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Home Sales, Jobs Data Further Bolster Economic Outlook
By Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON -- U.S. home resales rose to a 10-month high in July and the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, signaling strength in the economy early in the third quarter.
The growth outlook was further buoyed by other reports Thursday showing factory activity in the mid-Atlantic region hit its highest level since March 2011 in August while a gauge of future economic activity increased solidly last month.
The National Association of Realtors said existing home sales increased 2.4 percent to an annual rate of 5.15 million units. That was the highest reading since last September and confounded economists' expectations for a pullback.
%VIRTUAL-pullquote-It goes some way in allaying fears about a relapse in the housing sector recovery, which until recently appears to have stagnated.%Home resales have now increased for four straight months after the housing market recovery stalled in the second half of 2013 following a run-up in mortgage rates.
"It goes some way in allaying fears about a relapse in the housing sector recovery, which until recently appears to have stagnated," said Millan Mulraine, deputy chief economist at TD Securities in New York.
In a separate report, the Labor Department said initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 14,000 to a seasonally adjusted 298,000 for the week ended Aug. 16. That pointed to a sustained improvement in labor market conditions.
The four-week average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, rose 4,750 to 300,750. But at that level it is consistent with solid job growth and claims are back to pre-recession levels.
U.S. stocks were trading higher, with the S&P 500 index hitting an intraday record. The housing index was up 0.27 percent, with PulteGroup (PHM) gaining 0.26 percent.
The dollar was little changed against a basket of currencies while prices for U.S. Treasury debt rose marginally.
Firming Labor Market
The jobless claims report covered the period during which the government surveyed employers for August's nonfarm payrolls data. The four-week average of claims fell 8,500 between the July and August survey periods, suggesting another month of relatively strong job gains.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 209,000 in July, marking the sixth consecutive month that job growth topped 200,000, a sign of strength last seen in 1997. The firming jobs picture appears to have caught policymakers by surprise.
%VIRTUAL-WSSCourseInline-876%Minutes of the Federal Reserve's July 29-30 policy meeting published Wednesday showed officials viewing the improvement in labor market conditions as "greater than anticipated" and hinted that that could lead to an early interest rate increase.
The U.S. central bank had previously termed labor market slack "significant" but the minutes showed many policymakers thought this characterization "might have to change before long."
The Fed has held its benchmark interest rate near zero since December 2008. The economy grew at a 4 percent annual rate in the second quarter. Growth estimates for the third quarter are currently around a 3 percent pace.
In a third report, financial data firm Markit said its preliminary, or "flash," U.S. Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index rose to 58 this month, the highest since April 2010, from 55.8 in July.
That show of strength was corroborated by a separate report from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, which showed its business activity index increased to 28 this month, the highest since March 2011, from 23.9 in July. Any reading above zero indicates expansion in the region's manufacturing.
"Overall, today's Philly Fed and Markit manufacturing surveys indicate continued healthy growth in the manufacturing sector in August," said Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays in New York.
A fifth report from the Conference Board showed its Leading Economic Index increased 0.9 percent last month after advancing 0.6 percent in June.
-Additional reporting by Jason Lange in Washington and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss in New York.


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|Dynamic membrane patterning, signal localization and polarity in living cells. Soft matter. 11, pp.838–849 (2015)..
|Combined collapse by bridging and self-adhesion in a prototypical polymer model inspired by the bacterial nucleoid. Soft Matter. 11, pp.1677-1687 (2015)..
|Evaluation and improvements of clustering algorithms for detecting remote homologous protein families. BMC Bioinformatics. 16(1), pp.34 (2015)..
|Population genomics reveals chromosome-scale heterogeneous evolution in a protoploid yeast. Molecular Biology and Evolution. 32(1), (2015)..
|Speed of evolution in large asexual populations with diminishing returns. Journal of Theoretical Biology. 365, pp.23-31 (2015)..
|Dealing with light: The widespread and multitasking cryptochrome/photolyase family in photosynthetic organisms. J Plant Physiol. 172, pp.42-54 (2015)..
|Oxidative stress contributes to autophagy induction in response to endoplasmic reticulum stress in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Plant Physiol. 166, pp.997-1008 (2014)..
|The yeast autophagy protease Atg4 is regulated by thioredoxin. Autophagy. 10, pp.1953-64 (2014)..
|In vitro characterization of bacterial and chloroplast Hsp70 systems reveals an evolutionary optimization of the co-chaperones for their Hsp70 partner. Biochem J. 460, pp.13-24 (2014)..
|Cardiolipin at the heart of stress response across kingdoms. Plant Signal Behav. 9, pp.e29228 (2014)..
|Thioredoxin-dependent redox regulation of chloroplastic phosphoglycerate kinase from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. J Biol Chem. 289, pp.30012-24 (2014)..
|High-resolution crystal structure and redox properties of chloroplastic triosephosphate isomerase from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Mol Plant. 7, pp.101-20 (2014)..
|Putative role of the malate valve enzyme NADP-malate dehydrogenase in H2O2 signalling in Arabidopsis. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 369, pp.20130228 (2014)..
|Insight into protein S-nitrosylation in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Antioxid Redox Signal. 21, pp.1271-84 (2014)..
|Fifteen years later: hard and soft selection sweeps confirm a large population number for HIV in vivo. PLoS Genet. 10(2), pp.e1004179 (2014)..

subset: commoncrawl


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Almost 400 posts.
So she has not had visitors during this time.
I didn't want to take the chance of bringing in any germs plus she has been extremely tired
and very very sick.
After reading your comments today...I tried to answer most questions with a comment of my own.
So please go to my comments to read a little more.
**New Update**
The criminal blog has been taken down!
I'm not sure if Blogger did this or if the blogger himself gave up.
This does not mean that it won't happen again.
But at least for now...I know my posts are still my own.
Now... I'm going to really try to get back to business as usual.


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Editor's note: An earlier version of this article first appeared in American Thinker.
Last week, before an audience of millions of Americans, the new president made a telling statement. Alluding to the American founders, President Barack Obama, in his Inaugural Address, stated: "The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness." This seemed to be a reference to the Declaration of Independence, or at least to the principles in that sacred political document.
On the surface, Obama certainly said nothing objectionable. The moment I heard those words, however, I immediately noticed—as did others who quickly commented—that Obama neglected two crucial things from the most famous line not only in the Declaration of Independence but in the essence of the American founding: 1) He left out the unalienable right to "Life;" and 2) He left out the words "created" and "Creator"—the God who "endows" that "Right," a right which is a "self-evident" "truth."
This slight was significant for many reasons. Chief among them, it is patently clear—as it was to the American founders—that one must have life before one can entertain liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That is why that quintessential right is so fundamental and unassailable, as theologians and political philosophers alike have long underscored in their admiration of the Declaration. Thomas Jefferson himself wrote that very line, which was preserved throughout the edits and revisions to Jefferson's text by John Adams, Ben Franklin, and the entirety of the Continental Congress.
Even that, though, does not get to the heart of what Obama pronounced. Whether the new president—and his speechwriter and staff—realized it or not, he inter-mixed the core of the Declaration with the core slogan of the French Revolution: "liberty, equality, and fraternity." He seems to have integrated the guiding document of the French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, with the guiding document of the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence.
There, too, in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the emphasis on "life" is replaced with "equality." The word "life" is non-existent, as is the notion of a "Creator" of that life.
That was no accident by those who spearheaded the French Revolution. Robespierre and his Jacobins were secular, militantly atheistic, socialistic, even communistic. (Some historians have called the Jacobins the "first communists," and Vladimir Lenin called his Bolsheviks "glorious Jacobins.") The American founders, who read the French documents, saw the dangers endemic in the words of the French revolutionaries. As John Adams feared in a letter to Jefferson, "I know not what to make of a republic of thirty million atheists."
The American founders understood what we need to understand: words and ideas matter. We should read and consider them carefully. What Obama said in his inaugural is, presumably, an expression of his view of America, of government, and, yes, literally of "Life."
So, how could such a far-reaching mangling of the most famous quotation in American history take place before a massive crowd at the most hyped inaugural ever and few noticed or care? The answer is the failure of American education, from K-12 to higher ed. On that, I will wrap up with two examples, one negative and one positive:
In Cupertino, California, in November 2004, a fifth-grade teacher, Steven Williams, was barred from giving students historical American documents that mention God, including the Declaration of Independence. "It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders … is outrageous and shameful," protested Williams' attorney. "Williams wants to teach his students the true history of our country."
The teacher's mistake was to teach the truth—an inconvenient, unwelcome truth. Ironically, such prevention of truth has produced precisely the kind of Americans incapable of recognizing the political-historical revisions on display before them in Obama's Inaugural Address.
Compounding the problem, in the case of the Inaugural Address, is that even fewer Americans—needless to say—learned anything about the devastating secular-atheism that was the thrust of the French Revolution.
On the positive side, there are rare institutions, like Grove City College, where students learn these things. Specifically, every Grove City College student is required to take the six-course Humanities curriculum that exposes these and other crucial concepts. In the final installment of that curriculum, the course, "Huma 302," or Modern Civilization in International Perspective, which I teach with several other professors, I start with the American Revolution and the French Revolution, where we read—word for word—the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Our students know the difference.
To try to export this instruction beyond the walls of our college, the Center for Vision & Values hosts an American Founders Lecture Series quarterly in Pittsburgh. We recognized this dire need before January 20, 2009.
Yet, we are a mere drop in the sand in the arid desert that is American education. Thanks to decades of terrible teaching, and a blatant rejection of many fundamental beliefs of the founders, we are now reaping the desiccated fruit. It tastes awfully bitter, and a long period of wandering is upon us.


