack holders, and 20-game ticket purchasers.
Just for a frame of reference, last year's Home Opener didn't officially sell out until March 23rd. This year, all the tickets were gone on February 17th; a mere 90 minutes after they went on sale.
In the past, one could probably very easily find a ticket to the Home Opener in the days leading up to the first game of the season at the Rogers Centre. Now, you might have to spend upwards of $118 dollars on StubHub just to get yourself a 500 level ticket to the Home Opener.
What can this sudden surge of interest be attributed to? While other teams like the Los Angeles Angels are boasting increased ticket sales to the signing of free agents like Albert Pujols, the Blue Jays don't quite have that same luxury.
For a team that has been criticized for not being more active in the free agent market this off-season, the Blue Jays have definitely been able to cultivate a flurry of interest with their fans.
Sure, one could take the cynical outlook and focus on the inevitable attendance drop-off following the Home Opener. There's no question that the dome will probably only have half the amount of fans on April 10th compared to April 9th, but I think the Home Opener sellout is a very good sign of things to come.
The club may have had a bit of difficulty managing fan expectations this off-season, but one thing the Blue Jays did very well is they managed to get folks talking about the team.
The new uniform unveiling in November, combined with being linked to numerous free agents has helped the team remain at the forefront of people's minds. Those are just a few ways the Jays have been newsmakers in what can seem like an extremely length off-season.
The second consecutive year of the Blue Jays Winter Tour helped create some top of mind awareness during the cold winter months. A very active roster of Blue Jays player Twitter accounts was another way the club was able to remain interactive with fans.
A great deal of the press the Blue Jays received may have been negative this winter, but in a city where you have to battle with three other professional sports teams, I guess any publicity is good publicity.
It's a definitely a great sign when people are talking about the Blue Jays in the middle of February.
Toronto is arguably a hockey town, but if things keep progressing the way they have been these past few years, it won't be long before baseball is the talk of the town once again.
Thanks to Peaceful Pixel for the picture from the 2011 Blue Jays Home Opener


text:
With the support of your generous donations and grants, MCC used $16.9 million to help Haitians recover from the earthquake that devastated the capital of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas on Jan. 12, 2010.
After addressing urgent needs, we focused on repairing and building houses (pictured), strengthening opportunities for jobs and education and supporting Haitians who are advocating for their rights to safe housing.
We prioritized projects that addressed root causes of the excessive devastation -- unsafe building practices and overcrowding in the capital.
Too many people lived in Port-au-Prince because they didn't have opportunities for jobs and education in the rural areas. Therefore, much of our response in the past five years was done outside of the capital so that people can support themselves in their home communities.
Nearly $2 million more will be spent on earthquake response projects in 2015 and beyond.


text:
I'm grinding my teeth. I had no idea that I was doing it until my last check up at the dentist. She simply said: "Oh I can see your teeth are pretty worn down. Looks like you're grinding at night. Probably stress." A quick shrug, and on she went with her dental cleansing procedures.
While I was still chewing on what she had just said, as an afterthought, she casually added: "Might be worth looking into getting a teeth guard. Many people have one."
I couldn't talk with all the tools in my mouth, so I had time to think. And the longer I thought, the more I felt there was something really, really wrong with this conversation.
Of course I was getting worried about my teeth. But that's just on a personal level. From a broader perspective, what does it mean if dentists look at worn down teeth, shrugging, brushing it all off? Is it considered "normal" that we're creating self-destructive habits to cope with the grinding stress of our gadget addicted, 21st century lifestyle?
The conversation at my dentist reminded me of the book "A life worth breathing" by Max Strom. Over decades he has been working with people who try to heal themselves through yoga and has come across some who have to spend several minutes every morning on "unlocking their jaw": they wake up with their jaw muscles so tense that they are simply unable to eat or drink!
It was one of those reading moments where you'd just think "come on, really?" – but my dentist's reaction is proof that we're talking about a trend (or disease, if you like) that's clearly coming towards us like a massive wave. (I've heard of conversations between managers where you're being looked upon with suspicion if you don't already have a teeth guard. I mean, come on, your job isn't stressful – implication: important – or what?…)
But it doesn't stop here. The truly worrying bit is this: The proposed way of fixing the problem is inserting a piece of rubber into your mouth that stops you from grinding your teeth. It's similar to what they do with horses who swallow air because they're terribly bored in their tiny shoebox-sized stables: Tying a band around their neck that prevents them from doing it.
But what happens next? Exactly, they resort to things like continuously swinging their head from side to side. For us humans, there are ample opportunities to engage in similar things, among them biting nails, chewing on pens, twisting or pulling out hair – the possibilities are endless.
It feels like instead of asking ourselves how we can manage our stress we actually manage the symptoms.
I've decided that a good starting point is increasing the time I sit in meditation. As the saying goes:
If you have time, sit for 20 minutes every day. If you don't have time, sit for one hour.
What are the signs telling you that life has been too stressful recently? And what are your strategies to cope?
Wishing you a stressless, relaxing weekend,
~ Andrea
Categories: Happiness, Inspiration, Nourish Body & Mind, Trends, Yoga


