text:
Depending on where an end-user is and the type of device they are using, there is likely going to be different network conditions and requirement. That's a reality that content delivery network vendor Akamai is now coming to terms with a new technology called Aqua Ion.
Akamai's network already optimizes traffic over what the regular public Internet delivery system provides. The idea with Aqua Ion is to go deeper in an effort to provide the best user experience across any device, application or network situation.
"What we're introducing with Aqua Ion is a layer of optimization so when we are delivering content for our customers we are optimizing the payload for the browser, device, connection speed and the situational requirements," M.J. Johnson, director of product marketing for Akamai's Aqua solutions line, told EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet.
Johnson noted that Aqua Ion is a situational performance solution that enhances Akamai existing edge caching and acceleration approach.
In terms of how Aqua Ion improves connections, Johnson said that Akamai has an entire catalog of front end optimization that they will use on a request by request basis. Those optimizations include transcoding to reduce the size of images and objects. JavaScript can be optimized through asynchronous execution or by deferring or offloading JavaScript.
"So there is transformation logic that we can apply in the network, "Johnson said. "There is also the ability to observe the performance of the network itself."
As such, when Aqua Ion sees the throughput decreasing for a particular connection, Akamai provides its customers with the ability to choose how much they want to modify their data to accommodate the decreased throughput.
From an automated policy perspective, Johnson explained that transformation logic can be applied automatically based on the device, browser and connectivity.
On the transformation side, Akamai is using home grown technologies as opposed to leveraging tools like Google SPDY. SPDY is an emerging web standard for helping to accelerate HTTP transport. Johnson stressed that Akamai is supportive of protocol enhancement efforts and they are not mutually exclusive of the Aqua Ion efforts.
Akamai has a WAN optimization partnershipin place with Riverbed already to help enterprise users. Johnson noted that the same concepts behind Aqua Ion also apply to enterprise customers. The Aqua Ion technology is additive to whatever an Akamai client might already be using, according to Johnson.
"Aqua Ion is an acknowledgement of the fact that a one size fits all approach is important but there is a need to shift to situational performance as well," Johnson said. "What performance means to me on an iPhone 5 over an LTE connection is different than what performance is when I'm sitting at home on Wi-Fi with my Android tablet."
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.


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They have spoken with the Orioles about Javy Lopez, who was placed on waivers Monday. The Courant names Jason LaRue, Mike Lieberthal and Henry Blanco as other possibilities.
Matt Clement is being shut down for another three weeks, according to Terry Francona. I wonder if we'll see him at all this year; seems doubtful.
Manny Ramirez's home run last night extended his hitting streak to 18 games. It was his 30th of the season, the 9th straight season (and 11th overall) that he has reached that mark. Only Hank Aaron (15 seasons), Barry Bonds (14), Babe Ruth (13), Mike Schmidt (13) and Jimmie Foxx (12) have more 30-homer seasons. It was career HR #465, tying Ramirez with Dave Winfield for 26th all-time.
Speaking of Foxx, David Ortiz plans on doing some research into the life of Double X. Back in 1938, Foxx hit 50 home runs for the Red Sox (with a .349 average and 175 RBI!), a mark that Tizzle is taking serious aim at this summer. Ortiz:
I want to know everything about him. I'm going to get on the computer and read about him and get to know who he was. I want to know what he looked like, how big he was. I want to know how he swung the bat. I'm telling you, he must have been some [expletive] good hitter. ... I need to know how he put up that number. It's a long season now and it was a long season then. I'm going to get to know Jimmie Foxx. That's what I owe him.Wily Mo Pena's line drive home run over the Wall last night was struck so hard that after it hit behind the first row of Monster seats, it rolled about halfway back to the infield. Pena: "I was afraid because I thought I was probably going to kill somebody. I thought, 'I'm going to be in jail.'"
In his last six appearances, Jonathan Papelbon has retired 21 of 22 batters. ... Keith Foulke will try to throw off a mound today. ... Bryan Corey is the 25th pitcher to appear in a Red Sox game this season, one shy of the club record. ... The Red Sox now have three pitchers over age 40: Tim Wakefield (turned 40 yesterday), Mike Timlin (40) and David Wells (43).
An update on the little black bird that was hopping around the infield on Tuesday night (Elliott Ginsburg, 64, season ticket holder since 1972: "That thing ran from base to base pretty good. I think he was faster than Mirabelli was getting to the plate last night."): it apparently met its demise at the hands (claws?) of one of the red-tail hawks that lives in Fenway's light towers. (An earlier bird rumour - a post-game snack for David Wells? -- turned out to be untrue.)

subset: commoncrawl


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I looked around and found several places to post my free ebook! Here they are:
http://www.freebookspot.es/ This one I had trouble figuring out just how to get my book up. I skipped it to move to easier uploads.
So call me a dunce, but I didn't know you could upload books on Goodreads. Derp!
I also learned where to post videos on Smashwords. There is a link on your book page on the right side underneath the "total downloads".