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Golden Globe-nominated actor Chris Noth will be on the red carpet at the 16th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) next month.
The star from Sex And The City and The Good Wife will be at PiFan to present 3, 2, 1… Frankie Go Boom at its Gala Night on July 21. He will also be at the South Korean festival's Opening Night on July 19.
Written and directed by Jordan Roberts, the low-budget independent comedy Frankie Go Boom will be making its Asian premiere at PiFan. The film stars Charlie Hunnam as the long-suffering brother of a wannabe filmmaker (Chris O'Dowd) who uploads videos of his sibling's humiliations to promote his career. Frankie Go Boom features Chris Noth as a free-wheeling, burnt-out TV star whose daughter unwittingly gets mixed up with the brothers. The film also features Hell Boy star Ron Perlman as a transsexual computer hacker.
The comedy is programmed in PiFan's Vision Express section along with other films such as Imtiaz Ali's Rockstar, Pang Ho Cheung's Vulgaria and Bart Layton's The Imposter.
PiFan will run for 11 days with the Awards Ceremony on July 27 and encore screenings July 28-29. The Gala Nights are a new institution for the fest, which plans to make "every night a Gala night" at the Bucheon City Hall.


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As is to be expected during an election, there are false rumors circulating about my candidacy. Given the nature of these rumors and the unfounded fear that some have expressed, I would like to set the record straight.
First, I support our schools. So much so that I have fought time and time again to save teachers and critical programs like Reading Recovery. My son is an ORHS graduate and my daughter is a student at Linden. I have been very active in our schools since I moved here 12 years ago and could not be more impressed with the quality of our teachers and staff.
The rumor (that I am not supportive of our schools) is likely attributable to my frequent challenges of our superintendent and school board. My primary concern is that, in spite of being the most generous city in the state, your money is not making it into the classroom where it belongs. Elected or not, I will never tolerate putting teachers, reading specialists and other front-line employees up on the chopping block (as they do every year) before consideration has been given to cut things like a $1 million server room, a $39,000 SUV for the superintendent or the annual $100,000+ travel budget for senior administrators.
Second, I have no desire to consolidate our school system with the county system. Councilwoman Ellen Smith addressed this same rumor and I share many of her views on why this would not be to our benefit. I will point out, however, that that there is also a selfish reason that I would not support such a move. Because my family lives in the Roane County portion of Oak Ridge, my child's access, along with many of my neighbors' children, to our schools might be jeopardized if we were to merge with Anderson County schools.
Third, I have NEVER indicated that I would pursue cutting retirement benefits of city employees. I am not about to risk anyone's lifelong pursuit to be self-sufficient in their senior years.
Finally, I do not oppose preserving the Alexander Inn. I am fond of this most important landmark, but expressed concern about the proposal that city council passed Monday night. They did so unanimously with a single vote and with less than a week's notice to the public about the details of the taxpayer's obligation. Those details were very complex, but simplified came down to this: Taxpayers just gave a $1.2 million gift to a business (an assisted living facility) that did not compete for this gift and is part of an industry that is thriving and therefore needs no incentive to build and operate at a profit.
We are told again and again that public/private partnerships are "common practice;" in other words, "Everyone is doing it!" I do not believe that government should regularly use your money to pick winners and losers in the free market. If we want to become truly competitive, then we need to level the playing field for ALL businesses (new and existing) by other means like reducing the tax rate and controlling how government spends your money, because it is ALL your money.
I make every effort to be more transparent than what I see in our government. I do not run from questions and I do not attempt to whitewash data with emotional spin. I have openly shared my views on my website, to include some of the more controversial issues that others avoid. I will continue to do so. I welcome anyone with a concern or question to contact me at any time…that is why my phone number, email address and home address are listed on my website and/or campaign materials. Thank you.


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Pennsylvania Free Enterprise Week (PFEW) is a one-of-a-kind summer program that offers in-coming high school juniors and seniors a unique and challenging opportunity to see what it is like to run their own business.
Participants will make up an "imaginary" management team where they will learn first-hand about the Free Enterprise System. Their task - turn their failing company into a financial success! They will develop their own marketing strategies, design a website and in essence, make all of the decisions that are demanded of real life company executives. All work and no fun--NO WAY! PFEW provides students with a chance like no other - to experience what it is like to live on a college campus.
Apply online at:


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It almost seems impossible to live without credit cards, student loans, car payments, and all…
Most Popular Ways to Finance Home Improvements
Saving for making improvements to your home is often the least expensive route, but it's not always possible. Thankfully, you have other options for financing! Our business is in home loans, so you might already guess, that's the option we recommend, but you don't have to take our word for it.
Read about all your home improvement financing options –from traditional home improvement loans to peer-to-peer loans to cash out refinancing –and decide which is best for you!
Traditional Home Improvement Loans
Banks, credit unions, and a few online lenders fund these types of loans. You'll get a lump sum to pay for all the labor and materials for your home improvements, such as replacing your HVAC system or putting in a new pool.
Though the name implies that it's a home loan, it's not –at least not in the typical sense of the term. It doesn't consider your home equity nor does it require your home as collateral.
A home improvement loan is unsecured so you can expect a higher rate than you would with a secured loan.
Personal Line of Credit
This loan is also an unsecured loan and is collateral-free. You can use the lump sum however you wish. You can upgrade your home and set some money aside for a vacation too. Or maybe pay down some debt. They are funded reasonably fast and don't require any equity in your home either.
However, a word of caution: the repayment period is usually shorter. This means that your monthly payment will likely be high. If you cannot afford to make high monthly payments, a personal line of credit may not be for you.
Peer-to-Peer Loan
Neither A bank or the government fund these loans. They are funded by a group of investors. They go by different names, and you may have even received a flyer in the mail from these non-traditional lenders.
These loans fund quickly and there are no restrictions for how the money is spent. The downside, however, is that these loans have some of the highest interest rates out there.
Home Equity Loans
Home equity loans and home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) have longer repayment periods with lower interest rates than the above-mentioned loans. That means your monthly payments will be small and more of the payment will go toward the principle.
Another big bonus is that the interest is tax deductible!
The biggest risk to this loan comes with defaulting. If you're unable to repay the loan, you put your home at risk for foreclosure.
A home equity loan lets you borrow a lump sum, while a HELOC acts more like a line of credit.
With a HELOC, you have a "draw period" during which you can withdraw money. During this time, you only have to repay interest so your initial monthly payments will be quite low. When that draw period ends, your payments will then also include the principle. A HELOC typically has a variable interest rate, so your monthly payment could still be low even after the draw period ends, but it may also increase significantly.
If you prefer a fixed rate, then you'll want to look at interest rates of a home equity loan or ask about our fixed-rate HELOCs.
Cash-Out Refinance
A cash-out refinance replaces your current mortgage with a new one, but this time you'll borrow extra money to finance your home improvements. Borrowing more money means it will take longer to pay off your home, however, your new home loan may have a lower rate than your current one.
This option often requires you to have about 20% equity as well as meeting all the typical requirement of a home loan such as employment and good credit score.
FHA Title I Property Improvement Loans
If your equity isn't high enough for a cash-out refi, consider an FHA Title I loan. This government-funded loan is for specific home improvements such as energy conservation. They cannot be used for luxury improvements such as swimming pools and outdoor patios. This loan caps at $25,000 with a 20-year repayment period. These loans are not widely available, so you'll want to contact us to see if you qualify.
Want to know precisely how low your payment can be to fund your home improvement? Apply today! Use our digital home loan application and upload your docs securely in between shopping for floor tile and a new kitchen countertop!


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Baby Doll Australian Aboriginal Boy 15''
Miniland doll with native Australian Aboriginal features. This doll belongs to our Miniland Dolls collection that promotes the value of equality within kids regardless of their race, gender or condition and allows them to also learn about the diversity in all of us and how to develop social skills such as empathy and tolerance.
- Made of high-quality soft vinyl with a light vanilla scent. This doll is also recyclable
- Made in Spain
- Anatomically correct doll with realistic differences between boy and girl dolls
- Articulated head, arms and legs that can fully rotate allowing the doll to sit, stand or lie down
- Doll is washable and it will not affect their quality and durability
- It is 15 inches long
- Can be dressed with our Miniland' s clothing collection to complete its look
- Comes individually packaged in a polybag with underwear
Additional Information
|Product name
|Baby Doll Australian Aboriginal Boy 15''
|Recommended age
|Height in inches
|Special Needs
|Miniland Teach&Play
|Parts of the body, Parts of the face
|Multiple intelligences
|Emotional Journey, Speaking & Listening
|Featured intelligence
|Social Engagement
|Core Skills
|Imaginative & Role Play, Self-knowledge, Social & Cultural Awareness, Storytelling
Our friendly 24/7 customer service specialists are here to help. Chat with us or call us at1(844) 7JA-CKBO (752-2526) 9am-5pm EST, Monday-Friday.
This company cares about you, your child, and the environment! Mitchel helped me with my purchase and answered any questions I had! Highly recommend:)
Amazing customer service, really quick to respond all staff really kind and helpful x
Customer service was outstanding! The dress we purchased was so soft and comfortable and of course adorable. We will be purchasing more in the very near future.
Best experience at Jack & Bo
It was the first time here and it was amazing ♥