text:
Three Dimensional
Pay now or in 4 installments of 341,25 €
Yes, we do ship worldwide!In European Union we ship via TNT / FedEx courier. It usually takes 5-7 days to deliver your painting right to your door. All packages are shipped with tracking number and full insurance. We've already shipped to almost every country in EU, so please email us if you have any questions!
We ship worldwide via TNT / FedEx. Shipping takes about two weeks or a bit more, depending on how far away from Europe you are. All paintings are insured and shipped in tracked packages. If you are sending a painting outside the European Union, your country may charge an additional import tax. In this case, the recipient is responsible for paying it. We've already shipped paintings to most countries worldwide. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us!
We accept returns! Our main goal is for you to be happy with the purchase. Goods can be returned within 30 days of their receipt and delivery. Even more! Since painting that you are buying will stay with you for a long time, we are accepting most returns even after 30 day period.
Please contact us if you want to return a painting - we will help to find the best solution for shipping and handling the return!
acrylic on canvas
Width: 60 cm
The artist Gintas Banys in his paintings usually depicts human, his emotional states, relationships with the contemporary environment and surrounding events. Each painting - is a reflection of the moment, caught mood. In authors' opinion, exactly the eyes usually are the main accent in the artwork, which help to reveal the painting idea.


text:
About Weleda
Weleda represents the true harmony of humanity with nature. Its wide range of certified natural cosmetics helps to improve, restore and maintain people's health. They contribute to physical wellbeing and support personal development.
Weleda was founded in 1921 as a pharmaceutical laboratory with its own medicinal plant garden. It gradually developed into a globally successful health and beauty company which is now represented in over 50 countries. All Weleda products are manufactured exclusively using natural ingredients without artificial preservatives. In the vast majority of cases the raw materials are obtained from organic sources.
Weleda shampoos, targeted skin care and Weleda baby products are therefore highly effective yet gentle, as well as representing a path to a more harmonious lifestyle. Weleda cosmetics mean real love and respect for nature.


text:
The province recorded an average of 20 COVID-19 cases each day since Friday, health officials said in a Monday (July 13) news release.
B.C. recorded 21 cases on Saturday, 20 cases on Sunday and another 21 as of Monday, Health Minister Adrian Dix and Dr. Bonnie Henry said in a joint statement. The 62 new cases bring B.C.'s total number of test positive cases to 3,115, of which 208 are active. Of the active cases, 14 people are hospitalized and five are in ICU.
Two more people have died, both in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, bringing the virus's death toll in B.C. to 189.
"Until a vaccine or effective treatment is available, our focus is to keep new cases low and slow," officials said. "And to do this, all of us need to do our part, to show kindness and patience with those around us and take precautions to protect each other.
Officials reiterated that community exposure events are continuing to occur, including multiple recent events in Kelowna from the end of June into the first week of July.
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Want to support local journalism during the pandemic? Make a donation here.