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|Number 134
|June 1996
|Office of the Chief Actuary
From the perspective of program administration, the identity of a beneficiary's spouse, and even the fact of marital status, are not particularly relevant if neither person is an auxiliary beneficiary of the other; hence this information is not always routinely entered into the Social Security Administration's (SSA's) Master Beneficiary Record (MBR), the principal administrative file for the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program. Accordingly, the MBR would appear to be poorly suited to support investigations into the program experience of couples or the estimation of the effects of legislative proposals such as "earnings sharing," which would alter the structure of benefits to couples.
Indeed, such investigations and estimates are typically based on administrative data linked to household surveys -- ongoing surveys such as the Survey of Income and Program Participation and the Current Population Survey, or special surveys such as the Longitudinal Retirement History Study and the Survey of the Aged. These linkages to surveys provide a wealth of information about beneficiaries' income, health, education, and even marital and childbearing history. Nevertheless, sample sizes are modest and the linkage process is protracted. Linked files can quickly become dated; as of this writing, for example, the most recent fully linked file is for May 1990.
The information necessary to associate the beneficiary records of husband and wife, though often absent from the MBR, is available in claims folders in SSA local offices. Indeed the December 1976 "Improved Family Benefits Data Project" (Lingg 1982) achieved the "coupling" of beneficiary records without resorting to a household survey, but rather by canvassing SSA offices across the country for claims folders for a sample of beneficiaries, and then launching a significant manual effort to examine and code paper documents. The drawbacks in this approach are obvious. The ideal approach would be to employ a method or combination of methods to couple beneficiary records using only the data elements available in machine-readable administrative files.
Actually, one means for identifying beneficiary couples in the MBR, though neither member is an auxiliary of the other, already exists. The cross-reference section of an MBR record is available for recording the Social Security number (SSN) of a spouse. In fact, our Office has used cross-reference data in estimating the effects of certain legislative proposals for altering the structure of couples' benefits. We know, however, that too often spouse information is not recorded in the cross-reference section.
This Note describes the implementation and results of a pilot study investigating the efficacy of certain unconventional methods for coupling MBRs. These new methods can be used with large samples, are relatively quick, and miss only a small fraction of couples. However, steps must be taken to limit the incidence of incorrect couplings.
One new method, which is our primary focus, is surname/address matching. Our assumption is that a male retiree and a female retiree with the same surname and address are likely to be husband and wife. Of course we are aware of the possibilities that they may be parent and child or brother and sister, and that they may be unrelated persons living in either a multi-unit structure or group quarters.
Another new method is commonness of a bank account number. This method takes advantage of the fact that most beneficiaries use direct deposit, and assumes that a male retiree and a female retiree whose benefit checks are direct-deposited to the same bank account are likely to be husband and wife. Here, too, there is the possibility of a different familial relationship.
The pilot study
The nature of an investigation of the commonness of surname and address or of a bank account number ruled out the sample design used most often in our work -- selection for the sample by patterns in the Social Security number. Instead, we used an area sample and selection with probability proportional to size, to select 25 zip-code areas. The 25 zip-code areas selected are listed in the Appendix, together with a measure of size.
We obtained MBR records for all primary beneficiaries with benefits in force in these 25 areas as of mid-March 1994. Because address information is maintained in the MBR for about 4 years after the death of a beneficiary or the termination of a benefit for any other reason, we also included records of primaries who were terminated after January 1990. Additionally, we included records of lump-sum payments made to widow(er)s after that date.
Among the records, 22,091 were for females with retirement benefits in force. This represents about a 1-in-575 sample of the approximately 12.6 million in-force female primary retirement beneficiaries at the time. Our focus in the pilot study is on uncovering the identity of spouses of these 22,091 females.
A total of 8,690, or 39 percent, of these in-force female retirees are now, or have been, dually entitled as an auxiliary of their husband in addition to having primary entitlement. In an additional 75 cases, the husband is or was dually entitled, with auxiliary entitlement on the wife's record.
Cross-reference data in records of female primaries permit us to make an additional 4,062 couplings. In most of these cases the female has never been the male's auxiliary. In some cases, however, the female was his auxiliary at some time but is no longer; for example, she may have been a widow beneficiary at ages 60-61 and then became entitled to a (larger) primary benefit at age 62. Cross-reference data in the records of male primaries identify 750 more couplings.
In total, the conventional methods of identifying husbands -- using the dual entitlement and the cross-reference sections of MBR records -- yield 13,577 successes. Many of the identified husbands had died more than 4 years ago, and some of those alive or recently deceased did not reside in the same zip-code area as their spouse. (Possible reasons for zip-code differences include divorce, institutionalization of one member of the couple, and the relocation of a widow after her husband's death.) The number of husbands identified by conventional methods who furthermore had an MBR record in the sample of 25 areas is 6,990, of whom 5,800 were in-force and 1,190 died in the past 4 years.
New coupling methods
The two new coupling methods are matching on surname/address and matching on bank account number. For records of lump-sum payments to widows, where the payee is named, matching is on given name, surname, and address.
For name matching and bank account number matching we required an exact match. We recognized, however, that variations in address occur so frequently that the same requirement for address matching is too restrictive. (For example, there are quite a few variations on a street name like `General George Patton'!)
Matches in which the female retiree was more than 15 years older than the male retiree were excluded because of the significant possibility that the matching male was a son, not a spouse. We did not, however, exclude similar cases of a female retiree much younger than the male, because a woman and her father would not have a surname in common unless she had not married.
In the event that a retiree is incapable of managing his or her finances and an individual or organization is selected to be a representative payee, the MBR address would be that of the payee. Hence, several unrelated beneficiaries may have the same MBR address because they have the same payee, and may easily have the same surname, as well, purely by chance, if the payee is a large organization serving many beneficiaries. Indeed, we excluded any matches based on the address of the San Francisco Public Guardian.
The same potential for incorrect matches of unrelated persons exists for very large group quarters such as large nursing homes and for houses with many apartments. However, the two large group quarters in the 25-zip-code area presented no problem. One was a home for men only and the other, the Association of the Sisters of Mercy, had only female members. We also excluded bank account number matches when there was an indication on either record of representative payment to someone other than a spouse.
The new methods combined produced 8,325 pairings of female primaries: 7,146 to in-force husbands and 1,179 to husbands deceased in the past 4 years. This compares favorably with the 6,990 successes of the conventional methods in the 25-zip-code area. The performance of each of the new methods is as follows:
|Number of
|Surname and exact address
|Surname and standardized address
|Surname and ZIP+4
|Full name and address: lump-sum cases
|Bank account number
The conventional methods and new methods combined identify 8,715 pairings, including 390 identified only by the conventional methods and 1,725 -- 1,582 spouses and 143 widows -- identified only by the new methods. An estimate of the number of couples missed by both sets of methods is possible under the assumption that the two sets of methods are independent of each other. (Let X be the number missed; then X / (8715 + X) = (390 / 6990) * (1725 / 8325).) That estimate is: only 102 couples.
Surname/address matching fails for non-coresidents. Accordingly, we find that surname/address matching is less successful for widows than for married women, and less successful for women in the fourth year of widowhood than for women in the first year of widowhood, as widows tend to relocate from the home they shared with the decedent. Some of the couples missed by surname/address matching techniques do share a residence but have inconsistencies in their recorded addresses too pronounced to be resolved by the standardizer program; some additional editing or Soundex (phonetic) coding would be worthwhile.
Though impressive in terms of power, surname/address matching techniques suffer from a susceptibility to incorrect matching. In particular, in a random sample of 80 pairings produced by the new methods but not the conventional ones, we found, by checking in the NUMIDENT file, that 9 were not husband-wife pairs but instead either parent-child or brother-sister pairs.
The NUMIDENT file contains applications for an SSN card, a replacement for a lost card, or a revised card due to a change in information such as a change in surname upon marriage. (The NUMIDENT also contains information for decedents on fact and date of death; for persons issued more than one SSN, on the several numbers they hold; and for claimants to program benefits up through the mid-1970's, on the nature and date of the claim.) Most of the NUMIDENT is in machine-readable form; however, for accounts on which claims were filed up through the mid-1970's, the original application exists only on microfilm (Social Security Administration n.d.).
The application form for an original, replacement, or corrected Social Security card asks for, in addition to the applicant's current name, the applicant's name at birth, and the names of the applicant's parents. The maiden name on the application is the key to determining the relationship of the two members of a pair: it is almost certainly not a spousal relationship if the common surname is the female's maiden name.
From this sample of 80 we infer that about 200 of the 1,725 pairings accomplished by the new methods and not the conventional ones are spurious.
The new methods applied in this pilot study are powerful means for pairing with a wife retiree the husband retiree who is alive or recently deceased. The address standardizer software substantially enhances the matching capabilities, and further expenditures of effort to edit addresses would be profitable.
However, the problem of spurious matches needs to be addressed, especially since, generally speaking, the negative impact of a spurious match is greater than that of a missed correct match. Although some incorrect matches can be identified through internal checks, for example, if one female matches to two males, or if the Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) of a female not dually entitled is less than half of the matched male's PIA, a systematic weeding out of the false positives requires an interface with the NUMIDENT.
Thus, by employing the MBR either alone, or, better, in conjunction with the NUMIDENT, using an area-sample design and a combination of the conventional and new methods discussed here, investigations of the program experience of couples can be performed in a productive and timely fashion.
Bureau of the Census. 1994. Address Standardizer Software release 5.5.
Lingg, Barbara. 1982. "Social Security Benefits of Female Retired Workers and Two-Worker Couples." Social Security Bulletin Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 3-24.
Social Security Administration. n.d. Users' Manual: Studying Employment and Program Experience of Immigrants and Hispanics with Social Security Administrative Records.
Appendix: The 25 Zip Codes
|Number of female retirees
in-force, March 1994
|Worcester, MA
|Mechanic Falls, ME
|Milford, PA
|Huntington, WV
|Summerville, SC
|Panama City, FL
|Miami Beach, FL
|Hobe Sound, FL
|Nashville, TN
|New Bremen, OH
|Kingman, IN
|Indianola, IA
|Sun Prairie, WI
|Harvey, ND
|Chicago, IL
|Kansas City, KS
|Mayfield, KS
|Little Rock, AR
|Pflugerville, TX
|Friona, TX
|El Paso, TX
|Montrose, CO
|Coalinga, CA
|San Francisco, CA
|Sacramento, CA
Notes published in the 1990s


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For many years the LDS Church magazines have published new songs and hymns by talented Mormon musicians. Now, thanks to the updated official church website, it is easier than ever to find these treasures. This week, I will be sharing some of these with you. Today's feature is a song entitled "Shining Star" published in the December 1979 issue of the NEW ERA magazine.
1. If I had lived in Galilee
Or walked Jerusalem's road,
Followed Jesus by Jordan's sea,
Would I have tried to lift His load?
2. I wonder what my thoughts,
If I had seen the shining star
If it had been my happy lot
To hear the angels from afar.
Would I have followed wisemen
With a loving gift of mine,
To a stable in Bethlehem
Leaving all else behind?
O silent skies, so full of light,
Shine peace on this world tonight.
Let hate and envy, grief and wars
Be hid forever beneath shining stars.
Shining Star Words by Eleanor P. Madsen Music by RaeAnn Rasmuson – free sheet music and lyrics available here.


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I'm waiting in line at the drive-thru at Starbucks the other day. It's a beautiful evening and, after rolling down my window and turning off the radio to order, I don't bother to roll the window back up or turn on the radio. My mind is a million miles away, but, suddenly, I hear sounds. Zweet-zweet-zweet! I look up. Birds are flitting to and from nests built into the STARBUCKS sign. Zweet-zweet! And then . . . Buzzzzzz. A bumblebee meanders near my window as a soft breeze creeps into my car and tousles my hair.
Suddenly, I know: Everything's going to be all right . . .
Except, Honk!! Oh sh-t! What happened to the line?!
"The earth has music for those who listen."
― George Santayana
Image: Mine. All rights reserved.
Related Articles:


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Place Matters
THE VALUE OF a home, real estate agents like to say, is determined by three things: location, location, location. And so it goes with wine and wine grapes. Place matters, a lot. Especially in the Willamette Valley, where winemakers produce pinot noir far tastier than pinot noir grown almost anywhere else on earth—even in other regions of Oregon.
Wines from the Willamette Valley's six viticultural areas are so distinctive that wine labels can now legally declare their place of origin from one of these subregions: Chehalem Mountains, McMinnville, Yamhill-Carlton, Ribbon Ridge, the Dundee Hills, and the windswept Eola-Amity Hills. The thin and delicate skins of pinot noir ripen in these special places without losing their floral scents or their refreshing berry flavors. Among recent and still-available vintages, 2007 brought us wine of finesse and rich bouquets, 2008 offered ripe, mouth-filling fruit flavors, and 2009 proved to be early-maturing with plenty of alcohol and persistent raspberry-like flavors. Below is a trio of my recent favorites.
Yamhill-Carlton: 2009 Luminous Hills Pinot Noir $28
This is typical 2009 great pinot from the Willamette Valley with fresh acidity and ripe berry flavors. Pair with grilled salmon.
Dundee Hills: 2007 Et Fille Jim's Block Pinot Noir $42
Made from some of the oldest vines in the Willamette Valley, this bottle is reminiscent of wines made by the Rousseau family in French Burgundy, with an uncanny combination of delicacy and power. Pair with a slow-cooked leg of lamb.
Chehalem Mountains: 2008 1789 Pinot Noir $48
This bottle is pure, elegant, lush, satisfying, food-friendly, and crowd-pleasing. Pair with braised beef.