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How Does The Gig Economy Translate To Physician Work?
The New Yorker recently featured a long essay about a popular new episodic work style sweeping America: the "gig economy." The gig economy unbundles units of work previously tied to an employer or specific job. Online platforms serve as conveners to match task requests with those seeking to complete them. The New Yorker notes:
TaskRabbit, which was founded in 2008, is one of several companies that, in the past few years, have collectively helped create a novel form of business. The model goes by many names—the sharing economy; the gig economy; the on-demand, peer, or platform economy—but the companies share certain premises. They typically have ratings-based marketplaces and in-app payment systems. They give workers the chance to earn money on their own schedules, rather than through professional accession. And they find toeholds in sclerotic industries. Beyond TaskRabbit, service platforms include Thumbtack, for professional projects; Postmates, for delivery; Handy, for housework; Dogvacay, for pets; and countless others. Home-sharing services, such as Airbnb and its upmarket cousin onefinestay, supplant hotels and agencies. Ride-hailing apps—Uber, Lyft, Juno—replace taxis. Some on-demand workers are part-timers seeking survival work, akin to the comedian who waits tables on the side. For growing numbers, though, gigging is not only a living but a life. Many observers see it as something more: the future of American work.
The pluses and minuses of this kind of work are fairly straight forward. On the positive side there is speed and convenience (both on the part of the worker, and the one who needs the work done). Rapid matching of task to worker occurs in an online environment that promotes competition and favors those with high ratings and a track record of success. There is flexibility for the worker – he or she can commit to as much or as little work as is convenient, and there is the opportunity for augmenting earnings as small, paying "gigs" can be added to already existing work. Variety provides challenge and interest.
On the negative side, choosing to do gig work full-time leaves the gigger without employee benefits (such as health insurance) and an insecurity of income stream. Without a large, trusted company as the agent for work, there are fewer guarantees of service (or protections) for both the hiring entity and the worker. With freedom comes insecurity. And then there's the question about career advancement and long term economic effects of short-term work.
It seems to me that for most people outside of the healthcare marketplace, the gig economy works best as an income supplement, not replacement. In medicine, however, full time gigging may actually have more pros than cons.
In a system where fee-for-service healthcare is rapidly being replaced with bundled payments, shared responsibility, and accountable care, it is ironic that the workforce is moving in the opposite direction. Although initially physicians were driven to become hospital employees (instead of independent practitioners), now the pendulum is swinging in the gigging direction. Primary care is embracing the "direct pay" model, and more and more physicians are joining locum tenens agencies. I myself was an early adopter of both concierge medicine and locum tenens work.
Direct primary care is efficient – patients pay only for what they need (presumably from an HSA account), and there are incredible cost savings involved for providers, not having to code and bill insurance companies for services. As I've said previously, using health insurance for primary care is like having car insurance for windshield wipers. Expensive overkill.
As far as locum tenens is concerned, there is no better way to prevent burn out and overwork than to reclaim control of your work schedule. Short term work assignments may be accepted or declined at the physician's convenience. You can travel as far and wide as you have interest (there are international locums assignments available too), and gain exposure to various practice styles and locations. You set your hourly rates, and the pay is fair and transparent. No more uncompensated hours of extra work that fuel resentment towards your employer.
New companies such as Nomad Health are poised to revolutionize the gig economy for physicians. By directly linking physicians with job opportunities in an online marketplace, agency costs are avoided, saving money for hospitals and allowing for higher doctor salaries. The question remains if they will gain the user volume necessary to compete with agencies. Nomad Health will succeed if it can convene sufficient numbers of hospitals and physicians to make it worth the time on the site.
The gig economy is the natural evolution of our modern culture. As technology enables an on-demand lifestyle, work is becoming as modifiable as our media consumption. Will chopping work up into smaller bits have a net positive or negative effect? For the companies creating the niche platforms that support the work marketplaces, the outlook seems positive. Uber, for example, is currently valued at about $28 billion. They have drawn inspiration from video games to psychologically incentivize drivers to work longer hours, contributing to their success – and perhaps downfall. By maximizing their own profits at the expense of the drivers, their gigging community is beginning to look for greener pastures at Lyft. Competition is a critical part of the gig economy.
In healthcare, I worry that a significant physician shift towards gigging could be disruptive to care continuity and result in higher costs and poorer outcomes. That being said, the alternative of physician burn out, early retirement, and flight from clinical medicine is not acceptable. I suspect that the gig economy is going to change how physicians engage with the healthcare system – and that within a decade, a large segment of the workforce will be part-timers and short-timers. This may provide a sustainable way for older physicians (or those with family or childcare demands) to continue working, which could substantially improve the physician shortage.
Gone are the days of cradle-to-grave relationships with primary care physicians – I mourn the loss of this customized, deeply personal care, but I stand ready to embrace the inevitable. I just hope that I can connect with my "short-term" patients so that my advice and treatment captures their medical complexity (and personal wishes) correctly. With all the technological tools to personalize medicine these days, it is ironic how impersonal it can be when you rarely see the same physician twice. The gig economy forces us to be perpetual strangers, and that is perhaps its greatest drawback.


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Provided by: collectd-core_5.12.0-11_amd64
collectd-unixsock - Documentation of collectd's "unixsock plugin"
# See collectd.conf(5) LoadPlugin unixsock # ... <Plugin unixsock> SocketFile "/path/to/socket" SocketGroup "collectd" SocketPerms "0770" DeleteSocket false </Plugin>
The "unixsock plugin" opens an UNIX-socket over which one can interact with the daemon. This can be used to use the values collected by collectd in other applications, such as monitoring solutions, or submit externally collected values to collectd. For example, this plugin is used by collectd-nagios(1) to check if some value is in a certain range and exit with a Nagios-compatible exit code.
Upon start the "unixsock plugin" opens a UNIX-socket and waits for connections. Once a connection is established the client can send commands to the daemon which it will answer, if it understand them. In general the plugin answers with a status line of the following form: Status Message If Status is greater than or equal to zero the message indicates success, if Status is less than zero the message indicates failure. Message is a human-readable string that further describes the return value. On success, Status furthermore indicates the number of subsequent lines of output (not including the status line). Each such lines usually contains a single return value. See the description of each command for details. The following commands are implemented: GETVAL Identifier If the value identified by Identifier (see below) is found the complete value-list is returned. The response is a list of name-value-pairs, each pair on its own line (the number of lines is indicated by the status line - see above). Each name-value-pair is of the form name=value. Counter-values are converted to a rate, e. g. bytes per second. Undefined values are returned as NaN. Example: -> | GETVAL myhost/cpu-0/cpu-user <- | 1 Value found <- | value=1.260000e+00 LISTVAL Returns a list of the values available in the value cache together with the time of the last update, so that querying applications can issue a GETVAL command for the values that have changed. Each return value consists of the update time as an epoch value and the identifier, separated by a space. The update time is the time of the last value, as provided by the collecting instance and may be very different from the time the server considers to be "now". Example: -> | LISTVAL <- | 69 Values found <- | 1182204284 myhost/cpu-0/cpu-idle <- | 1182204284 myhost/cpu-0/cpu-nice <- | 1182204284 myhost/cpu-0/cpu-system <- | 1182204284 myhost/cpu-0/cpu-user ... PUTVAL Identifier [OptionList] Valuelist Submits one or more values (identified by Identifier, see below) to the daemon which will dispatch it to all its write-plugins. An Identifier is of the form "host/plugin-instance/type-instance" with both instance-parts being optional. If they're omitted the hyphen must be omitted, too. plugin and each instance-part may be chosen freely as long as the tuple (plugin, plugin instance, type instance) uniquely identifies the plugin within collectd. type identifies the type and number of values (i. e. data-set) passed to collectd. A large list of predefined data-sets is available in the types.db file. The OptionList is an optional list of Options, where each option is a key-value-pair. A list of currently understood options can be found below, all other options will be ignored. Values that contain spaces must be quoted with double quotes. Valuelist is a colon-separated list of the time and the values, each either an integer if the data-source is a counter, or a double if the data-source is of type "gauge". You can submit an undefined gauge-value by using U. When submitting U to a counter the behavior is undefined. The time is given as epoch (i. e. standard UNIX time). You can mix options and values, but the order is important: Options only effect following values, so specifying an option as last field is allowed, but useless. Also, an option applies to all following values, so you don't need to re-set an option over and over again. The currently defined Options are: interval=seconds Gives the interval in which the data identified by Identifier is being collected. meta:key=value Add meta data with the key key and the value value. Please note that this is the same format as used in the exec plugin, see collectd-exec(5). Example: -> | PUTVAL testhost/interface/if_octets-test0 interval=10 1179574444:123:456 <- | 0 Success PUTNOTIF [OptionList] message=Message Submits a notification to the daemon which will then dispatch it to all plugins which have registered for receiving notifications. The PUTNOTIF command is followed by a list of options which further describe the notification. The message option is special in that it will consume the rest of the line as its value. The message, severity, and time options are mandatory. Valid options are: message=Message (REQUIRED) Sets the message of the notification. This is the message that will be made accessible to the user, so it should contain some useful information. As with all options: If the message includes spaces, it must be quoted with double quotes. This option is mandatory. severity=failure|warning|okay (REQUIRED) Sets the severity of the notification. This option is mandatory. time=Time (REQUIRED) Sets the time of the notification. The time is given as "epoch", i. e. as seconds since January 1st, 1970, 00:00:00. This option is mandatory. host=Hostname plugin=Plugin plugin_instance=Plugin-Instance type=Type type_instance=Type-Instance These "associative" options establish a relation between this notification and collected performance data. This connection is purely informal, i. e. the daemon itself doesn't do anything with this information. However, websites or GUIs may use this information to place notifications near the affected graph or table. All the options are optional, but plugin_instance without plugin or type_instance without type doesn't make much sense and should be avoided. type:key=value Sets user defined meta information. The type key is a single character defining the type of the meta information. The current supported types are: s A string passed as-is. Please note that this is the same format as used in the exec plugin, see collectd-exec(5). Example: -> | PUTNOTIF type=temperature severity=warning time=1201094702 message=The roof is on fire! <- | 0 Success FLUSH [timeout=Timeout] [plugin=Plugin [...]] [identifier=Ident [...]] Flushes all cached data older than Timeout seconds. If no timeout has been specified, it defaults to -1 which causes all data to be flushed. If the plugin option has been specified, only the Plugin plugin will be flushed. You can have multiple plugin options to flush multiple plugins in one go. If the plugin option is not given all plugins providing a flush callback will be flushed. If the identifier option is given only the specified values will be flushed. This is meant to be used by graphing or displaying frontends which want to have the latest values for a specific graph. Again, you can specify the identifier option multiple times to flush several values. If this option is not specified at all, all values will be flushed. Example: -> | FLUSH plugin=rrdtool identifier=localhost/df/df-root identifier=localhost/df/df-var <- | 0 Done: 2 successful, 0 errors Identifiers Value or value-lists are identified in a uniform fashion: Hostname/Plugin/Type Where Plugin and Type are both either of type "Name" or "Name-Instance". If the identifier includes spaces, it must be quoted using double quotes. This sounds more complicated than it is, so here are some examples: myhost/cpu-0/cpu-user myhost/load/load myhost/memory/memory-used myhost/disk-sda/disk_octets "myups/snmp/temperature-Outlet 1"
collectd ships the Perl-Module Collectd::Unixsock which provides an abstraction layer over the actual socket connection. It can be found in the directory bindings/perl/ in the source distribution or (usually) somewhere near /usr/share/perl5/ if you're using a package. If you want to use Perl to communicate with the daemon, you're encouraged to use and expand this module.
collectd(1), collectd.conf(5), collectd-nagios(1), unix(7)
Florian Forster <firstname.lastname@example.com>