text:
We've gone multi-media at Sku's Recent Eats. That's right, we have a new YouTube Channel. Sku's Whiskey Minute, on YouTube, features short videos with very basic whiskey information. So far, we have videos up discussing whiskey, Scotch, Bourbon, Tennessee Whiskey and how to drink whiskey.
Check it out and let me know what you think.
Next week we pick back up with our Speyside tastings. Still to come in no particular order: Linkwood, Longmorn, BenRiach and Glenrothes.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Whiskey Wednesday: Sku's Whiskey Minute Hits the Airwaves
3 comments:
Congrats on going on the air!
- May 14, 2008 at 1:36 PM
Great stuff! How about an episode about rye?
- May 19, 2008 at 9:53 AM
- sku said...
Thanks Raven and Blake.
Blake, great idea. If you read my Whiskey Wednesdays you know I love rye. I'll put that one in the hopper.
- May 19, 2008 at 2:58 PM
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
Part III
Part I dealt with guns and the Second Amendment. Part II dealt mainly with the First Amendment. This Part III looks at the origins and purposes of the Bill of Rights and questions the direction in which our nation is headed.
The Bill of Rights in general
When the Constitution was being considered there was opposition to inclusion of any Bill of Rights and the Bill of Rights as we now know it — the First through Tenth Amendments — was added not long after the Constitution had been adopted.
The Founders' indifference toward a bill of rights in the national Constitution was premised on the idea that it would not be practically useful. The experience of the states in the 1780s demonstrated that bills of rights, though suitable for theoretical treatises, imposed no effective restraints on those who would be responsible for protecting rights in practice. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 84, the provisions of the various state bills of rights "would sound much better in a treatise of ethics than in a constitution of government."[1] Benjamin Rush similarly stated that those states which had tried to secure their liberties with a bill of rights had "encumbered their constitutions with that idle and superfluous instrument."[2] The Founders at the Convention believed that a bill of rights would be merely another "parchment barrier" incapable of restraining those who would seek to violate its provisions, and thus it would fail to provide true security for liberty. (Emphasis added,)
"Mere parchment barrier" is a good phrase and we should keep it in mind, particularly but not exclusively with reference to the Second Amendment. Unfortunately but with substantial justification, the Constitution as a whole seems to have become, or at least to be on the way to becoming, a porous "parchment barrier."
There was also concern that since not all rights of the people could be encompassed within a Bill of Rights, adopting such a bill might imply that only the rights expressly mentioned in it were intended to be retained by the people.
To suggest, for example, that the liberty of the press is not to be infringed upon might imply that, without such a provision, the federal government would possess that power. The Founders feared that we might infer that they created a government with unlimited power and that the specific provisions in the Bill of Rights denote particular reservations of power from an otherwise unlimited government. (Emphasis added.)
In view of the ways in which the original Constitution (i.e., sans the Amendments) — the Commerce Clause of Article I, Section 8 for example — has been interpreted, those fears seem prescient, see below on New Deal legislation and its interpretations. Unfortunately, the various amendments did little to temper interpretations toward increasing power for the Federal Government and therefore less for the people.
The Ninth Amendment addresses such concerns as follows:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
The Tenth Amendment importantly provides,
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. (Emphasis added.)
In drafting what became the first ten amendments, James Madison
pointed back to the Declaration of Independence as the philosophic statement of rights and first principles; the amendments were not intended to replace or revise what had been set forth in that document. Therefore, the amendments should not be construed as enlarging the grant of power to the federal government by the Constitution, nor could they be thought to serve as a sufficient definition of all the rights and privileges of citizens. (Emphasis added.)
These points illustrate the crucial importance of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Those amendments were drafted and ratified to prevent the Constitution from becoming a carte blanche of authority to an unlimited government. Neglect of these amendments by the public as well as the courts has been so conspicuous as to illustrate the force of the Federalists' original objections to a bill of rights. Yet for Madison, these amendments were central. They were intended to prevent the false interpretations that might be placed upon the provisions enumerating powers in the Constitution. (Emphasis added.)
The Declaration of Independence was not self-executing and neither is the Bill of Rights. Nor is it dependent upon governments alone to guarantee or to respect it; indeed, governments are the only possible culprits in violating not only the Bill of Rights but the rest of the Constitution. The Constitution authorizes the Federal Government to do various things and only those things. The Bill of Rights attempted to guarantee that the Federal Government would not exceed the authority granted to it and specified some but not all of the rights of the people that the Government
can may not violate. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments generally extended the prohibition against Federal violation of the rights of the people to the States as well. No person, acting solely in his private capacity, can violate the Constitution; private citizens have only the ability to violate laws promulgated in alleged conformity to it.
The safeguard of individual liberty, Madison reasoned, must lie with the people themselves. It is the people who must be responsible for defending their liberties. And a bill of rights, Madison and his colleagues finally concluded, might support public understanding and knowledge of individual liberty that would assist citizens in the task of defending their liberties. (Emphasis added.)
The Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court.
The times they are a changin
If the people are unable to defend their liberties, who is likely to do it for them? The Legislature or the Executive Branch? I wouldn't count on it. The Courts, maybe, but only if requested by someone directly affected by a particular loss of liberty or property who therefore has the requisite standing. In addition, prosecuting or defending a case up to and through the Supreme Court is costly and can take years.
A bill of rights, they saw, could serve the noble purpose of public education and edification. As Madison confided to Jefferson, "The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government, and as they become incorporated with the national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion."[12] (Emphasis added.)
Where has that national sentiment gone? Has it "gone with the wind?" Will it ever return?
Does the possession and use of firearms, as guaranteed by the Second Amendment, no longer rank among the possible methods (and one hopes last resort) by which "the people who must be responsible for defending their liberties" may do so? That is a legitimate concern and Part I attempts to deal with it. Without the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, we would appear to be left with little more than what the founders referred to as "parchment barriers." That was not the intention and would be contrary to it. However, it may be well on the way to becoming the practice.
Where do these principles mean?
I submit that they mean the following.
1. The rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are pre-existing. They can be withdrawn only by subsequent amendment of the Constitution pursuant to Article V (see Part II of this series). Neither legislative action, nor bureaucratic action pursuant to broadly granted discretionary powers, nor judicial fiat can be permitted to impair those rights. Sometimes it happens anyway. Have we only a porous "parchment barrier?"
2. Other rights not expressly stated in the Constitution can properly be inferred from what it meant when adopted or amended. They can not be based on what popular sentiment may now or hereafter suggest should be granted. Nor can they be inferred from the Constitution if inconsistent with its specific or implied provisions that have not been amended pursuant to Article V.
3. Rights that are neither expressly stated in the Constitution nor properly inferred from it can be granted legitimately by statute, but only if rights expressly stated in the Constitution or properly inferred from it are not thereby infringed. This suggests that in most cases the rights that can properly be granted by statute are against only the Government, thereby limiting its own constitutionally granted prerogatives. Government has no authority other than as granted by the Constitution and it can presumably waive that. Rights against the Government legitimately granted only by statute can thereafter be abrogated by subsequent statute. The rights of the people, however, are extensive. They are pre-existing and no mere statute can legitimately waive any of them.
4. Statutory grants of rights, as indicated in #3 above, that infringe upon the constitutional rights of the people can be permitted only following the adoption of amendments to the Constitution pursuant to Article V. (See Part II.)
Popular opinions on the proper functions of State and Federal governments have changed over the years. Through various amendments pursuant to Article V, the Constitution itself has changed responsively. Unfortunately, it has also changed in response to popular sentiment, as reflected in statutes and in judicial interpretations, in disregard of the exclusivity of Article V.
Judges are not, and should not act as though they were, legislators. The consequences of judicial "activism" of that sort have commonly been unfortunate breaches of the "parchment barrier." For example, many New Deal era and later interpretations of the Commerce Clause of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution have distended it beyond recognition, certainly by its authors and by those who approved its adoption. The results of that distention have usually been to increase governmental power, at the expense of the freedoms of the people. Some of those interpretations followed FDR's threats to "pack" the Court. Ultimately, he found it unnecessary to do that.
The legislation was unveiled on February 5, 1937 and was the subject, on March 9, 1937, of one of Roosevelt's Fireside chats.[5][6] Shortly after the radio address, on March 29, the Supreme Court published its opinion upholding a Washington state minimum wage law in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish[7] by a 5–4 ruling, after Associate Justice Owen Roberts had joined with the wing of the bench more sympathetic to the New Deal. Since Roberts had previously ruled against most New Deal legislation, his perceived about-face was widely interpreted by contemporaries as an effort to maintain the Court's judicial independence by alleviating the political pressure to create a court more friendly to the New Deal. His move came to be known as "the switch in time that saved nine." However, since Roberts's decision and vote in the Parrish case predated the introduction of the 1937 bill,[8] this interpretation has been called into question.[9]
Roosevelt's initiative ultimately failed due to adverse public opinion, the retirement of one Supreme Court Justice, and the unexpected and sudden death of the legislation's U.S. Senate champion: Senate Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson. It exposed the limits of Roosevelt's abilities to push forward legislation through direct public appeal and, in contrast to the tenor of his public presentations of his first-term, was seen as political maneuvering.[10][11] Although circumstances ultimately allowed Roosevelt to prevail in establishing a majority on the court friendly to his New Deal agenda, some scholars have concluded that the President's victory was a pyrrhic one.[11]
Since the courts normally construe the Constitution in light of precedent, their own or that of higher courts, the locomotive of constitutional abrogation — rolling along tracks of convenient interpretation — continues to run along those same tracks while gaining momentum as it has for many years. I am concerned that changes in the composition of the Supreme Court and of inferior courts during President Obama's second term in office are likely to add more fuel to the firebox beneath the locomotive's boiler and bring even more of that. When will we learn the rest of the story? Before or after it has become too late to do anything about it?
I was not happy with his "first coming" and expect the consequences of his second to be far worse. Will we soon arrive at the point where because "the people" want something and "the Government can" provide it, it will?
Not if the people think about it, but that is a gigantic "if."
In that video, Mr. Whittle seems more optimistic than I am. I hope that he is right and that I am wrong. However, this slightly newer video suggests that his frustration, if not his pessimism, may be rising as his optimism wanes. Mine too.