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Problem: You have the unfortunate habit of neglecting to allow your port to breathe before you imbibe, because of an awkwardly-shaped decanter you never end up using.
(I'm sure you can relate.)
Solution: Victorian wine funnel.
If you're the kind of person who decants vintage ports, you can probably afford it.


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The Verrückt, the world's tallest water slide, has finally started testing with real, live humans. And the first drop in this POV footage is absolutely terrifying.
Located in Kansas City, Schlitterbahn water park has been pushing back the big unveiling of their monster slide (The Verrückt) again and again. But this video with slide's engineers taking the first human ride gives us hope that it may just be safe enough for the public soon.
Here are the facts. The Verrückt is 168 feet and 7 inches tall. The Statue of Liberty (from toes to the tip of the flame) is only 151 feet. It's also taller than Niagara Falls. You have to climb up 264 steps to get to the top of the 17-story slide. It's expected to hit speeds of up to 65 miles-per-hour. And when you ride you must be velcro strapped into a very large raft (which is good because you would have no butt if you did this bare bottomed).
Also, remember a few months back when we reported the rumor that sandbags were being launched off the ride, and then everyone freaked out because the park claimed that wasn't true. Well guess what? It was true. In earlier models of the ride sandbags were launched into the air. And on the actual ride itself, early tests showed the entire freaking raft lift off into the air. Here's a clip from the Travel Channel's feature on the construction of the ride, enjoy the terror:
But it's cool because now the ride has netting around it so you probably won't fall off. Maybe. Still no word on the official release date but the website says "sometime in 2014."
And here's the raw POV shot. The camera craps out on the second bump, but the drop is still intense.
Can't wait. This weekend a friend of mine took a shot of The Verrückt from the highway and the thing is just so ridiculously large, even from super far away.


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If you were recently in an accident or received a hard hit while playing sports and you have been feeling jaw pain ever since, you may be suffering from a serious injury. It is important that you make an appointment with us immediately, so that we can conduct a proper examination, make a diagnosis and prescribe a suitable treatment. Even if the pain is lessening, you should still make an appointment.
Without seeing you, we have no way of definitively diagnosing the cause of your pain. However, here are a few possibilities:
- You displaced a tooth or teeth.
- You indirectly traumatized or injured the jaw joint (TMJ — temporomandibular joint). This trauma will cause swelling in the joint space, and the ball of the jaw joint will not fully seat into the joint space. If this is the issue, it is likely that your back teeth on the affected side will not be able to touch. Over time, the swelling should subside, allowing the teeth to fit together normally.
- You may have a minor fracture of your lower jaw. The most common is a "sub-condylar" fracture (just below the head of the joint), which will persist in symptoms that are more severe than simply bruising and swelling.
- You may have dislocated the joint, which means the condyle or joint head has been moved out of the joint space.
All of the above injuries can also cause muscle spasms, meaning that the inflammation from the injury results in the muscles on both sides of the jaw locking it in position to stop further movement and damage.
The most critical step is for you to make an appointment with our office, so we can conduct a physical examination, using x-rays to reveal the extent of your injury. We'll also be able to see whether the injury is to the soft tissue or bone.
Treatment may involve a variety of things, including anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxant medications. If your teeth have been damaged, we'll recommend a way to fix this issue. If you have dislocated your jaw, we may be able to place it back through gentle manipulation. If you have fractured your jaw, we'll need to reposition the broken parts and splint them to keep them still, so that they can heal.
If you would like more information about jaw pain, please contact us or schedule an appointment for a consultation. You can also learn more by reading the Dear Doctor magazine article "Jaw Pain."


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Bradshaw, John
Bradshaw, John, 1602–59, English regicide judge. In 1649 he was made president of the parliamentary commission to try Charles I, other lawyers of greater prominence having refused the position. For a short time he was rewarded with honors and offices and acted (1649–53) as president of the council of state. He was forced to retire when Oliver Cromwell dissolved the council, and he became an opponent of the Protectorate.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: British and Irish History: Biographies


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Home Visits
Whenever possible we will ask you to attend appointments at the surgery as we have full access to your medical records and treatment facilities. You are usually able to be seen sooner at the surgery, as we can see three or four patients in the surgery in the time it takes to do one home visit.
If you are not well enough to attend the surgery please try to phone before 11:00am. If you are not sure whether you need a visit, reception can arrange for you to get advice from one of the doctors. If the doctor feels your problems would be dealt with appropriately within the surgery, then you will be offered an appointment and the home visit request declined.
Please note that we cannot guarantee a time for the home visit.


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This story originally appeared on ozy.com. It has been reprinted with permission.
By Sean Braswell
Hillary Clinton should thank Barack Obama for beating her in 2008. Every day.
Not only does the former first lady and U.S. Secretary of State appear as well-positioned as any candidate to capture the presidency in 2016, but her arrival in the Oval Office could well coincide with headwinds that the U.S. economy has not seen since, well, the last time a Clinton occupied the White House.
Are we getting ahead of ourselves? Absolutely. A lot can happen in three years, but there's one scenario for 2017 that should be staring all would-be prognosticators in the face: The very real possibility of another Clinton economic boom like the U.S. experienced in the 1990s.
Here are five key economic and political trends that should leave Camp Clinton giddy — and the GOP scared out of its mind — when it comes to the next presidential election.
The U.S. rode its abundant natural resources, particularly oil, to global prominence during the 19th century, and it seems primed to do so again. This time the new growth in oil and shale gas production, made possible by hydraulic "fracking" and other new, non-conventional drilling strategies, means that the U.S. is "well on its way to realizing the American dream" of energy independence, according to the International Energy Agency. The IEA predicts that the U.S. will be the world's top oil producer by 2015, peaking around 2025 at 12 million barrels a day.
The fact that much of the technology and know-how behind shale gas production also resides in the U.S. means that countless upstream and downstream jobs could be generated as well. According to a recent analysis by Citigroup's economic research unit, the U.S. energy boom should support between 2.2 to 3.6 million new jobs by 2020.
And the oil and gas boom is just the start, according to Charles Morris, who correctly predicted the 1990s boom, and whose latest book, Comeback: America's New Economic Boom, makes the case for another sea change in the U.S. economy.
"The collateral job creation is even more important, and it's just getting underway," Morris argues, citing several major U.S. industries, including aluminum, chemicals, steel and paper, in which energy is a significant cost component. The American Chemistry Council, for example, estimates that the expected reduction in fuel costs in coming years will generate close to 1.2 million new jobs across eight energy-intensive industries (not including the energy sector itself).
As Morris tells OZY, there are many things that could deflate the economic benefits of an energy explosion, from poor management at drilling sites to methane emissions to over-exporting, but the opportunity is exceptionally real — especially when other emerging trends are factored in, most notably the rebirth of the American manufacturing sector.
The growth in U.S. energy output comes on top of an increasingly revitalized manufacturing base as a result of, among other things, the increased "reshoring" of previously outsourced jobs. As a recent report from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) documents, China's cost advantages are quickly being eroded by rising wages, land prices, corruption and shipping costs, making U.S. labor more competitive and prompting companies from Apple to Toyota to return operations to the U.S.
The U.S. already makes about 20 percent of the world's goods (roughly on par with China). "Now it will make more," says Joel Kurtzman, former editor of the Harvard Business Review and author of Unleashing the Second American Century, "as businesses move to the United States to take advantage of abundant energy and capital and tap into our vast reserves of intelligence and creativity."
States such as Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina, hit hardest by layoffs and spare capacity during the recent recession, are quickly becoming the prime targets for a renewed manufacturing sector. BCG estimates that the reshoring trend and increased exports could trim $100 billion from the U.S. trade deficit. And, as U.S growth levels return to 3 to 3.5 percent in coming years and new tax revenues stream in, "trade and budget deficits will shrink in real terms," says Morris, "and cease to dominate the political discourse."
Unemployment should also continue to drop. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, the unemployment rate was 7.4 percent (higher than today's 6.7 percent), but thanks to an economy growing at 3.5 to 4 percent, the jobless rate sank to 3.9 percent. Hillary Clinton, or whoever wins in 2016, could inherit a similar trajectory.
The recent economic recession benched at least two major U.S. economic heavyweights for the past five or so years: the accumulated capital held by U.S. corporations and banks, and the pent-up consumer demand of the millennial generation.
U.S. companies produce between 30 to 40 percent of the world's goods, and a lot of the money earned from their overseas operations stays offshore for tax reasons. "Our corporations are sitting on an extraordinary amount of cash, cash that is just waiting to be deployed," says Kurtzman.
In his book, Kurtzman estimates that U.S. corporations are holding about $4 trillion in spare cash and says that when you combine that with the approximately $1.8 trillion that the Federal Reserve says is being held by banks as "excess banking reserves," you are talking about almost $6 trillion on the sidelines, roughly the size of Japan's entire economy.
But even that, he insists, is "peanuts compared to where the real money lies, jangling around at the bottom of our purses and pockets." And, as the economy improves, that money is going to pour out of the pockets of younger Americans — the 20- and 30-somethings who have been delaying buying homes, getting married and more during the financial crisis.
Households headed by younger Americans have also been paying down their debts — which have declined an average of 23.7 percent since 2007 — and they are eager to catch up. According to one recent survey, 85 percent of millennials plan to buy a home someday, and 49 percent expect to do so in the next two years.
America's younger households and shelved capital won't come off the sidelines all at once, but an energy and manufacturing-fueled resurgence in the U.S. economy could unleash a critical mass of both into the U.S. marketplace — and when that happens, watch out.
As promising as the future looks for the U.S. economy, it may be even rosier for 2008 Democratic also-ran Hillary Clinton. Just ask Pharrell.
Billed as the party's "inevitable" candidate for president in 2008, Clinton's aura of invincibility, and her campaign, ultimately went down in a blaze of infighting, cost overruns and mismanagement. This time around, Clinton enjoys most of the same advantages she carried in 2007: a large potential donor base, influence over Democratic Party fund-raising and get-out-the-vote operations and a strong early fund-raising push and campaign infrastructure despite the fact that she has not even declared her candidacy (the super PAC Ready for Hillary raised nearly $4 million in 2013). Plus, with Secretary of State added to her CV, she's an even more daunting candidate.
And Clinton will not confront many of the liabilities she faced in 2008: She won't be hamstrung by her position on Iraq, nor will she likely have to square off with an opponent in the primary as formidable as Barack Obama (though Elizabeth Warren could prove a tough adversary). And as the Ghosts of Clinton Scandals Past recede further in the American memory bank, any attempt by the GOP to resurrect such ancient sins could prove more destructive to that party than to Clinton.
The early numbers also appear to stack the deck for Clinton. According to recent polls by Rasmussen, she enjoys the support of 70 percent of likely Democratic voters and leads the second-most popular candidate nationally, Jeb Bush, 47 to 33 percent.
As 2008 proved, there's no such thing as a "sure thing" when it comes to elections, but it's hard to recall an environment more favorable to a single candidate than the present one is for Clinton. And she is fortunate in that her ascendance coincides with the ever-descending odds that any GOP nominee can win the White House.
"I think Republicans will not win again in my lifetime for the presidency unless they become a new GOP, a new Republican Party," Kentucky senator and presidential hopeful Rand Paul claimed in an interview with Glenn Beck in February. Or as David Axelrod, Obama's former chief political strategist, recently observed from the other side of the aisle: "The Republican Party today is, at its core, a mostly Southern, white, old, evangelical party" and is therefore "incapable of winning a general election for president."
And the numbers support the many challenges facing the current GOP as it tries to win the White House in 2016. In what Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, labels "The Big Blue Wall," the Democrats essentially will start the 2016 election with 242 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency based on the tally of the 18 states that have gone blue the last six elections in a row. Put another way, as Marc Ambinder observes in The Week, even if the GOP nominee wins all five of the key swing states (Ohio, Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania), "he or she will need at least eight more electoral votes."
It is by no means too late for the GOP to figure out how to run that electoral gauntlet. And the prize at the end is well worth winning: A resurgent U.S. economy would mean that whoever occupies the White House come 2017 could benefit from a cushion of growth and prosperity that will dampen chatter about deficits and debt and return the discussion to longer-term goals — spending on social programs, for example, or cutting taxes.
And, as the U.S. becomes less and less dependent on foreign oil, the 45th president may have an unprecedented opportunity to adjust the terms of the country's relationship to the Middle East, and perhaps the region itself.
In short, the next presidency has the makings of a truly landmark one — offering a rare chance to make history, precisely the sort of chance that some think Bill Clinton squandered in the 1990s. And what are the odds that the person who gets handed the keys to the country, and seizes that opportunity, will be the one person best-suited to learn from the mistakes of the last president to have such a historic opportunity — or the one person most likely to be doomed to repeat them?
Higher than you might think.