text:
Quitting a job is no fun. And it certainly isn't easy.
But if you dread going in and you're constantly bored, it may be time to start looking for a position elsewhere.
In a recent LinkedIn post, Robert O'keane, an international search consultant for Charles Francis Cooper, writes that if we ignore the signs that we've outgrown our jobs, "we run the risk of living our life in a stale career or being forced to move on."
Here are four warning signs that it's time to get out:
1. You feel like you can't win.
If you find your role has become confusing, or that people in senior management situations give conflicting feedback, you may want to start thinking about your next move. "No one wants to be stuck in a situation where they can't win and if a job makes you feel like this why not look at moving on?" O'keane asks. Your job should make you feel exhilarated and challenged, he says. "Like you are succeeding in something rather than like you are fighting a losing battle and not achieving anything."
2. You've lost interest.
O'keane says your job should keep you challenged and engaged, but if you're mentally checked out when you should be working, it's probably not a good fit anymore. "It's important that your job pushes you and keeps you interested," he says. If your current position doesn't motivate you, it might be time to look for one that does.
It should also be fun, he says. "You should laugh at work and enjoy your time there. If you find that [it has become] less and less enjoyable, then maybe a change of scenery is what you need."
3. You question every move.
Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, but if you second guess every decision you make at work, your job is likely creating more anxiety than it's worth, O'keane says. "When you get to the stage where you are doubting what you're saying and you're wondering whether people around the table will agree with you, move on," he says. You should be confident at work; not perpetually nervous.
4. You dread going to work.
If you never enjoy yourself at the office or dread returning to work after the weekend, something's missing from your career. Work doesn't have to be the most exciting component of your life, but if there's absolutely nothing you look forward to, consider looking elsewhere. "If you find that your time at work is becoming less and less enjoyable, then maybe a change of scenery is what you need," O'keane says.
Click here to read the full LinkedIn post.
Want your business advice featured in Instant MBA? Submit your tips to email@example.com. Be sure to include your name, your job title, and a photo of yourself in your email.


text:
|The contents of my pantry before the challenge
The Budget:
As far as money goes, I spent $57.09 on food this week, and most of the items I bought were to replace foods that we finished off during the week (milk, peanut butter, etc.). I'm a little embarrassed to admit that the $57.09 includes $14.67 I spent on a frozen turkey breast, because I was nervous that I might spend too much money and not be able to buy one when Thanksgiving rolls around. Whether or not this is giving in to my food hoarding tendencies, it made me feel better about my holiday meal plan, and the turkey is safe in the deep freezer. I'm only a little ahead of budget even given that large purchase. If I put the turkey in the last week's budget instead, I only spent $42.42 this week!
Thoughts & Reflections:
I'm surprised at how much food costs. I've spent a lot of my time since college (when I was on a very tight budget and often eating beans and Ramen noodles) disregarding the numbers on the cash register because I've (blessedly) been in the financial position to do so. Jaymz and I have never been that great at sticking to a budget, but we try to save in smaller ways. However, when we were doing our taxes last year, we discovered just how much we spend on food and I was shocked. I hope to carry the food budget and meal planning aspects of this experiment on past this month and into our regular routine.
I have to say that I'm surprised at the prices of various foods in both directions (pricey and inexpensive) now that I'm paying closer attention. For instance, this week I purchased 10lbs of potatoes for a mere $1.98. Does that seem ridiculously low to you, or is it just me? I spent more than that on one jar of peanut butter ($2.16) and the quantity of food doesn't even come close enough to compare. One of the things I think will be helpful for me through this challenge (and in the future) is to make a point to visit the grocery store less frequently. I only went once this week, and I felt like that one trip was a much more efficient use of both my time and money (as opposed to my usual several trips per week). I also went to the cheaper grocery store, so I wasn't tempted by a gorgeous loaf of gluten free bread or any other goodies that cost more than I'd like and aren't part of my plan.
The other thought I have for this week is that I'm proud of myself for preparing all the meals for everyone every day, and totally sticking to the challenge. I had worried it would be more difficult, but so far, the key has been simply being more intentional about food preparation.
The Adjustments:
The first change we made that affected our first week of the challenge was something we did a few days before the challenge officially began: We cleaned out our pantry cabinet. (The "before" photograph of the contents is at the top of the post, and the "after" photo is to the right.) We needed to move the pantry cabinet in order to put the new freezer in, and for us to do that, it needed to be emptied. I was embarrassed at the many multiples of things that I found in there (which is one problem with keeping shelves constantly full). I was newly motivated to check thoroughly for ingredients before purchasing more.
The best side-effect of this organization is that I now know what is in the cabinet and where to find it. In fact, it was this organizational task that renewed my motivation to take on this challenge in the first place!
The second change we've made mostly affects my partner. Jaymz is (once again) taking his lunch to work every day. This is something we've tried doing intermittently in the past with mixed results. He's very particular about the types of foods he is willing to take to work (specifically, how much effort it takes to reheat, if necessary). He's also very bad at remembering to make his lunch the night before (as in, if he was going to take a sandwich or other cold food item) so that is a huge factor in our previous failure rate. In any case, previous successes at him taking his lunch to work involve preparing a hot dish completely separate from our other meals and pre-packaging it in five (workday) servings. This week, he stayed home on Monday (so he ate leftovers), then he took leftovers from Monday's dinner for Tuesday and Wednesday, and a pasta dish that he prepared for Thursday and Friday. I'm not sure yet how we're going to solve this problem sustainably, but I'm sure we'll think of something!
This Week's Tasks:
- I'd like to get better at advanced menu planning, so I'm going to work on that.
- We need to come up with a long-term strategy for Jaymz's lunches that both of us can be happy with (not too much work for me with good results for Jaymz). He will be home most of this week, so it'll be a good time to troubleshoot this issue.
- We're going out of town for a couple of days this week, so we're planning to spend most (if not all) of our weekly food budget on eating out during those days. This is definitely going to throw a monkey wrench in the routine I have going so far, but I'm pretty sure we can still make it work.
I was inspired to start this challenge (in part) by Momma Jorje's Monday Minimalist series. I'll be participating in Monday Minimalist for these Mondays in November, giving you updates on the progress of our minimalist food challenge.
Go on over to Momma Jorje and grab her brand new MM button!