text:
While falling snowfall is generally a marvelous sight to behold, it's an entirely distinct ballgame if it actually starts to build upon your own driveway and yard and kind of a hill of bright white that may cause vacation difficulties and remove headaches. That is why snowfall removal providers are probably the most sought-after solutions that can come during the winter season.
Some may choose to do the work of getting rid of snowfall by themselves, others, however, choose to have their fingers off this laborious subject and engage a licensed contractor instead. But precisely what enters into selecting snow removing service? Below are a few essential points to consider when deciding on a business to offer you a snow elimination service.
Choose smartly, choose a reliable firm
Nothing's more serious than paying upfront for the snowfall elimination assistance and after that getting stuck with a licensed contractor that doesn't show up to accomplish the things you paid out them for. In order to prevent stepping into this predicament, it is prudent to choose a snow elimination company that is respected and is considered reliable.
Getting a reliable snowfall removing contractor would involve not just getting the classifieds and randomly deciding on a business. In printing, these businesses all seem to be identical, so go the extra mile. Talk to family and friends, loved ones, and affiliates and request advice on a great snowfall eradication service. Chances are, you're going to get an opinion from a handful of organizations, in addition to their testimonies will be reputable particularly when they on their own have seen availing of these companies' professional services and were satisfied with the outcome.
An alternate way to validate which clients are indeed reputable is actually by examining together with your neighborhood Better business bureau or Much better Company Bureau. The BBB accredits businesses inside the range of the region they support and monitors these businesses for adherence to particular specifications of quality and quality. Some snow eradication businesses get great reviews from the Better business bureau, while many get mostly issues from buyers on their own. By checking with the BBB, you'll discover which snowfall removal businesses you can examine and which you should definitely keep away from.
Once you have testimonials and explore critiques, develop a listing of companies you want to communicate with to ask about their providers. Prevent determining immediately or picking a brand off that listing with the reasoning that since they're the best of the bunch all of them are possibly the same.
A greater move is usually to the material. Speak with a few of these businesses and get to know what they are selling of course, if they meet your needs plus your price range. Be specific regarding your requirements when you ask and make sure that you find out this essential information regarding the business and its solutions:
1. Find out about their liability insurance.AndnbspYou wants to know should be insured for charges associated with property problems.
2. Get published quotes.AndnbspThe cheapest building contractors usually do not always offer the finest professional services, so talk to them about their solutions and their related service fees.
3. Get information regarding their charging your plan.AndnbspHow are you going to pay for the services they give? Will they agree to monthly installments, for every check-out repayment or by the time of year repayments? Have they got discount rates or campaigns? What is their reimbursement coverage if support was not offered?
4. Ask for important information regarding their professional services, like what kind of products they already have and exactly how numerous, the volume of personnel they employ, how many times they may come around to get rid of snowfall, and how they can be contacted.
Buy it on paper
Once you've gathered each of the important info, you can now pick the business that you just consider greatest matches your requirements. Right after you've made your selection identified, make certain you have a created commitment with all the specifics presented clearly for functions to consent to. Make sure that the drafted commitment is really what the two of you arranged on, so read it thoroughly before you sign about the dotted range.
Inspired by: ezinearticles