text: Mercedes-Benz Actros MP3 The improved LEGO version of the Mercedes-Benz Actros MP3 in a 4160 and 4165 variant. The 4160 is build in the Mammoet livery and the 4165 uses the Liebherr colors and is completed with the Nooteboom livery to match the Nooteboom trailers. Both trucks are available in the webshop with professional building instructions and complete sticker sets. Build your own heavy haulage truck and let's haul!!


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By Mycle Schneider, Special to CNN
Editor's note: Mycle Schneider is an independent international consultant on energy and nuclear policy based in Paris. He is the coordinator and lead author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report. The views expressed are his own.
"Careless" was how Toyoshi Fuketa, commissioner of the Japanese Nuclear Regulation Authority, reportedly described the inspection quality of hundreds of water tanks at the crippled Fukushima plant following the recent discovery of a serious radioactive spill. China's Foreign Ministry went further, saying it was "shocking" that radioactive water was still leaking into the Pacific Ocean two years after the Fukushima incident.
Both comments are to the point, and although many inside and outside Japan surely did not realize how bad the March 11, 2011 disaster was – and how bad it could get – it seems clear now that we have been misled about the scale of the problem confronting Japan. The country needs international help – and quickly.
While the amount of radioactivity released into the environment in March 2011 has been estimated as between 10 percent and 50 percent of the fallout from the Chernobyl accident, the 400,000 tons of contaminated water stored on the Fukushima site contain more than 2.5 times the amount of radioactive cesium dispersed during the 1986 catastrophe in Ukraine.
So, where has this huge amount of highly contaminated water – enough to fill 160 Olympic-size swimming pools – come from? In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the reactor cores of units 1, 2 and 3 melted through the reactor vessels into the concrete. Nobody knows how far the molten fuel went through the containment – radiation levels in the reactor buildings are lethal, while robots got stuck in the rubble and some never came back out.
More from CNN: What Japanese leaders can learn
The molten fuel still needs to be cooled constantly and the operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), injects about 400 tons of water into the perforated reactor vessels every day. That water washes out radioactive elements and runs straight through into the basements that were flooded during the tsunami. By 2015, over 600,000 tons of highly radioactive liquid are expected to have accumulated in temporary tanks, some underground, many bolted rather than welded together, and none ever conceived to hold this kind of liquid over the long term. The dangerous fluid is pumped around in four kilometer long makeshift tubes, many of them made of vinyl rather than steel, and plagued with numerous leaks in the winter when the above ground lines get hit by frost.
TEPCO's account of the discovery this month of the leak of 300 tons of highly radioactive water showed a frightening level of amateurism:
"We found water spread at the bottom level of tanks near the tank No.5... Therefore, we checked the water level of this tank, and… confirmed that the current water level is lower by approximately 3 meters than the normal level."
TEPCO reportedly admitted that only 60 of 350 tanks in that area are equipped with volume gauges. "Inspection" is done visually by a worker with a radiation detector. Meanwhile, the soil around the leaking tank delivered a dose per hour equivalent to the legal limit for nuclear workers for five years. No remote radiation measuring devices, no remote handling.
The tank leak is just the latest in a long list of signs that things are going fundamentally wrong at the site of what could still turn out to be the most serious radiological event in history. And the situation could still get a lot worse. A massive spent fuel fire would likely dwarf the current dimensions of the catastrophe and could exceed the radioactivity releases of Chernobyl dozens of times. First, the pool walls could leak beyond the capacity to deliver cooling water or a reactor building could collapse following one of the hundreds of aftershocks. Then, the fuel cladding could ignite spontaneously releasing its entire radioactive inventory.
More from CNN: Japan ponders freezing ground
TEPCO's inability to stabilize the site, and the dramatic failure of the Japanese government, now majority owner of TEPCO, should come as no surprise. Indeed, so far, the Nuclear Regulation Authority has seemed too busy trying to help restart the country's stranded reactors to put adequate attention on stabilizing the Fukushima site.
The fact is that the Fukushima Daiichi site represents challenges of unprecedented complexity. Maintaining the cooling of three molten reactor cores and five spent fuel pools in a disaster zone is a job of titanic proportions. That is why two weeks after the crisis first erupted I suggested the creation of an International Task Force Fukushima (ITFF) that would pull together the world's experts in key areas of concern: nuclear physics and engineering, core cooling, water management, spent fuel and radioactive waste storage, building integrity and radiation protection.
Two and a half years on, the need for such a taskforce has only grown.
An ITFF would need to be established for at least two years to be effective, and could have two co-chairpersons – one Japanese, one from abroad. A core group of about a dozen experts would work full-time on the project and could draw at will on the expertise of several dozen corresponding experts that are carefully selected by the core group. A significant share of the core group should be independent experts (i.e. with no link to corporate or state interests). In addition, the ITFF would work in an open expert network, free to draw on any expertise in any field that it judges pertinent. It could openly invite feedback to its recommendations and would do its utmost to assess comments and suggestions.
Of course, such a taskforce would not "supervise" or "control" – the responsibility for this would remain with the Japanese government and the regulator. But the ITFF could provide recommendations on short-, medium- and long-term strategies for site stabilization.
Will the call for such a taskforce gain any traction? I have presented the basic concept to safety authorities of several countries, acting and former ambassadors, ministers and the European Commission. But while some officials have pointed to some ongoing limited bilateral assistance, so far, the main stumbling block appears to be the "pattern of denial" in Japan, a problem that has affected not only TEPCO, but apparently the Japanese government and the safety authorities as well.
Thankfully, there have been some small signs in official declarations by TEPCO and the Japanese government in recent days that offer hope for a change in attitudes. And Japan's image in the world – and the Japanese people's trust in their institutions – would greatly profit from an explicit and concrete international project. The question is whether members of the international community can muster the will to put their own interests aside, and help Japan conquer the denial that is risking catastrophe.
I don't agree, read that http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/insight/2016/03/27/01-climate-change-study-suggests-earth-is-heading-toward-a-second-catastrophic-hot-house-event.html
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This week's fabulous space is the living room in model, Elletra Wiedemann's West Village apartment. It's glamorous, layered, and a little eclectic. There are so many great pieces, including the bold floral rug, Lucite chairs, director's chairs, gold lamps with black shades and the paneled wall is even interesting. I could do without the turkey chair and the watering can in the corner, though. Is this a space you could see yourself enjoying or is there too much going on for your taste?
{Image via Vogue.com}