text:
Two years ago at E3, the teams at DICE and Visceral Games were eager to spoil the announcement of their first-ever game-making collaboration. At the time, staffers from each company privately hinted about their creation and its huge stress on multiplayer. At one party, we nearly coerced drunken Visceral designers to spill the secret, but they only spilled their drinks.
The devs managed to keep their lips sealed about the shape of Battlefield Hardline, the cops-and-robbers spin-off of EA's biggest military franchise, though the momentum of their announcement was nearly stalled by a leak two weeks ago. Somehow, today's full, official reveal rekindled the excitement and then some.
Monday's EA press conference contained early peeks at Star Wars Battlefront and entries in the Mass Effect and Mirror's Edge series, but Battlefield Hardline managed to elicit the biggest cheers, possibly because of its beautifully choreographed gameplay reveal. Shortly afterward, EA put its helicopters where its mouth was, revealing a huge line of PS4 consoles hosting the game's live beta.
We wanted to see how the real thing compared, and while the perfectly timed bombast and invincible lead criminal of the demo were more astounding, we walked away from Hardline genuinely impressed. Battlefield has consistently attempted to shoehorn Call of Duty-esque, quick-burst combat into its open-world, vehicle-loaded formula, usually in the form of underwhelming DLC. But here, the combined forces of DICE and Visceral have instead leapfrogged CoD's tired formula with a city-driven, cash-loaded twist.
We started in the game's "Heist" mode, which was the same as in the presentation. This asymmetrical mode sees a team of robbers combing a battleground—in this case, downtown Los Angeles—looking for a few vaults loaded with cash and valuables. Police officers must stop the criminal squad from setting off explosives and taking the cash, or stop them along the way at various drop-off points, before the criminals eventually get the final cache into a getaway helicopter.
On its face, Hardline doesn't stray from Battlefield's general formula, especially in terms of highly potent weapons. For starters, since when was LA overrun with arms dealers thick in rocket launchers? Both sides also get to pick from classes and loadouts, though instead of upgrades based on experience points and grinding, Hardline appears to hinge more on an in-game cash system. You accumulate cash during each mission to stock up on mid-combat upgrades like better vehicles, zipline hooks, and "non-lethal" taser equipment (which proved surprisingly effective at dispatching foes).
The secret sauce, at least in today's demo, was how Heist mode forced players into high-octane, group-loaded paths to protect (or recover) loads of cash. Getting from point A to point B in any Battlefield game can take a variety of paths, but you'll need a motorcade, mixed with motorcycles and gun-loaded SUVs to do so effectively this time around. The game appears to be built from the ground up to host skyscraper-loaded cityscapes, blown-up freeways, and beautiful, high-action paths that make us most excited about losing hours to its multiplayer mode.
The other mode revealed today, "Blood Money," is a more traditional "protect your turf" mode, asking players to raid a central vault and return its cash to your home base. The catch is that you can also hide by your foes' base, kill any of its thieves, and ferry that cash back home (or pick up cash from dead bodies along the way). This symmetrical mode felt a little more staid, but we liked it as a cool twist on Call of Duty's "Kill Confirmed" mode.In terms of performance, we only saw the game run on PlayStation 4 consoles today. While it didn't stick to the "60 frames a second" promise from its developers, that's more forgivable in beta form. Explosions and particle effects weren't quite up to the PC footage in the eye-bulging demo, but the series' trademark collapsible set-pieces still blew up very nicely.
Really, the biggest shame about this game is that it didn't preempt the launch of last year's Battlefield 4, which was marred with incremental updates, a sorry solo campaign, and horribly broken multiplayer servers. This demo felt like refinement, not total overhaul, and we have to wonder whether it could have launched as a BF4 expansion pack instead. Still, this is a Battlefield experience we could get hooked on, having been worn out a bit by the open-prairie, run-for-kilometers stuff of the past two entries. We'll be eager to test our optimism come October 21.
Listing image by Andrew Cunningham


text:
The initial review of HP's webOS TouchPad tablet paint a somewhat confusing picture. But one thing is clear: It's no iPad 2.
The initial reviews of HP's TouchPad tablet are in and they paint a somewhat confusing picture. But they all agree this much: TouchPad (1) is no iPad 2.
Overall, many reviewers liked the webOS operating system and user interface, especially the way it makes use of multitasking, notifications, and integration with an array of online services and websites via the HP Synergy synchronization feature.
BACKGROUND: Analysts lukewarm on HP TouchPad chances for success
The device itself is where it suffers most in comparison with the iPad: a glossy, black 1-inch plastic case that's slightly thicker and heavier and far more prone to fingerprints, than the sleek, aluminum unibody iPad 2 housing, or of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, running Android 3.1 firmware. The 9.7-inch touchscreen is the same size, resolution and aspect ratio as the iPad 2.
It comes in two Wi-Fi only models (3G models with assisted GPS are coming later), based on internal storage capacity: a 16GB model for $500, and 32GB for $600, the same pricing as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the iPad 2 (which is also available with 64GB, for $700).
There are, of course, far fewer tablet-specific apps for TouchPad, about 300 at launch versus more than 90,000 for iPad. By one recent count, there are about 1,300 Android tablet apps.
Engadget's Tim Stevens sums up a common set of impressions.
"The shortage of apps is a problem, no doubt, but that will change with time," he writes. "What won't change is the hardware, and there we're left a little disappointed.
"Holding this in one hand and either an iPad 2 or a Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the other leaves you wondering why you'd ever be compelled to buy the HP when you could have the thinner, lighter alternative for the same money. Meanwhile, the performance left us occasionally wanting and, well, what is there to say."
UI and operating system
TouchPad has a distinctive UI, based on the webOS firmware originally created by Palm.
"I like the interface a lot," writes Walter Mossberg, reviewing the tablet for The Wall Street Journal. "Instead of a screen full of app icons, the main screen of the TouchPad's operating system, called webOS, presents running apps as "cards" -- large, live rectangles that you scroll through in a horizontal row."
The cards are easy to size, move and close using finger swipes. They can combine both local and offline content, and cards with related functions are "stacked" atop each other.
"It seems to me that the general tenets of the webOS philosophy have always been based around speed, simplicity, and finding the shortest and most organic steps to getting things done, and webOS 3.0 doesn't seem to have lost those principles," says Joshua Topolsky, reviewing for ThisIsMyNext. "HP has certainly tightened up much of what Palm started, and navigating the TouchPad quickly became not only second nature, but an experience I found myself missing [after] going back to the iPad or a Honeycomb [Android] device."
"It works beautifully, and conveys far more information than the iPad's application switcher (which is just a row of icons)," says David Pogue, reviewing TouchPad for The New York Times. He notes that HP argues the tablet offers "real multitasking" with all open apps always running, compared to iPad, where only selected apps can run in the background, and the rest are suspended until the user returns to them. "Apple argues that true multitasking runs down the battery -- and the battery-life stats prove it correct," says Pogue.
But Case Johnston, for Ars Technica, noted one problem with the card metaphor: The screen can get cluttered. "We wish there were some way to see an overview of what applications are open without having to swipe between them all," he writes.
Based on various reviews, TouchPad seems to get from just over six hours to more than 8 hours of battery life, depending on the mix of apps, tasks, and whether the tablet's Wi-Fi radio is turned on, and if so, for how long. The iPad 2 consistently gets about 10 hours.
Some reviewers consistently reported uneven application performance, which they found surprising because TouchPad runs a powerful 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU with 1GB of RAM.
"[I]t should be fast ... but too often left us waiting," Engadget's Stevens writes. "Bootup, for example, takes 1:15, which is an eon compared to 30 seconds or so on both the Galaxy Tab and the iPad 2."
Johnston, at Ars Technica, says "performance was in general quite snappy. Swiping between cards and opening applications is quick and smooth, and we rarely saw a jittery action from the TouchPad except when Adobe Flash reared its ugly head." On occasion, he adds, an app freezes or becomes unresponsive.
Web browsing is pretty snappy most of the time, but inexplicably bogged down on some Web pages, Stevens found. "Online video plays in the browser, but rarely well," Stevens writes. Most applications load quickly and run responsively. But some, such as Weatherbug, are very slow.
Several reviewers reported a gradual slowdown in the system over a day or two; they rebooted to restore performance.
"It's clear the Qualcomm chip is no slouch, but I did see performance issues while using the TouchPad, though I believe that has more to do with buggy code than underpowered hardware," writes ThisIsMyNext's Topolsky. Several reviewers say HP told them the company is aware of these bugs and has either already addressed them or will soon in a webOS firmware update.
The bottom line
Here's how a number of reviewers wrap it up:
"The HP TouchPad, if it were less expensive, could be an extremely strong, if slightly less polished, alternative to the iPad. But like other recently released high-profile Android tablets, it's determined to take on the champ. And just like those Android tablets, it's hard to recommend over an iPad at the same price." - Casey Johnston, Ars Technica
"[T]he stability and smoothness of the user experience is not up to par with the iPad or something like the Galaxy Tab 10.1, even if many of the underlying ideas are actually a lot better and more intuitive than what the competition offers. That, coupled with the minuscule number of quality apps available at launch make this a bit of a hard sell right now. If HP can convince developers to get behind this product, and the company can laser focus on the end-user experience, becoming the number two player in tablets isn't as crazy as it sounds." - Joshua Topolsky, ThisIsMyNext.com
"If the Pre 3 were out today and if the TouchPad were $100 less we could maybe see giving it a go, if only to root for the underdog. But, as it is, you have to put your heart and two decades worth of Palm obsession ahead of any buying rationale. With such compelling alternatives readily available, that's asking rather a lot." - Tim Stevens, Engadget
"Just like Google, HP will likely work out many of the [TouchPad's] kinks with its first over-the-air update -- at which time we'll revisit our rating -- but right now the TouchPad is a tough sell." - Mark Spoonauer, Laptop Mag
"Overall, HP's TouchPad offers a great user experience on hardware that's top of the line. It makes an appealing tablet choice to those who want to work it into their workflow. But the drawback of a more limited app selection and lack of a rear-facing camera will see some consumers passing on it for the iPad 2." - Brian Jackson, ITBusiness.ca
"WebOS and the Palm TouchPad are nearly perfect, an excellent amalgamation of everything that was ever right about Palm. But is even perfection, in this market, enough? Without a strong app base and some work on performance issues, the TouchPad may be the most beautiful dead end we have seen yet. But there is hope." - John Biggs, CrunchGear
"I actually prefer webOS to early Android tablets and believe it compares favorably to iOS in many respects. It's actually a terrific operating system for tablets. And the TouchPad, which I generally like, has a world of potential. Potential means things are missing (movie and music stores, true GPS). I also encountered frustrating snags ... [T]here's a lot to like about the first webOS tablet. But before HP can hope to challenge Apple, it needs to supply more apps and exterminate a few bugs." - Edward Baig, USA Today
You can find an extensive list of review links at the reCentral.Net forums.
John Cox covers wireless networking and mobile computing for Network World.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnwcoxnww
Email: email@example.com
Blog RSS feed: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/2989/feed