text:
YASKAWA A1000 – First choice for offshore and ship usage
The A1000 Series frequency inverters from YASKAWA are suitable for drive solutions in marine applications. Vibrations, heat and humidity which are common conditions on board of ships coupled with the necessity of ultimate reliability are demanding technical requirements. Here, the A1000 inverter is in it's element. Robust design and many clever functionalities make this inverter to the means of choice for drives in marine.
- Standard devices are certified for marine applications (Germanischer Lloyd, more possible)
- Substantial energy savings and thereby fuel savings compared to unregulated drives
- High flexibility in drive dimensioning
- High efficiency
- Easy adaption to any motor and application
- Proven YASKAWA reliability and durability Worldwide availability and service


text:
We are thus not only the first country in the world with the capability to produce nuclear weapons that chose not to do so, we are also the first nuclear armed country to have chosen to divest itself of nuclear weapons.
Pierre Trudeau United Nations, 26 May 1978
From 1963 to 1984, US nuclear warheads armed Canadian weapons systems in both Canada and West Germany. It is likely that during the early part of this period, the Canadian military was putting more effort, money, and manpower into the nuclear commitment than any other single activity. This important book is an operational-technical history and expos of this period.
Its purpose is to bring together until-recently secret information about the nature of the nuclear arsenal in Canada, and combine it with known information about the systems in the US nuclear arsenal. The work begins with an account of the efforts of the Pearson government to sign the agreement with the US necessary to bring nuclear weapons to Canada. Subsequent chapters provide a detailed discussion of the four nuclear weapons systems deployed by Canada: the BOMARC surface-to-air guided interceptor missile; the Honest John short range battlefield rocket; the Starfighter tactical thermonuclear bomber; the VooDoo-Genie air defence system. Each chapter also includes a section on the accidents and incidents which occurred while the weapons were at Canadian sites. The final chapter covers the ultimately futile efforts of the Maritime Air Command and the Royal Canadian Navy to acquire nuclear weapons. An appendix includes the text of the until-now secret agreements Canada signed with the USA for the provision of nuclear weapons.
Illustrated throughout with photographs and diagrams, and supported by extensive transcriptions of original documents, Canadian Nuclear Weapons will be of great value both to scholars and interested laypersons in its presentation of what has been a deeply hidden secret of Canadian political and military history.
- Publisher: Dundurn Press
- Publish Date: February 1998
- Dimensions: 11.02 x 8.5 x 0.04 inches
- Page Count: 400