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This is the type of video that makes my eyes well up and I become so inspired to go on a manhunt for lost design. Aaron Draplin as collected so many aged, original memo books over the years and is building an archive. You can see a sample of the collection here, and boy is it great. It's beautiful and I absolutely can't wait to see more of it.
I see one huge lesson in all of Aaron's collecting, and it's something that I've been trying to do on a smaller scale… I believe we should all be doing our part to rescue the lost great design. This also goes hand in hand with sharing great design as well. That's all I have for you now on this great establishment, but expect more on this memo book collection in the future!


text: Dollar General (NYSE: DG) is a Fortune 200 company with more than 15,000 retail locations in 44 states, 15 distribution centers and 130,000 employees that embody our mission of Serving Others each and every day. We work in an energetic atmosphere that embraces innovation, diversity and teamwork, all while keeping our customers and communities at the center of everything we do! At Dollar General, employees have numerous growth and development career opportunities through award-winning training and being part of one of America's fastest-growing retailers. Apply today and let's grow together!


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Getting Ready For The Season!
Man, I feel like I'm so behind! At least we're just playing Spring Training games, but still. Anyways, things have been going GREAT!! I love the way the team is playing right now and it's sooo cool to see.
I was listening to the game the other day and the guys were talking about how the young guys don't worry about "saving" for the regular season. Like some old guys worry about saving all their hits for the regular season, but the young guys are just full of it. They're taking advantage of every situation they get.
Take Will Venable. He's been on fire, as far as Spring Training fire goes. He's got four hits so far, including a three-run homer, a double, and a triple. He's scored four runs and driven in three. Pretty amazing stuff.
On Wednesday, we were split-squad: one game against the Indians and one against the Brewers. We won the Brewers game, 5-4, but we lost to the Indians, 10-5.
The Brewers game was really good. That's the one where Will hit his three-runner. Logan Forsythe drove in two runs with a double.
Mat Latos threw three innings in that game and didn't give up a run. Good sign.
In the other game, Wade LeBlanc threw three innings, allowing only one run on four hits. Aaron Poreda, though, didn't even get an out as he allowed seven runs on three hits with three walks. Grady Sizemore hit a grand slam. Ugh.
On Thursday, we played the Cubs. Jon Garland started, but he struggled, giving up four runs in 1.2 innings. That's okay, though. It's early, and every pitcher is expected to have a bad outing here and there.
We did really well on the offensive side! We were down 8-0 going into the bottom of the 7th. We got one run in the bottom of the seventh, then we got three runs in each of the eighth and ninth. Isn't that great? Of course, it's kind of sad that we weren't able to get just one more run, but that's okay. We rallied back really well.
I'm soooo thrilled with this team right now, even if we're like 2-6. I'm seeing things that really matter on this team. Defense, baserunning, determination, perseverance, agressiveness. The attitude around this team is completely different than anything I've felt from them before. I honestly don't know what this team is going to do this season, but I can tell you this: things are different. There's a buzz in the air. There's a spark to this team that I've never seen before. And I think it's going to be an amazing season.
Kouz hit a homer a few days ago. GO KOUZ!!
Brian Giles retired yesterday. It's kind of weird. I mean, he was very good when he played for us and everything, but I think it definitely was time for him to retire.
We're playing the Rangers in a few minutes. Clayton Richard is starting, so that will be cool.
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ETSU drops
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (March 9, 2009) - After coming off its best weekend series this season the ETSU women's tennis team split a pair of non-conference matches Monday dropping 4-2 against No. 72 Northern Arizona, before making quick work of Weber State 7-0 at the Flagstaff Athletic Club in Flagstaff, Ariz.
ETSU (4-4, 2-0 A-Sun) opened play by taking the doubles point from the ITA ranked Lumberjacks. Senior Tara Byrne (
As singles play opened Northern Arizona rallied taking a 2-1 lead after ETSU senior Vita Moskaliova (Minsk, Belarus) fell to Oris Golovics, 6-2, 6-2, while Byrne dropped a heartbreaking three-set tie breaker to Edit Suhajda, 6-2, 7-6 (7-5).
However, after
In the second match of the day the Lady Bucs would jump out to an early lead and never look back dropping
After sweeping all three doubles matches, Stupak opened singles play by dropping the Wildcats' Greyce Farias, 6-0, 6-1, while fellow upperclassman Tara Byrne made quick work of Caroline Drugge, 6-1, 6-1.
ETSU followed that up as Vita Moskaliova picked up her second singles win of the spring dominating Keye Jenkins, 7-5, 6-3. After disappointing finishes against
Rounding out the scores for the Lady Bucs was Tara Sheets who downed Alyssia Pyne in straight sets 6-0, 6-1 giving the Gate City, Va., native her third victory in her last four dual matches.
The Lady Bucs will now stay out west before returning to A-Sun Conference action with a match Friday at league foe Mercer at the
For more information on the ETSU women's tennis team please visit www.ETSUBucs.com.


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AUGUSTA, Ga. — Tiger Woods getting into the final group at the Masters made it feel like a typical Saturday at Augusta National.
Nothing else did.
Not Woods finishing bogey-bogey, only to charge up the leaderboard while on the practice range. Not a scoreboard that showed no survivors to par for the first time in history. And certainly not a wind chill factor that never climbed higher than 47 degrees.
They might hand out a green parka, not a green jacket.
Stuart Appleby emerged as the leader despite a triple bogey on the 17th hole with a tee shot into the bunker guarding the seventh green, a wedge into a bunker on the hole he was playing and three putts. Compared with other train wrecks, that was tame.
He wound up with a 1-over 73 and in the final group with a familiar name, who got there in the strangest fashion. Those two bogeys gave Woods a 72, the first time in 11 trips to Augusta National as a pro that he has played three rounds without breaking par.
"There's a lot — a lot — of work left," Appleby said. "There's 18 holes, but to be honest, it's way more than that."
There was plenty on Saturday, the highest-scoring third round since 1956. The average score was 77.35, the highest day at Augusta National since it switched to Bentgrass greens in 1981. That's assuming it was grass — and not glass — on those greens.
Retief Goosen was the only player to break par, a 70 that moved him from last place into a tie for eighth. A dozen players failed to break 80. That
included U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy, who was in the top 10 and making a charge until he twice hit wedge into the water on the 15th for a quadruple-bogey 9. He followed that with three straight bogeys for an 81.
The only suspense was watching Woods move closer to a fifth green jacket, a task made easier by late-afternoon collapses.
Appleby was at 2-over 218, the highest 54-hole lead ever at the Masters. He had a simple explanation for his triple bogey, and he might as well have been speaking for everyone.
"That's golf. That's Augusta," he said. "It was a tough opponent. And it will be a tough opponent tomorrow."
Another battle figures to come from the guy playing alongside him.
Woods has never lost a major when playing in the final group, although he has always had at least a share of the lead. History is on his side, too. The winner at the Masters has come out of the final group every year since Nick Faldo won in 1990.
Woods was playing one his finest rounds in the toughest conditions until a tee shot into the trees cost him a bogey on the 17th. Then he came up well short of the 18th green when the wind tricked him.
"I hung in there as best I could," Woods said. "I blew it at the end and made two careless bogeys the last two holes. Overall, I've improved my position. As of right now, I'm only four back, and not a lot of guys between myself and the lead."
His position improved dramatically over the final 90 minutes of a harrowing day at the Masters.
Jerry Kelly was at 2 over until he took double bogey from the front of the 14th green, then rinsed one in the pond short of the 15th green for another bogey. Rose got shaky with the short game, lipping out a 3 1/2-foot par putt on the 16th, hitting a simple chip too hard from behind the 17th green and leaving himself a 4-foot putt that caught the left edge.
Vaughn Taylor, who grew up in Augusta, missed a 5-footer for par on the 16th, the start of a bogey-bogey-bogey finish.
"There is no par out there," Zach Johnson said after a three-putt bogey on the 16th sent him to a 77. "Who's to say 72 is par?"
Each mistake moved Woods closer to the top until there was no one between him and a fifth green jacket except Appleby, who is trying to become the first Australian to win one.
"He has more experience than what's left of this field put together," Appleby said.
Indeed, of the half-dozen players behind Appleby, Woods is the only one with a major. But as crazy as the third round was — and there's no reason to believe Sunday will be any different — this Masters remains ripe with possibilities.
Padraig Harrington of Ireland took double bogey on the 15th and shot 75 and was at 4-over 220, along with Taylor (77) and Johnson (76). Bradley Dredge of Wales was another shot back after a 76.
Defending champion Phil Mickelson is only four shots behind and tied for eighth. He finished nearly three hours ahead of the leaders with a 73 that put him at 6-over 222, finally emerged from the scoring hut and sounded like a prophet.
"I know over par is going to be the winning score," Mickelson said.
Tied with Mickelson was a collection of major champions — Goosen, Jim Furyk and David Toms.
Second-round co-leaders Tim Clark and Brett Wetterich, in the last group, were forgotten figures by the end of the day with scores of 80 and 83.
Woods also finished bogey-bogey on Thursday to waste a good round, and he was even more surly on Saturday when asked on television if he had the same feelings. "Yeah, and then some," he replied.
But he can't complain about where he is now, with a chance to win his third consecutive major.
Springtime in Augusta meant breaking out ski caps and mittens. Then came gusts of nearly 25 mph, swirling around Amen Corner, leaving the 60 players hanging on for dear life.
Through it all, Woods played a remarkable round. He kept bogeys off his card through 11 holes that sent him soaring up the leaderboard. But it all went to waste — or so he thought — on the last two holes.
He drove left into the trees on the 17th and tried to carve an 8-iron around the seventh green, bending it back into play. It caught the bunker, and the best he could do was hit out to 20 feet. Woods was in good shape on the 18th until the wind switched and left him well short of the green, and he missed a 10-footer for par.
Then came his best move of the day — leaving the course, safe from any further damage.
Appleby opened strong, capping three straight birdies with a tee shot right over the flag to 10 feet on the par-3 fourth. Equally impressive was that he held it together for so long, dropping only one shot over the next 12 holes until the 17th.
There was no escape for anyone. Even Goosen's brilliant round ended with a bogey.
"We all are struggling in it together," Woods said. "You just have to get by."