text: >From: email@example.com [mailto:firstname.lastname@example.com] >Non-OS venders should be included >Specifically Desktop products that are commonly seen in both corporate and >consumer systems Can you name names? That's a potentially very large list. Would it be worth combining this with a numeric qualifier? Say, desktop products that produce more than 10 disclosures a year? (pulling that number out of the air) > 2. Nice to have > * ZDI > * Exploit-DB > * MSVR - Microsoft Vulnerability Research Advisories > * iDefense > * cisco-sa-xxxxxxxx-xxx (Cisco Security Advisories) > * Htxxxx (Apple) > * VMSA (Vmware Security Advisories) > * CNVD (China National Vulnerability Database) > * Metasploit Module Ids Some of these are behind pay-walls, no? CVE charter is to provide ids for "publicly available" vulnerabilities. I don't consider things behind pay-walls as publicly available. My mind could be changed on that but it would need to be a good argument. -Dave ================================================================== David Mann | Principal Infosec Scientist | The MITRE Corporation ------------------------------------------------------------------ e-mail:firstname.lastname@example.com | cell:781.424.6003 ==================================================================


text:
Research Overview
We are a computational genetics and genomics lab. Our main research is on genetic variation, including mechanisms of spontaneous mutagenesis, functional effects of mutations and allelic variants, population genetics and relationship between genotype and phenotype. As part of our research we develop new computational and statistical methods to assist DNA sequencing studies.
Understanding mutations from sequencing data
Mutations are the source of population genetic variation; they fuel evolution and cause disease. Data on de novo germ-line mutations are now available from whole genome sequencing of parent-child trios. Cancer genomics provides data on somatic cancer mutations. We analyze statistical properties of germ-line and somatic cancer mutations alongside epigenomic datasets. We believe that this analysis has a potential to generate biologically relevant hypotheses on leading mechanisms of spontaneous mutations in humans. From an evolutionary viewpoint, it can be informative about the evolution of mutation rate. On the practical side, accurate models of mutation rate will enhance statistical methods of cancer genomics and neuropsychiatric genetics aimed at mapping genes using recurrent de novo mutations.
Some of our findings include the demonstrated association between mutation rate and replication timing; elevated mutation rate in functional regions due to maintenance of hypermutable sites by natural selection; and a unique spectrum of clustered mutations suggesting a specific mechanism generating clustered mutations. For somatic cancer mutations, we demonstrated that the relationship between chromatin accessibility and modification and mutation rate is highly cell-type specific. We also showed that the somatic mutation rate is decreased in regulatory regions marked by accessible chromatin, and linked this observation to the action of nucleotide excision repair.
Functional effect of allelic variants
It is essential to identify, among a myriad of allelic variants, those with the effect on molecular function. For predicting the functional effect of sequence variants in protein coding regions we rely on the comparative sequence analysis and analysis of protein structure. We are continuously developing and maintaining PolyPhen-2 – a computational method for predicting the effect of missense mutations and SNPs. We are interested in dependence of the functional effect of coding variants on genetic background, and are using comparative genomics to identify suppressors of coding mutations. In non-coding regions of the genome, the effects of regulatory variants can also be analyzed using a combination of functional and comparative genomics data. Here, we are interested in using Whole Genome Sequencing to identify regulatory variants of larger effects in humans and animals.
Population genetics
We are interested in population genetics as a lens through which we can study microevolution. Dynamics of allele propagation in populations depends on a number of evolutionary forces. Now, development of theoretical models is enhanced by the availability of massive sequencing datasets.
Our recent results include the demonstration that deleterious alleles are younger than neutral alleles at the same population frequency. We studied the effect of population bottlenecks and expansions on the burden of deleterious mutations under arbitrary dominance coefficient. We are currently interested in the inference of complex natural selection in the form of balancing selection, genetic dominance, epistasis, and pleiotropy from population sequencing data.
Evolution, maintenance and allelic architecture of complex traits
Despite widespread interest in the genetics of complex traits (including common human diseases), basic principles of complex trait genetics are still poorly understood. We attack the problem from three directions. First, we develop theoretical models of evolution and maintenance of complex trait variation under various allelic architectures. Second, we are involved in a large zebrafish screen aiming at identification of key parameters of allelic architecture of complex traits. Third, we work on statistical methods for the analysis of available genomic data in phenotyped human populations. This includes methods for predicting complex phenotypes from genotypes.
Computational and statistical methods for sequencing studies
We develop computational and statistical methods for sequencing studies. VT-test is designed to detect combined association of rare variants with a complex phenotype. SNPTrack has been developed for gene mapping in model organisms. We continue developing new methods including methods that benefit from pedigree collection and functional genomic data. We actively participate in collaborative projects devoted to sequencing of populations with common diseases.
Brigham Genomic Medicine (BGM)
The lab is intertwined with the computational component of Brigham Genomic Medicine (BGM) program. This service aims at discovering genes underlying previously uncharacterized human Mendelian diseases of rare diseases with unknown genetic etiology. We use genomic data of individual pedigrees to identify mutations potentially causing the phenotypes.