text:
Judge for yourself. Someone claims to have written a driver for the Kinect's motor, and he's extracted a Kinect's-eye view of what players look like to the device (above).
A while back we had a series of monochromatic shots animated together, showing you how the Kinect recognizes players. This gives you a better view of it. Below, you can see NUI Group user AlexP controlling the Kinect's motor.
Forum commenters at Adafruit, offering the $2,000 bounty for hacking the device, speculate that controlling the camera's motor is perhaps the easiest feat in hacking the Kinect. The skeletal imaging is pretty cool, but reading the terms of Adafruit's bounty, it sounds like just seeing what the device sees doesn't win the challenge. But it's probably a step along the way.
Did This Person Just Win The Open Kinect Prize? [Adafruit via Gizmodo]


text:
JEvents v3.1.8 Stable Copyright © 2006-2013
Péter L. Erdős (Rényi Institute, Budapest): How to sample scale-free degree sequence's realizations uniformly and fast
Because of the important roles of the Internet and social networks in modern society, much attention has been paid to analyzing graphs with real-world network properties. One of the most prominent traits of many real-world networks is that their degree distribution follows the so-called power-law, usually with parameter \gamma between 2 and 3. Graphs with such degree distributions are sparse but have vertices with very large degrees.
There are peculiarly few available methods to sample the realizations of exact degree distribution uniformly. One of them a newly developed exact uniform sampler by Gao and Wormald (SODA, 2018), based on the configuration model. This works when the parameter \gamma is > 2.8810. Another approach is a newly developed version of the switch Markov chains, which suitable to sample power-law degree sequences with parameter \gamma >2.
|Location : Bolyai Intézet, I. emelet, Riesz terem, Aradi Vértanúk tere 1., Szeged
JEvents v3.1.8 Stable Copyright © 2006-2013


text:
Sheriff's Office: Hip-Hop Concert Promotion Was a Scam
WINTER HAVEN | Polk County sheriff's undercover detectives Monday arrested a Lakeland couple who are accused of taking $36,000 in investments from three local residents for a Nicki Minaj and Drake concert that was supposed to take place Oct. 24 in Winter Haven.
According to detectives, the whole thing was a scam.
Deputies said Phillip Bradley, 46, and Evelyn Bradley, 36, who have been renting a house on Coral Way in Lakeland, are being charged with scheming to defraud and grand theft, among other charges.
According to their arrest affidavits, Phillip Bradley's business agreed to rent out Simmers-Young Park for a concert featuring Nicki Minaj and Drake, two hip-hop artists who have become very popular in recent years.
The agreement included rental of a portable stage, generators and stage skirting. Bradley advertised the concert on his website, www.mrdonpconcerts.us, and on Facebook, the affidavit said.
The Sheriff's Office said an undercover detective, posing as a parks and recreation employee, met with Phillip and Evelyn Bradley to do a walk-through of the venue and discuss the concert. Phillip Bradley told the detective that he was personally in contact with the management companies of both performers, and even inquired about hiring off-duty sheriff's deputies for security. He told the detective he intended to sell at least 10,000 tickets.
Sheriff's spokeswoman Carrie Eleazer said neither performer's management company had heard of Phillip Bradley or his business, Big Apple Music Inc.
An undercover detective called the number listed for ticket sales and was told that the concert was sold out, and that tickets would be sold the day of the concert for $100, but on the day of the concert, no one showed up, the Sheriff's Office said.
Sheriff's detectives located three people who invested money with Bradley for the concert. One investor gave Bradley $16,000 and the other two invested $10,000 each. According to deputies, the money was deposited into Evelyn Bradley's bank accounts.
The day before the concert was scheduled to take place, Phillip Bradley told the investors the concert had been canceled and that he was filing an insurance claim with Lloyd's of London to get their investments back. None of the victims have received money from Bradley, an affidavit said.
Phillip Bradley is being charged with scheming to defraud, grand theft of more than $100,000, and unlawful use of two-way communication. Evelyn Bradley is being charged with scheming to defraud and grand theft of more than $20,000.
Both of the Bradleys were booked into the Polk County Jail on Monday afternoon.
[ Clifford Parody can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com or 863-802-7516. ]