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An outtake from a Jan V. White post, 2008
I've been posting about magazine guru and design consultant Jan V. White since the beginning of this blog, ever since I discovered his best known title, the Graphic Idea Notebook.
He's a hero of mine because he has spent the majority of his life making a whole world of design techniques and ideas accessible through his many titles, all painstakingly thorough. These books were groundbreaking at the time because most were released before designers had widespread access to the internet and the world's collective inspiration at their fingertips. Books like this were the gateway to learning about great design.
To this day, I still use his his titles like Editing By Design and Designing for Magazines when I'm working on publication-based projects like the Rock N Roll Bride Magazine from earlier this year — they're timeless and are a great way to jog your memory when you're trying to come up with unique, original page layouts.
The big news is that Jan V White's books are now all available under the public domain in their entirety, completely free on his website! This is amazing because a lot of these titles are no longer readily available.
Upon the completion of the digitization of his books, Jan wrote, "This 84-year-old thanks you for your gift of remaining extant forever.†His works now have the chance to become cultural artifacts, not just design relics. And for that, I'm very grateful. A whole new generation of designer can now access his books with ease. I hope you love his content as much as I do!
You can view all of The Typofiles right here.


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Robert D. Hormats serves as Under Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs. Originally posted on DipNote, the U.S. Department of State official blog.
Nearly one billion people — one seventh of the world's population — suffer from chronic hunger. Because of extreme hunger and poverty, children, adults, and indeed entire societies are prevented from achieving their full potential. But, through the work of many, progress is being made.
Today, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, Ambassador Kenneth Quinn of the World Food Prize Foundation, and I honored the former President of Ghana, H.E. John Agyekum Kufuor, and the former President of Brazil, H.E. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as recipients of the 2011 World Food Prize. Their commitment and visionary leadership have propelled Ghana and Brazil toward meeting Goal 1 of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals — to reduce the prevalence of poverty and hunger by half by the year 2015.
This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the World Food Prize. It recognizes the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world. In preparations for the awards ceremony, I was reminded of the visionary work of Dr. Norman Borlaug, the founder of the World Food Prize, and the crucial impact of innovation in addressing global hunger. Dr. Borlaug's life story and dramatic successes merit our ongoing respect and appreciation, and should inspire use to better address the food security challenges that we face today.
Two hundred years ago, the English economist Thomas Malthus reasoned that food production could never keep up with population growth. This theory continued into the late 1960s, when Paul Ehrlich in The Population Bomb similarly forecast mass global famine. Ehrlich also argued that India, with its rapidly growing population, was incapable of becoming self-sufficient in food production. The work of Norman Borlaug proved otherwise.
In 1944, Dr. Borlaug began work as a plant geneticist in Mexico. There, over the course of twenty years, he perfected a variety of high-yielding short-strawed, disease-resistant wheat. Through a collaboration with the Indian agriculture scientist M.S. Swaminathan (recipient of the first World Food Prize in 1987), Dr. Borlaug's dwarf wheat was adapted to India's local conditions. As a result, wheat yields for the country increased from 12.3 million tons in 1965 to 20.1 million tons in 1970. And, contrary to Paul Ehrlich's prediction, by 1974 India was self-sufficient in the production of all cereals. U.S. – India collaboration helped spark the "Green Revolution" of the 1960s and '70s, which led to a dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity not only in India but also throughout much of Asia and South America. For spearheading this achievement, Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.
Although Dr. Borlaug passed away in 2009, his contributions to agriculture continue to save countless lives. Yet there remains more work to be done. The world desperately needs a second Green Revolution, and in particular one that extends to Africa. Having lived and worked in Africa, I am deeply aware of the tragedy of chronic hunger and the need for global collective effort to resolve this enormous moral challenge.
The United States and the international community are extending support for sustainable, agriculture-led growth that will help people suffering around the world to lift themselves out of poverty. Sustainable agriculture is a powerful tool to increase the availability and accessibility of quality food and reduce poverty. Momentum is building for global action, and the leaders of developing countries have also recognized the need to invest more in their own food security. Achieving a second Green Revolution will depend on policy changes such as those implemented in Ghana and Brazil by Presidents Kufuor and Lula, respectively, as well as agricultural innovation through science and technology development.
Innovation is key to help solve the challenge of producing and distributing food more efficiently to meet the needs of a growing global population while, at the same time, adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change. I am excited by the breadth of talent that is being brought to bear on the challenges of food security. Ranging from low-tech options such as a treadle pump that is improving irrigation and access to water in villages across Africa, to high-tech geographical information systems utilizing the latest satellite technology and cell phones that allow smallholder farmers to benefit from access to market data, timely weather forecasts, and crop advice.
Governments and the private sector are also beginning to recognize that agricultural innovation must extend all the way from seed to market so that improvements in farm productivity are matched by post-harvest and preservation technologies. For example, the single most important problem facing the Indian agricultural industry — and that of many emerging economies — is the highly inefficient supply chain. In India, it is estimated that over 40 percent of the nation's farm output rots before it gets to the market. Therefore, improvements to post-harvest processes such as with cold chain storage and transportation technologies are also vital to achieve food security. We are beginning to explore these opportunities with the Indian government and hope to work with other governments in the future. And, we plan to work with American companies with great expertise in food storage and distribution.
There is no silver bullet that can be implemented to meet the world's food needs. Hence, it is vital that we support sound food security policies and the development and dissemination of food-related technologies to address these issues. It is also fitting that we celebrate and draw inspiration from innovators such as Norman Borlaug and visionary leaders such as this year's World Food Prize laureates.