text:
There's a trick to technical interviews. Every question is looking for integrity first, and intelligence and energy second. This is paraphrasing Warren Buffet, who became the most successful investor out there by becoming the best at interviewing the management of the companies he was investing in.
To understand what answers are right you need to understand the motives of the interviewer. Why are they asking these questions, what are they looking for? Yes, you can cram for an interview and hope you get more questions right, but that isn't what's going to make or break you. It may help you represent yourself as more of a subject-matter expert than you are, which can be both good and very, very bad. What they're looking for is someone who can be a good employee a lot more than someone who can currently pass a written exam.
In the end, if you don't know how to answer a question I know you can go look it up. However, what integrity do you have when you don't know the answer? This is where all those years you spent in school are going to fail you, miserably. You've been taught from a young age that you need to have an answer for every question on the test, even if it's because you'll get 25% of them right on multiple choice or 10% partial credit on something else. Interviewers, like your teachers, know the answers they're looking for before the question was asked. However, interviewers are different in that they give negative credit instead of partial credit.
So, what is this negative credit and why are they giving it to you? Lets look at it from the context of being on the job. I'm a Database Administrator, and I have developers ask me questions from time to time. Many times I know the answers and can help them out off the top of my head, we're not going to worry about those times. The problems come from when I don't know or I'm unsure of the answer. Do I have the integrity to tell that developer I don't know? If I don't, will they build the world upon inaccurate information and end up with a world that needs to be torn down and rebuilt? One of these answers cost a little bit of time to look it up. I'm not going to try to put an estimate on the cost of the other answer.
Interviewers don't like it when you know all the answers because of this, and a good interviewer is going to have a question or two they can bring up that no one would know the answer to off the top of their head for this very reason. Yes, they do like it when you know a lot of answers, but more importantly they want to know what type of integrity and mindset you have when you don't know. The right answer if you're uncertain is to say you would need to verify it, but here's my answer and here's how I'd check it. The right answer if you have no clue is "I don't know", hopefully followed up by where you would start to look for answers.
In both cases, you write down the question, look it up after the interview, and be ready to answer it next time. If you want bonus points, and who can't use bonus points in this situation, you'll email your interviewer the next day and say that you looked into the question and here's the right answer. Now you're acting like the ideal employee. You maintained integrity by saying you either didn't know or weren't certain of the answer, which couldn't have done a better job showing you had the integrity Warren Buffet was referring to. Then you followed up with the energy to gain the intelligence to answer it better.
On the answers you know, be it ones you knew all along or ones you crammed for, you fulfilled one of the lessor criteria that Warren Buffet would look for. On the answers you don't know you instantly fulfilled the most important criteria if you admitted you didn't know, then you had the opportunity to throw in the other two criteria on a follow up.
Here's the problem. Every good employee is a teacher, and you're better off without a teacher if their lessons are wrong. A good interviewer is looking for a good teacher more than a know-it-all.
Speaking of being a teacher, how do you answer the questions you do know very well? Chances are you know how to answer them in a way that someone else who knows the answer would understand. However, they want to know if you could teach someone else the answer, even if that person doesn't have your specialty. Make sure you can teach them the right answer in an interview when you understand it well enough, especially if it's a common question they'll ask at every interview.
Back to my Database Administrator background, every interview I'm in someone will ask what the primary types of indexes are in SQL. The "right" answer is that a clustered index is the table itself in a sorted order, and a nonclustered index is a subset of that data which is also sorted. This is good, they understood my answer and know that indexes aren't something new to me. However, if you're talking to someone on the job who doesn't specialize in SQL Server, how well are they going to understand and remember this answer?
The answer that will blow them away is that a telephone book is a clustered index which is sorted by the key fields "Last Name" then "First Name", and has all the relevant information is clustered together in that single index. A nonclustered index is the index at the back of a book where it's sorted by the key field "key word", and it includes the page number, which is the clustered index key, so you can look up the rest of the information if the index didn't tell you everything you needed to know. It's not uncommon to get the response "Do you teach?" from your interviewer after an answer like that, to which you respond "every chance I get."
There are other questions you can expect in interviews, too. "Tell me about yourself", "Where do you expect to be in 5 years", and so on. I'm not going to pretend to be a good list of all the common questions, but I can tell you how to prep for them. Again, think about it from the interviewer's perspective.
"Tell me about yourself" is obviously a very vague question. I hate it this question, but it still gets asked. I view it from the standpoint that they want to see how you handle vague questions. Do you just ramble on about your kids and dog or do you clarify what they are asking? Do you have the ability to break this down into something specific and get to the right answer? On my job people will often come to me and say "the server is slow", which I have to break down into pieces until I can start asking the right questions and answers. Now I'm taking a "why would you ask this" question and demonstrating what they want to see in an employee.
"Where do you expect to be in 5 years" is also every common, and they aren't expecting you to be a fortune teller here. Also, I wouldn't expect someone to try to commit to being with my company for that length of time before they're even offered the job. What else could an interviewer be hoping for? They just want a direction. Are you excited about what you're doing and have the drive to keep learning? Do you want to make the jump from technical employee to manager, which would start another conversation with the stated goal still being to look for the energy to improve yourself and be a continually better asset to the company. If you don't know what career you want to have in 5 years then you can't be expected to have the energy to improve your abilities at your current career.
Here's some more you should know before an interview, but I'll be brief since it goes beyond the scope of this post. When people ask you questions in an interview, do you exude the following?
- Humble – If someone asks you to rate yourself on anything from 1 to 10 then 10 is not an option. Even 9 is arrogant unless you're known around the world for your skill. Too high and you're too confident, won't take criticism, and, my personal favorite, you're done learning because you think you know it all.
- Hunger or Drive – You want to keep bettering yourself, both in work and out. You want something a little above your skill level because you'll be there soon.
- Energy – If the interviewer is good, they'll ask you questions you don't know no matter how good you were. Did you come back with a solution after the interview?
- Communication – How were you able to answer the questions you got right? Were they just technically right, or did you put off the impression that you could help others get to your level?
- Leadership – Chances are you aren't interviewing for a management position, but management isn't leadership. Are you showing that you can take an idea and run with it, asking others for help as you go, and making sure it's right without someone looking over your shoulder the whole time? Managers want to do more than stand around holding a bullwhip, they want to watch people fly on their own with ground control giving a little direction.
These questions are being asked now in the context of an interview, but you should be asking yourself these things in your continual career planning phase as well. "Tell me about yourself", can you break down large issues and find the root of the problem, and do you care enough about what you're doing to get down into the details and root causes? "Where do you expect to be in 5 years", do you care enough about this career path to make yourself a better you? If you don't have good answers to these questions for yourself then where do you want to be? Figure that part out and you'll have a better chance at finding the career you want to do. And don't forget to consider the integrity of your answers when coworkers look towards you for guidance. Do you give each answer your best shot off the top of your head, or do you tell them you would have to look it up and follow up with the right answer after you do? Following this advice you'll be a lot closer to the ideal employee the interviewers are looking for, then all you have to do is walk into the interview and be yourself.
This post was already in the works before I found out it was the topic for this month's T-SQL Tuesday led up by Boris Hristov (b | t) on Interviews and Hiring. This is an amazing coincidence for both of us. For me, it gives me more visibility on this post, which I think a lot of people could benefit from. For you, it gives you a couple links in this paragraph to exercise your hunger to better yourself. Just remember that a lot of what you see is going to be how to get a job, but you can skew it to how to be better at your job and evaluate where you want to be.


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The limousine that burst into flames on the San Mateo Bridge, killing five women, wasn't required to undergo a state safety inspection — or even carry a fire-extinguisher — under the regulations that are supposed to ensure the thousands of limos on California's roads are safe.
Like most stretch limos, the 1999 Lincoln Town Car had been modified — cut in half, its fuel and electrical lines severed and rebuilt with a large passenger compartment in the middle. But since the car was licensed to carry fewer than 10 people, the state doesn't require routine safety inspections. Such inspections are required every 13 months for larger limos, airport shuttles and buses.
The inspection loophole — and the lack of fire extinguisher requirements — raised new concerns Tuesday as authorities continued what they say will be a lengthy investigation into what caused Saturday's horrific inferno. And it provided little comfort during the heart of the spring prom and graduation season to people asking just how safe are California's limos.
Tuesday, state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, said he would introduce a bill next week requiring fire extinguishers in limos and would also explore why the cars carrying 10 or fewer people, including the driver, are not inspected.
"Once that vehicle is modified, the bigger ones have the same structural changes as the smaller ones," said Hill, whose district includes the San Mateo County side of the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge. "Everything is identical. That makes no sense."
Experts say radical modifications to lengthen cars can add stress to key systems like fuel lines and electrical wiring.
But the state agency that regulates and licenses limos, the Public Utilities Commission, has no rules or standards about how stretch limousines are built from standard cars, its spokeswoman, Terrie Prosper said Tuesday.
The 28-foot limousine that burst into flames Saturday was owned by Limo Stop Inc. of San Jose and San Francisco, which had no record of consumer complaints since it opened in 2006. In interviews Monday, the driver, Orville "Ricky" Brown speculated that an electrical problem may have sparked the blaze, because he didn't smell gas when the group celebrating a friend's recent wedding started screaming about smoke rising from the passenger compartment floor. The car was carrying nine passengers — one more than it was licensed for — but officials haven't said if that was a factor.
Statistics about limousine fires and deaths are difficult to come by — partly because they are rare — and the state can't even say how many converted stretch limos are on California's roads.
There are 6,600 companies in the state licensed to operate limousines, Prosper wrote in an email Tuesday, but some of them are bus and van companies that may not operate limos. She could not say how many limos there are and the Department of Motor Vehicles does not track them. The Maryland-based Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association estimates there are about 45,000 stretch limos in the country.
"You're dealing with a very under-regulated industry," said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a group founded by Ralph Nader. Ditlow said drawing the line at inspecting only vehicles that carry at least 10 people "is just an arbitrary line. You can have a tragedy, as you did in San Mateo, in a vehicle that escapes regulation."
The process known as "stretching," which greatly lengthens the car's wheel base, creates "stresses and vibrations" on systems that can create damage over time, auto safety experts say.
"The government doesn't appear to be concerned with the modification of the vehicle, just the number of passengers," said Keith Friedman, an auto safety expert and accident investigator from Santa Barbara. "You need to take that into account. Most of the people doing the work aren't engineers."
Custom car builders strip the interior, cut the car in half and insert a steel frame, panels and windows up to the desired length. Part of the process is unhooking electrical cables and fuel lines and then reattaching them in the new, longer car, said Phil Restivo, owner of Santa Clara-based LeGrande Affaire Worldwide Ground Transportation. He said his company conducts safety inspections on its limos before every trip."There's a lot of manufacturers out there that will try to save a buck (or) two, here or there, and they don't look at the longevity of the vehicle," Restivo said. "We pay close attention to the small things."
The fire, and revelations about lack of oversight, are scary, said Jenny Brandt, a lawyer who lives in San Leandro and is planning a friend's bachelorette party later this month that includes a stretch-limo ride to Napa wineries.
"I had no idea that limos were modified from town cars," she wrote in an email Tuesday. "I just figured they were built that size."
Now she wants to know when the limo she reserved for nine people was last inspected.
The editor of a limousine industry trade journal said some vehicles like Lincolns and Cadillacs are modified into limos based on manufactures' recommendations while others are not. Lincoln Town Cars — the kind that burned Saturday — are extremely popular for conversions to limos, said Martin Romjue, editor of Limousine, Charter & Tour Magazine, which is based in Los Angeles.
"They are a high quality work horse, the standard vehicle of the industry," Romjue said. "I have never heard of anything like (the fire) before. A lot of people in the industry are saying this is (the) worst (limo) accident they've seen."
Romjue said consumers should use common sense when picking a limo company, starting with making sure it is licensed by the PUC.
"Go take a look at the vehicle" before renting it, he said. "Ask the company about safety and (driver) training."
He also said that passengers should agree among themselves to never pile more people into a car than is permitted and walk away from unscrupulous drivers who offer to carry more.
"It is clearly an industry standard to never exceed the passenger limit."
Reach Thomas Peele at firstname.lastname@example.com; follow him at twitter.com/Thomas_peele. Reach Joshua Melvin at firstname.lastname@example.com; follow him Twitter.com/ melvinreport.
Make sure the company is licensed by the state Public Utilities Commission.
Take a trip to the limo company and ask to see the car you will be renting.
Be certain the charter-party carrier (TCP) permit number is displayed on the limousine.
Verify that the TCP permit number is accurate by checking with the CPUC.
Ask the company about safety and driver training.
Never pile more people into a car than is permitted, and walk away from unscrupulous drivers who offer to carry more.
For more information, go to: http://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PUBLISHED/NEWS_RELEASE/100776.htm.