text:
Lower Back Pain
What is lower back pain?
Lower back pain can range from mild, dull, annoying pain, to persistent, severe, disabling pain in the lower back. Pain in the lower back can restrict mobility and interfere with normal functioning.
What causes lower back pain?
The exact cause of lower back pain can be difficult to determine. In most cases, back pain may be a symptom of many different causes, including any or several of the following:
- Overuse, strenuous activity, or improper use (such as repetitive or heavy lifting, exposure to vibration for prolonged periods of time)
- Injury
- Degeneration of vertebrae (often caused by stresses on the muscles and ligaments that support the spine, or the effects of aging)
- Infection
- Abnormal growth (tumor)
- Obesity (often increases weight on the spine and pressure on the disks)
- Poor muscle tone in the back
- Muscle tension or spasm
- Sprain or strain
- Ligament or muscle tears
- Joint problems (such as spinal stenosis)
- Smoking
- Protruding or herniated (slipped) disk
- Disease (such as osteoarthritis, spondylitis, compression fractures)
What are the symptoms of lower back pain?
Lower back pain is classified as acute (or short term) and chronic. Acute low back pain lasts from a few days to a few weeks. Most acute low back pain will resolve on its own. Chronic low back pain lasts for more than 3 months and often gets worse. The cause of chronic low back pain can be difficult to determine.
The following are the most common symptoms of low back pain. However, each person may experience symptoms differently. Symptoms may include discomfort or pain in the lower back that is:
- Aching
- Burning
- Stabbing
- Sharp or dull
- Well-defined or vague
The pain may radiate into one or both buttocks or even into the thigh or hip area.
The symptoms of low back pain may resemble other conditions or medical problems. Always consult your health care provider for a diagnosis.
How is lower back pain diagnosed?
In addition to a complete medical history and physical exam, diagnostic procedures for low back pain may include the following:
- X-ray. A diagnostic test which uses invisible electromagnetic energy beams to produce images of bones onto film.
- CT scan. A diagnostic imaging procedure that uses a combination of X-rays and computer technology to produce horizontal, or axial, images (often called slices) of the body. A CT scan shows detailed images of any part of the body, including the bones, muscles, fat, and organs. CT scans are more detailed than general X-rays.
- MRI. A diagnostic procedure that uses a combination of large magnets and a computer to produce detailed images of organs and structures within the body.
- Radionuclide bone scan. A nuclear imaging technique that uses a very small amount of radioactive material, which is injected into the patient's bloodstream to be detected by a scanner. This test shows blood flow to the bone and cell activity within the bone.
- Electromyogram (EMG). A test to evaluate nerve and muscle function.
How is lower back pain treated?
Specific treatment for lower back pain will be determined by your doctor based on:
- Your age, overall health, and medical history
- Diagnosis
- Extent of the condition
- Your tolerance for specific medicines, procedures, or therapies
- Expectations for the course of the condition
- Your opinion or preference
Treatment may include:
- Activity modification
- Medicine
- Physical rehabilitation, therapy, or both
- Occupational therapy
- Weight loss (if overweight)
- No smoking
- Following a prevention program (as directed by your doctor)
- Surgery
- Assistive devices (such as mechanical back supports)
Rehabilitation is often a part of treatment for low back pain. generally, there are 3 phases of low back pain rehabilitation.
- Acute phase. During this initial phase, the physiatrist (a doctor who specializes in rehabilitation medicine) and treatment team develop a treatment plan to reduce the initial low back pain and source of inflammation. This may include using ultrasound, electrical stimulation, or specialized injections.
- Recovery phase. Once the initial pain and inflammation are better managed, the rehabilitation team then focuses on helping you return to normal daily activities while starting a specialized exercise program to regain flexibility and strength.
- Maintenance phase. In this phase, you will learn ways to prevent further injury and strain to the back, and how to start a fitness program to help further increase strength and endurance.
Can lower back pain be prevented?
The following may help to prevent lower back pain:
- Use correct lifting techniques
- Maintain correct posture while sitting, standing, and sleeping
- Exercise regularly (with proper stretching before participation)
- Avoid smoking
- Maintain a healthy weight
- Reduce stress which may cause muscle tension
When should I call my healthcare provider?
Notify your healthcare provider if:
- Your pain becomes worse or spreads to your hips, thighs, or legs
- Your pain medicine no longer works well for you
- Your pain begins to interfere with your daily activities, or interferes with activities more than usual
Living with lower back pain
Most back pain will ease in a few days to a few weeks. If the pain lasts longer than 3 months, it is considered chronic and you should talk with your health care provider. Recovery from low back pain can take time. To prevent back pain from coming back, it's important to follow good health practices, such as:
- Maintaining a healthy weight
- Exercise regularly
- Practice good lifting techniques
- Maintain good posture while sitting, standing, and sleeping
- Avoid smoking
Key points
- Specific treatment for lower back pain depends on the cause of the pain and the severity, but often includes pain medications and muscle relaxers, physical therapy, and lifestyle changes such as stress reduction, weight loss, increased physical activity, and assistive devices such as a back support.
- A back rehabilitation program may be used as part of the treatment for low back pain.
- Measures to prevent back pain include using safe lifting techniques, correct posture, maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, and stress reduction.
Next steps
Tips to help you get the most from a visit to your healthcare provider:
- Before your visit, write down questions you want answered.
- Bring someone with you to help you ask questions and remember what your provider tells you.
- At the visit, write down the names of new medicines, treatments, or tests, and any new instructions your provider gives you.
- If you have a follow-up appointment, write down the date, time, and purpose for that visit.
- Know how you can contact your provider if you have questions.
Would You Like to Schedule an Appointment?