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Prague To Host EU Satellite Navigation Agency
December 10, 2010
By Dave Keating
BRUSSELS -- EU ministers in Brussels have voted to let the Czech Republic host the headquarters of a planned European satellite navigation tool that could rival the U.S. government's Global Positioning System (GPS).
Ministers from EU member states chose Prague to be the host city for the agency charged with developing the so-called Galileo satellite navigation technology. The agency -- the European GNSS Supervisory Authority -- has already been operating for three years out of Brussels.
In an interview with Czech television, Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas called the decision a success for the entire country.
"This is very good news because this will bring the most advanced technologies to the Czech Republic and, accordingly, one of most technologically advanced systems in the European Union will be controlled from here, from the Czech Republic," he said.
U.S. Rival
The Galileo system was taken over by the EU in 2007 after the public-private partnership developing it collapsed. It is set to be operational by 2014.
Several countries were vying to host the agency and in the final days Prague was competing against the Dutch town of Noordwijk to secure the agency's headquarters.
Before the vote, the Czech Republic was one of only four member states that joined the EU in 2004 which had not yet been chosen to host an EU agency or body.
The tasks to be fulfilled by the Prague-based agency will include security accreditation and the operation of the Galileo security center, as well as the commercialization of the European GNSS systems.
One of the goals of the $4.5 billion Galileo project is to give the EU independence from GPS, which is owned by the U.S. government. The only other satellite navigation tool for European consumers or governments is the Russian GLONASS system. Many in the EU have worried that being dependent on foreign governments for satellite navigation puts Europe in a militarily weak position.
Several countries have been working for decades to try and develop satellite navigation systems that would be independent of the U.S. GPS. China is developing its own rival "BeiDou" navigation system that is intended to first be used by its military. According to the China National Space Administration, the system is aiming to cover China by 2012 and the world by 2020.
Allan Brimicombe, head of the Center for Geo-Information Studies at the University of East London, said countries like Russia and China "worry . that America could downgrade or even switch [GPS] off selectively in their corners of the world," adding, "In the EU, the thinking is similar."
Russian Setback
On December 5, Russia's GLONASS navigation system suffered a major setback when three of its satellites failed to reach orbit and crashed into the Pacific Ocean, about 1,500 km north of the U.S. state of Hawaii.
The crash is estimated to have cost Russia $162 million and has likely delayed Moscow's goal of achieving 100 percent coverage for its system.
The United States has always maintained that GPS is a neutral technology. But during the 2008 Russia-Georgia war there were accusations that GPS signals had been blocked or blurred. Those accusations added urgency to Russia's desire to complete its own system.
The EU has been more hesitant to brand its developing system as a rival to the American GPS, and has emphasized its compatibility with GPS technology. But Galileo is expected to have significant improvements over GPS, including giving users faster and more reliable tracking and pinpointing locations more exactly instead of the current GPS range of several meters.
Earlier this year a consortium of German and British companies was asked to provide the first operational spacecraft for the system. The first satellites are scheduled to be finished and ready for launch in the second half of 2012. By early 2014 it is expected that there could be up to 16 spacecraft in the Galileo network.
Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/prague_galileo_agency/2245066.html
Copyright (c) 2010. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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text:
Story by
Josh Ong
Josh Ong is the US Editor at The Next Web. He previously worked as TNW's China Editor and LA Reporter. Follow him on Twitter or email him a Josh Ong is the US Editor at The Next Web. He previously worked as TNW's China Editor and LA Reporter. Follow him on Twitter or email him at [email protected].
The AntiSec hacking group claims to have released a set of more than 1 million Apple Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs) obtained from breaching the FBI. The group claims to have over 12 million IDs, as well as personal information such as user names, device names, notification tokens, cell phone numbers and addresses.
(Updated with link below to check whether your device's UDID was leaked)
The hackers issued a statement with the following description on how the data was obtained:
During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber Action Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached using the AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability on Java, during the shell session some files were downloaded from his Desktop folder one of them with the name of "NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv" turned to be a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc. the personal details fields referring to people appears many times empty leaving the whole list incompleted on many parts. no other file on the same folder makes mention about this list or its purpose.
They published the UDID numbers to call attention to suspicions that the FBI used the information to track citizens. Much of the personal data has been trimmed, however, with the hackers claiming to have left enough for "a significant amount of users" to search for their devices.
If AntiSec's account of the breach is accurate, the NCFTA acronym in the filename would likely refer to the National Cyber-Forensics & Training Alliance, a non-profit corporation of experts from both the private and public sector that investigates cyber-crimes.
TNW has contacted the FBI for comment. Meanwhile, AntiSec says it will not provide further statements or interviews until a mysterious request is fulfilled – to have a photo of a Gawker staff writer dressed in a tutu featured on the company's homepage.
Update: The TNW tech team has built a tool to let you check whether your device was included in the list.
Update 2: The FBI has issued a statement denying both that it had the data in the first place and that an FBI laptop was compromised. Meanwhile, AntiSec has responded on Twitter to the FBI's claims.
(hat tip Hacker News)
Image via Shutterstock
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text:
AVONDALE, La. -- As Seung-Yul Noh exhaled and tilted his head back in a skyward gaze on the 18th green, fellow South Korean players Y.E. Yang and Charlie Wi charged toward him, spraying him with bottled beer.
Noh smiled, removed his hat, held both arms out and soaked it all in.
The 22-year-old overcame windy conditions and the pressure that goes with attempting to secure a maiden PGA Tour triumph, shooting a 1-under 71 on Sunday to win the Zurich Classic by two shots.
He also knew he achieved another goal of providing some joy to a nation that has been reeling since a passenger ship capsized April 16, leaving 300 missing or dead.
"Hopefully, they'll be happy," said Noh, who wore black and yellow ribbons on his white golf hat to honor victims of the ferry accident.
While Noh, the leader through three rounds, never fell out of first, he did make his first three bogeys of the tournament and briefly fell into a tie with Keegan Bradley, the 2011 PGA Championship winner who had the gallery behind him.
But Bradley did himself in with a bogey on the fifth hole and a triple bogey on the sixth.
"I actually played pretty well," Bradley said. "Just made one bad swing on 6 and had a bunch of lip-outs."
Noh remained steady enough- even with wind gusting up to 30 mph -- to hold off the remaining challengers.
"Very challenging today out there, especially playing with Keegan, a major champion, and heavy wind," Noh said.
Noh needed a few clutch shots on the back nine, including a chip out of a grassy downhill lie on the edge of a bunker on 13, which hit the flag on a bounce, setting up a routine birdie putt. On 16, with wind in his face, Noh landed his approach 3 feet from the hole to set up his last birdie, then made a 14-foot par putt on 17 to assure a two-shot cushion on the final hole, uncharacteristically pumping his first afterward.
"Yeah, that was a clutch putt," Noh said, explaining that it left him "very comfortable" on 18.
Noh had made 77 previous PGA Tour starts, never finishing better than tied for fourth at the 2012 AT&T National.
He took the third-round lead in New Orleans while becoming the first to play 54 holes at TPC Louisiana without a bogey. The seventh first-time PGA Tour winner in the last 10 years in the New Orleans event, Noh finished at 19-under 269 and earned $1,224,000. He was playing for the first time with caddie Scott Sajtinac, who seemed awe struck by Noh's combination of talent, wisdom and sense of calm for a player so young.
"He's going to be good," Sajtinac said. "He was unflappable. You need to be unflappable to win on the PGA Tour."
Andrew Svoboda and Robert Streb tied for second. Svoboda had a 69. Streb shot 70, including an eagle on the second hole, and was one shot off the lead after a birdie on 8, but his tee shot was pushed into water by a crosswind on the par-3 ninth hole, and he made double-bogey.
Jeff Overton, who briefly pulled within a stroke of Noh on the back nine, had a 70 to finish fourth at 16 under.
Bradley wound up with a 75 to tie for eighth at 13 under.
On Saturday, Bradley worked his way into the final group, two strokes behind Noh, with a 65.
Bradley was within a stroke after the first hole Sunday, which saw Noh hit his drive into mulch right of the fairway en route to his first bogey. Bradley then birdied the par-5 second hole to tie Noh.
But just a few holes later, Bradley missed a par putt from less than 2 feet, and followed that up by hitting his drive into the water on No. 6. Then, he three-putted to complete a pivotal two-hole stretch in which he dropped four strokes.
While Bradley never recovered from his front-nine falter, Noh still had to ward off a challenge from Overton, who was one stroke back after his 20-foot birdie putt on 10.
Overton, however, bogeyed 11 when he hit his drive into a bunker left of the fairway and his second shot over the fairway and right of the cart path.
Noh, meanwhile, has the victory he needed to get into The Players Championship next month, and his first Masters next spring.
"Dreams come true," Noh said. "When I started at 7 playing golf, I dreamed of always playing (on the) PGA Tour ... or playing any major, especially the Masters."
Divots: Robert Garrigus, who narrowly made the cut Friday, had the best score Sunday with a 64. The round included a 374-yard drive with a tail wind on 18, which he birdied to tie for fifth at 14 under, along with two-time heart transplant recipient Erik Compton. Garrigus, who would have earned nothing had he been one stroke worse during the first two rounds, took home $248,200. ... Ben Martin, who shot a course-record 62 in the first round and was 14 under through 22 holes, was 3 over on the last 50 holes. He tied for 15th with David Toms.