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Hotategai, or Scallops, is another worldwide favourite and also a source of dispute caused by illegal poaching, international or domestic.
The season is summer and the shellfish is sometimes called Akitagai, as of Akita Prefecture.
They are caught off Hokkaido, Aomori, Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures.
The domestic production/catch is over 300.000 tonnes a year, while 400 tonnes are imported from China as whole Scallops and 700 tonnes as the muscle part only ("kaibashira"). Japanese scallops will be significantly larger than the Chinese.
Of course, they are much appreciated as sashimi, but also as sushi:
(pic taken at Sushi Ko in Shizuoka City)
They are also much appreciated cooked/grilled in the shell with just a little shoyu and sake:
Actually, a good-class sushi restaurants will serve the muscle part as sashimi or sushi, and will serve the rest of the shellfish cooked in light broth inside the shell later!


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Cathedral Concert
September 17, 2011
Almost 142 years ago to the day John Muir completed the first documented ascent of Cathedral Peak in Tuolumne. Writing about this experience Muir stated:
This I may say is the first time I have been at church in California, led here at last, every door graciously opened… the sweetest church music I ever enjoyed.
I can't say that my experience ascending Cathedral Peak for the second time was on par with Muir's first. For starters I didn't do it in cowboy boots. But I can say that I've never been to an actual church in California. I can also say that years of fortunate experiences have allowed me to enjoy being on top of such spectacular summits. However, it's the music and the company that made this trip especially enjoyable.
The day after Ben and I linked up Royal Arches and North Dome we wanted to repay Linda, Marzena and Jill for graciously picking us up at the end of that adventure. Marzena and Jill had never been up Cathedral Peak so the prospect of sharing such a special climb with them was highly appealing. However, we awoke to a rather cloudy morning and this made for a pretty lazy start to the day so it's not surprising that we found ourselves at the trailhead organizing gear and getting ready to hike to the base around noon.
By this point the clouds had started to break and the sky was mostly blue during the approach. I think everyone (except for Marzena) was feeling a bit tired so it was roughly 2 when we reached the leftmost route up the face. Just as we started to flake the ropes a brief period of rain struck. It only lasted for a few moments and by the time we got our rain gear on it had past. But the event was enough to make us consider if it was wise to start the route. A bit of deliberation later Linda decided that since she'd been on the route before the prospect of doing it again and potentially getting rained on wasn't too appealing.
Feeling (perhaps foolishly hoping) that the weather would hold and seeing the desire that Marzena and Jill had to do the climb I decided that I was game to lead the first pitch. We were initially going to ascend with me leading and Jill seconding on my rope while Ben would lead on doubles for Linda and Marzena to follow. But now that we were a party of 4, we decided that just having one leader would be the easiest way to go.
Racked up with a set of nuts, a single set of cams from #0.5 to #2 and 4 tri-cams I picked a line for the first pitch and ran up it until I was out of rope. Ben followed trailing the two doubles for Marzena and Jill. Ben lead the next pitch and aside from managing three ropes at the belay the climb was going well, especially because the rain hadn't returned.
For the start of the third pitch we were just below the chimney section. This is typically where the many routes up the face meet and get funneled into a single stream of climbers. So I wasn't surprised to see at least one party waiting to get through the section. However, Cathedral Peak is very featured and we'd read of variations to the left and right of the chimney that can be used to alleviate the congestion. No better time than now to try them.
Here's the variation that we took. On the very lefthand side of the ledge below the chimney pitch (typically the ledge that people belay from for the chimney pitch), go straight up for around 15-20 feet of very easy climbing. You'll find yourself in a bit of a small corner with a fantastic hole in the granite that can be girth hitched. Up and left of the girth hitch there is a finger sized crack that leads out to an arête on the left. Keep your hands in this crack and move out to the very well featured and protectable arête. It isn't obvious that there is anything out to the left to climb, but trust me, there is and the mysterious feeling adds to the adventure. From here you can continue straight up towards the summit, bypassing all the groaning and struggling parties in the chimney. At a rating of 5.7 and featuring some fantastic exposure, I can't recommend it enough.
After that section the rest of our route was pretty typical climbing for an afternoon on Cathedral. I got to the summit blocks and waited for some traffic to clear before making the final push to the top. As I waited, two free soloists came marching up the rock, one carrying a banjo and the other a guitar. Immediately I began to smile, hoping that we'd get to hang out as a group on the top and enjoy a world class view with some accompanying music.
After a short wait I brought Ben up to the party and he gave Marzena and Jill a belay while I shot some video of the music scene. Once we were all on top I couldn't help but feel extremely fortunate. Not only did the rain stay away, it was sunny and beautiful. The climbing ended up being more enjoyable than I had even remembered. Plus I got to share a summit that is always incredible with three people that I am fortunate to have in my life. Add into that the mood that the music set and it's a day that can't be repeated.
We ended up sitting on the summit for almost an hour, soaking up the sights and enjoying the music. I can't thank everyone enough for making that one of the more memorable and enjoyable hours that I've had. The only bummer of the day was that Linda didn't get to experience it with us. However, I did manage to get a couple videos where the wind didn't totally destroy the audio. I've posted them below along with a couple other photos from the day.


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In their continuing efforts to fix the economy, over the last year and a half or so, cage-rattling, game-changing conservative lawmakers have passed a record number of bills regulating
banks and out of control financial institutions women's access to medical care. And since it's illegal to personally break into individual ladies' homes and steal their birth control or make it illegal for women to have sex without God's supervision, they've done the more efficient thing and focused on making abortion as inconvenient as possible for the women choosing it and eliminating affordable women's health care at the source — low-cost OB/GYN clinics and other women's health care providers. In at least two states, we're starting to see the effects of these "pro-life" efforts — and they're pretty fucking depressing.
In Tennessee, lawmakers passed a law requiring all doctors at abortion providing clinics have admitting privileges at a local hospital — a condition framers of such legislation often tell the public is for women's own good, but tell their frothy anti-abortion rights voting base is for the sole purpose of eliminating abortion by targeting providers (we saw a lot of this in Mississippi earlier this year). Well, in Tennessee, the law is working just as lawmakers not-so-secretly intended — the Volunteer Women's Medical Center in Knoxville was just closed down this week because it was unable to pay its bills while it scrambled to comply with the state's Life Defense Act. According to the clinic's director, a doctor at the clinic had recently obtained admitting privileges, but died before he was able to begin seeing patients in compliance with the law.
Meanwhile, in Texas, lawmakers intent on preserving life and keeping women healthy there have forced many of the state's cowgirls to travel to Mexico for abortion and pregnancy care. The state's Governor Rick Perry, who I always picture grinning in that Dick Tracy villain way of his, has championed legislation that barred Planned Parenthood from participating in the state's Women's Health Program, a mostly-federally-funded effort to make reproductive and sexual health services available to Texas' many low income, uninsured women. The federal government and courts rejected the Texas law on the grounds that it interfered with Planned Parenthood's freedom of speech (Cliff's Notes version: the arm of Planned Parenthood that provides abortions, in Texas, is a completely separate entity from the one that receives federal or state funds and has been for many years, and Texas was penalizing the non-abortion providing arm of Planned Parenthood for loosely associating with the abortion arm of the organization and discussing abortion as an option for pregnant women). In response, Perry threw the ladies out with the bathwater and threatened to shut down the Women's Health Care Program entirely. And if what he wanted to do was make life more difficult for women, mission accomplished.
Perry's antics have already caused more than 60 women's health clinics to shut down. Forty-eight of those do not provide abortion care services and are completely unaffiliated with Planned Parenthood. According to Think Progress, most of the clinics that closed their doors are located in the panhandle, in Central Texas, or on the border with Mexico, which means that for many women those clinics served, there are no alternatives.
But it gets worse. According to the Texas Tribune, the mass shuttering of women's health care clinics combined with Texas' new law requiring an ultrasound 24 hours before abortion procedures has driven women to Mexico for their reproductive health needs, which has proven dangerous. In Mexico, abortion is illegal everywhere except in the capitol, but the drug commonly used for medicinal abortions here in the states isn't. In fact, it's available over the counter as a treatment for ulcers. Many pharmacists in northern Mexican cities haven't been trained on how the drug can be used for pregnancy termination, and so women who take the drug don't know how to properly administer it. From the Tribune:
In July, at one of the many pharmacies lining the main street in Nuevo Progreso, a town across the border from Weslaco, Jose Alfredo Acosta was selling Cytotec for $153 per box. The package contained 28 pills, each about 200 micrograms. The informational insert did not include directions for self-induced abortion, but Acosta said he knew that was why many women bought the medication.
"If I see that a girl is too young, I won't sell it," he said, citing stories he had heard of girls hemorrhaging after using the pills. "I try my best to explain the consequences, but there's only so much I can do."
One abortion provider in Texas noted that in addition to taking the pill unsafely, many women, without guidance on how to take the medicine, won't take enough of it and will remain pregnant, which could lead to improper prenatal care and a whole host of post birth problems for the baby.
How exactly are we protecting women by making health care more dangerous and less available to them? And how exactly is this leading us charging toward recovery? It's not clear how America will Get Awesome Again if only poor women can't get birth control pills and are forced to be pregnant when they're not prepared to have another child, but I'm not an economics expert.