text:
The continuation of hot, dry weather isn't only a factor for the Northern Plains states; we're also seeing such conditions in the eastern Corn Belt. The result is that the corn and soybean markets have begun to reflect those worries and are trading higher.
Perhaps more important than the current weather is that the short-term weather forecast going out two weeks shows no sign of any significant relief. Because the crops are hitting some crucial growth stages, the threat to downgrade the crop is real.
In fact, the futures market saw new-crop corn trade at its highest levels in nine months this week. And any significant downward revision in crop estimates is expected to have a negative impact on the feeder and calf market as well.
This year perhaps more than most, the conventional wisdom early on was that we had record acreage and very good planting conditions. Thus, most feedyards are not as far out in front of the corn market as they traditionally have been. Spring came early this year in much of the country, and the weather pattern continues to appear to be running 40-45 days early, with record temperatures across a good portion of the country.
Along those lines, the West is shaping up to have its worst fire season in years. But, as one expert in Colorado said this week, at least there isn't much fuel. From a grass and undergrowth standpoint, that's true, but the trees ravaged by the beetle bugs in many forests are likened by some to tinder boxes.


text:
While it may not be the Mississippi, California has a delta, too, and some of its residents are singing the blues.
On Monday, the Metropolitan Water District and the California Department of Water Resources hosted a tour in support of the massive proposed Bay Delta Conservation Plan, a 50-year project to send Delta water south in big tunnels and protect the habitat of native fish and plants. Opponents don't see it as conservation. They see more efforts to transfer water from their north to our south.
Proponents say the BDCP is nothing like an L.A. water grab. Rather, it would, with admittedly much effort and billions of dollars in expense, be a buffer against the big earthquake that's surely coming and longtime agricultural water-use damage to the Delta.
As the bus carrying journalists and our handlers headed into the mysterious, rather wonderful world of historic towns and, to a Southern Californian, crazy-wide stretches of water, from the Sacramento and American rivers to shipping canals big enough for ocean-going freighters, we were being followed.
At every stop along the way, a couple of cars would pull over as well, and out would pop locals carrying signs reading "Save the Delta. Stop the tunnels. Fishable, swimmable, drinkable, farmable."
One was even wearing a T-shirt promoting a Cajun music festival in nearby Isleton playing on our Delta's cultural similarities to the one down South: "Two days in the beautiful Delta," it read, the concert headlined by Elvin Bishop, California's own version of bluesman Robert Johnson.
And at every crossroads our bus would traverse, there would be our followers, including Brett Baker, a sixth-generation local farmer with a degree in fisheries science from UC Davis, and Rogene Reynolds, another local farmer, who said the water agencies weren't telling us the real story of what havoc the tunnels project would wreak on small family farms in the Delta.
As the day progressed, the fascinating thing to me was learning how in this argument the ordinary tables are turned — are thrown over, in fact — from the usual tale of government vs. environmentalists when it comes to a huge infrastructure project.
At least in this administration of a Gov. Jerry Brown, the environmentalists are within the system, and the protesters are more on the libertarian side.
The director of California's Department of Fish and Wildlife, Chuck Bonham, who met us at one of the crossroads stops, was until recently the California director of Trout Unlimited, one of the greenest of the great green organizations fighting for clean waters and against overdevelopment in the nation. Until recently, as a dedicated angler and outdoorsman, he said he never could have figured taking a job where he couldn't wear a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops to work. And, though he is now a big boss, with a governor promoting BDCP, as a clearly deeply thoughtful person, he says he's not made up his mind about the tunnels. They would affect locals by returning some of the Delta to wetlands and take other land, some by eminent domain, for the waterworks.
Delta farming, though, is not precisely natural. The sea-level levees we were driving on were often more than 15 feet above the crops below us — Tyler Island, because of its farms, is sinking about an inch a year as the ancient peat depletes and the water table is used up. Farmers with ancestral rights pay almost nothing for the water they can flood into their land. Of course, to them, that makes more sense than sending any of it 400 miles south in tunnels for the sake of California equality.
Our state is at a decision point. As Robert Johnson sang in another delta in 1936, "I got the crossroad blues this morning Lord — babe, I'm sinking down."
Larry Wilson is a member of the Los Angeles News Group editorial board. firstname.lastname@example.com