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He suffers from an egregiously unfair reputation. His record, though, shows he was quite a good president.
By Walter Rodgers
from the January 5, 2009 edition
Today, Carter is caricatured as a weak-kneed, sweater-wearing puritan who struggled with lust in his heart, presided over a malaised America, and micromanaged even the scheduling of the White House tennis courts. More recently, he's taken heat for his blunt portrayal of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
What an egregiously undeserved reputation. Carter wasn't just a "good man who got in over his head," as critics say. He was in fact quite a good president.
He kept us out of endless wars. He protected the Alaskan wilderness (Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D) of Wisconsin once told me that "Carter was the greatest environmental president the country ever had.") He promoted a visionary energy policy. He countered the Soviet military threat. And since he left office, he has persistently promoted the cause of peace around the world. The landmark Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty he fashioned remains in force today.
Against the backdrop of an unnecessary trillion-dollar war in Iraq, it is instructive to recall how Carter avoided a similar morass when he negotiated the Panama Canal treaties, for which he was excoriated by Ronald Reagan's Republicans. When he left office, he was able to say with Thomas Jefferson "[D]uring the period of my administration not a drop of the blood of a single citizen was shed by the sword of war."
In the public mind, Carter continues to be judged as "ineffectual." Yet he started that treaty ratification process with fewer than 40 votes of the 67 needed. Pentagon generals advised him it would require 100,000 troops, rivers of blood, and untold treasure if the US did not return sovereignty of the canal to Panama.
Carter was keenly aware that retaining US control of the canal, as Reagan demanded, might result in another Vietnam-like conflict. Today, looking at America's open-ended wars in Southwest Asia, Carter should be thanked for his wisdom and vision.
President-elect Obama, take note: No matter how loud the clamor for war, if your instincts tell you it's wrong, remember Carter and don't be stampeded onto unnecessary battlefields.
Carter was truly the prophet without honor in his own land on energy policy. Thirty years ago, he preached conservation and alternative energy. A profligate nation – not to mention Congress and the vested interests – ridiculed him. Today, his ideas are mainstream.
Obama take note: The American public believes it has a constitutional right to cheap gasoline. Even with gas prices topping $4 a gallon in 2008, the bestselling vehicles are still gas-guzzling pickups.
Reagan Republicans disingenuously claimed credit for much of America's long-range military buildup that helped win the cold war. But it was Carter who proposed deployment of 200 MIRVed MX missiles in hardened silos to counter an unbridled Soviet buildup. (Under Reagan, only 50 were actually deployed.) Cruise missiles and the B-2 Stealth bomber technology were also born under Carter.
To the Russians, the most terrifying weapon the Americans ever deployed was the intermediate-range Pershing missile, which had a flight time of 10 minutes to Moscow from NATO bases in Germany. Carter agreed to deploy that weapons system. The irony is that Carter's hawkish leanings later in his administration alienated many in the party of George McGovern and, ultimately, Carter was crippled at least as much by Democratic liberals as by Republicans.
Carter was one of the most brilliant presidents we've ever had. Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill wrote that Jimmy Carter was the "smartest public official" he'd ever known. Yet he was portrayed as a Southern bumpkin, and he battled other ugly prejudices. Some Northern Democrats simply could never stomach an openly religious Southern Baptist in the White House. Carter talked like Lyndon Johnson, prayed like Billy Graham, and farmed peanuts in the heart of the old Confederacy. These regional bigotries also colored much of the news reporting. Carter was maligned for events and forces over which a president has little control: inflation fueled by soaring oil prices stoked by the Arabs and OPEC.
Obama take note: American politics is as much about bigotries as it is about issues.
The worst thing about Carter is that he was politically tone deaf. But even that's not true: He simply prized doing what was right over what was popular.
Oh yeah, and that infamous "malaise" speech? He never actually used the word. And his text remains prophetic:
In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.... But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning....
Little by little we can and we must rebuild our confidence. We can spend until we empty our treasuries, and we may summon all the wonders of science. But we can succeed only if we tap our greatest resources – America's people, America's values, and America's confidence.
When we consider the record of the past eight years, Carter's performance – and his vision for America – positively shines. So, let's make a national New Year's resolution: Stop denigrating Carter.
Walter Rodgers is a former senior international correspondent for CNN.


text:
I have something that I'd like to have 3d printed, but one of the things that Sketchup is incredibly shitty at is making things that don't have holes/leaks in them. The extrude/intersect commands fuck up all the time.
Can I send you my leaky .skp file and have you send me back something that Shapeways's printer won't completely fail on?


text:
Spa Perfect is an all natural, powerful enzyme that breaks down organics to reduce spa maintenance and prevent scum lines, organic staining and surface oils. It eliminates skin and eye irritation and strong chemical odors, making water feel soft and silky.
1oz (30mL) per 100 gallons (380L)
(one cap per 400 gallons (1,500L)
1. Add 1oz (30mL) per 100 gallons (380L) per week - one capful per week treats 400 gallons (1,500L)
2. Use twice per week during periods of heavy use
Do not use with or immediately after shocking. Sanitizer level must be under 5ppm before using Spa Perfect


text:
Astronauts on board the International Space Station had to rush into two docked Soyuz spaceships as space debris nearly missed their homebase, passing just 250 meters (820 feet) from it. In space, that's a pretty close call.
While this is not been the first time that the evacuation protocol has been activated—it happened once in 2009—it was an especially tense moment because the space debris was not detected until it was too late to move the station to a completely safe spot. According to an unidentified Russian source, "the space junk was detected too late for a ducking maneuver."
Russian and NASA officials have stated that this was "not an emergency situation," and the astronauts went back to their normal day after spending thirty minutes inside the Soyuz capsules. Although if the astronauts had to get into their escape pods, surely that qualifies as an emergency situation. Perhaps for them an emergency situation is something actually hitting the station and the astronauts having to fire up their spaceships back to Earth.
I have said it before, and I will say it again here: These guys need lasers, or a better detection system. It would be terrible to lose the station—not even to mention lives—after so many years and money spent on this marvel. [AFP and Fox News]


text:
- Defining a group of virtual machines that failover together.
- Defining the dependencies between the virtual machines so that the application comes up accurately.
- Automating the recovery along with custom manual actions so that tasks other than the failover of the virtual machines can also be achieved.
|The above image shows how a three tier application looks when a recovery plan is created for it.
|After initiating a failover you can go to the jobs page to see the progress. The jobs page will show you granular progress and inform you if there is any error during the execution.
|The virtual machines are now recovered in Azure. Now you can interact with them as if they are IAAS VMs.


text:
In some countries where U.S. soldiers are posted, there are significant restrictions on their ability to keep weapons in off-base housing -- and surprise: in those countries, the soldiers have much lower rates of suicide:
Even as the Army recorded its worst year in decades for soldiers killing themselves -- with 323 deaths in 2012 -- there were places in the service where suicides are rare....It's not just U.S. soldiers who commit suicide less often when firearms in the home are restricted:
American troops anywhere in the world are heavily restricted on registration and storage of personal firearms while living on U.S. military bases. But that uniformity ends when the issue is off-base housing.
Troops overseas must abide by the restrictions of host nations, according to military policy. Accordingly, U.S. soldiers in South Korea, Germany, Italy and elsewhere are virtually without access to personal firearms....
Last year there were three Army suicides among the 25,000 soldiers posted in Germany, one among 19,200 in South Korea and none in Italy where 3,900 soldiers are based.
Meanwhile, U.S. posts often see double-digit suicides each year. There were a dozen among the 30,000 GIs at Fort Campbell, Ky., last year; 17 at Fort Hood, Texas, which has 46,500 soldiers; and 10 among the 20,000 GIs at Fort Stewart, Ga., according to Army statistics....
In Israel, which has tough restrictions on personal firearms, the Israeli Defense Force changed policy in 2006, prohibiting troops from taking their service weapons home on weekends. Suicides dropped 45%, according to a 2010 study.Some information on this subject is about to be released in a Defense Department study:
A soon-to-be published study by the Pentagon's National Center for Telehealth and Technology asserts there is a gun culture among those who volunteer to serve and acknowledges the difficulty of restricting personal firearms, despite evidence that it could reduce suicides.The reaction of the gun culture and its agents in Congress will probably be to ban the federal government from conducting any more studies of this kind.
This comes from a sidebar story in USA Today; the main story, on suicide, notes that method plays a major role in whether people attempting suicide actually succeed:
While guns are involved in just 5.6% of suicide attempts, they account for 55% of suicide fatalities. That's because 85% of suicide attempts involving guns result in death, making firearms the leading method of suicide in the USA, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In comparison, taking pills results in death in 2% of cases....But don't tell Wayne LaPierre:
The National Rifle Association has said guns don't play a major role in suicide, arguing that suicidal people will always find a way to kill themselves.Even though he and his pals are wrong:
The facts don't bear that out, says Catherine Barber, who directs the Means Matter Campaign at the Harvard School of Public Health's Injury Control Research Center....There was also a big drop in suicides and overdoses in the U.K. after it was no longer possible to buy paracetamol (acetaminophen) in any packaging except blister packs.
A 2005 study found that, among people who had survived a suicide attempt, one in four deliberated for less than five minutes. Nine in 10 people who survive a suicide attempt don't later die of suicide, according to the Harvard center....
Many studies show that reducing access to lethal methods dramatically lowers the rate of suicide, Barber says.
For example, suicide rates fell in the United Kingdom after that country eliminated carbon monoxide from home cooking gas, which had been the most common form of suicide in the 1950s. A 2002 study estimates that, over a 10-year period, that change saved up to 7,000 lives.
So, um, separate depressed people from guns, which are an easy way for them to kill themselves? We'll never do that in America, will we? The gunners will raise holy hell. Because they care about guns and guns only -- they don't care about saving lives.


text:
Running across Northumberland and Cumbria in Northern England, lies a very old dividing wall. Built nearly 2,000 years ago, about 50 years after the birth of Christ, this great stone barrier marked the northern edge of the Roman Empire. It divided the southern conquered lands, from those to the north which lay in the hands of the Britons and the Picts. The sheer size of it is breathtaking, even in its crumbled and worn present state.
Walking it now, and seeing its stone blocks still in place, you can't help but marvel at the human effort put into building this, when there was no mechanised help. It was a grand undertaking, and the scale of work, the materials and the statement it must have made as it sprang up across this beautiful green landscape leave us in awe to this day.
It also left me thinking a lot about the arbitrary lines we draw across the earth, naming this piece and that as belonging to certain groups. Out here in the wild empty space of the far north of England it just seems a nonsense. Nowadays there is another dividing line slightly further to the north, separating Scotland from England, but it seems just as meaningless as you drive across it. Nothing suddenly changes, the earth just rolls on, despite the words we have drawn on the signs.
Hadrians wall was a grand political statement in its day, and despite time reducing its height to a fifth, it still makes a grand impression on the landscape and on our minds. It ran from the East coast to the West, cutting our island in half. A truly great feat of engineering by men long dead.