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Alexandre Riazanov wrote: >>> (3) Use case 4.2 in http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-rif-ucr-20080730/ uses >>> frames as (individual-valued) base terms. >>> The BLD spec does not seem to provide either syntax or semantics for such >>> use. Does it mean that such use was >>> considered initially but didn't make it to the spec? >> The syntax and semantics do specify individual-valued frames, one of their >> most obvious uses on the semantic web is for RDF triples. What leads you to >> believe that the syntax or semantics are not provided? Or perhaps you mean >> something different by "(individual-valued) base terms". >> >> e.g. the RDF triple >> >> <http://ex.com/john> <http://ex.com/uncleOf> <http://ex.com/mary>. >> >> can be written in the frame syntax as >> >> <http://ex.com/john>[<http://ex.com/uncleOf> -> <http://ex.com/mary>] >> >> where <xxx> is a shortcut for xxx^^rif:iri. >> > > The triple above is obviously a statement which can > only have a boolean value. The frame can also be interpreted > as a statement (equivalent to the triple), but it can > also be used in a place where a resource-valued term is > expected, e.g. it can be the filler in a property: > > <http://ex.com/paul> > [ > <http://ex.com/father> -> > <http://ex.com/john> > [<http://ex.com/uncleOf> -> <http://ex.com/mary>] > ] > > In this case, the value computed by the frame is just <http://ex.com/john>, > which is not boolean. The slots can be considered as qualifiers > of <http://ex.com/john> and have to be treated semantically as, > for example, additional constraints on <http://ex.com/john>. > This is, of course, syntactic sugar. OK - frames don't "compute values". Your example is supported, and would be syntactic sugar for (and <http://ex.com/paul> [<http://ex.com/father> -> <http://ex.com/john> ] <http://ex.com/john> [<http://ex.com/uncleOf> -> <http://ex.com/mary> ] ) Both of these frame terms are truth-valued, that is, both of them are either true or false. Being able to nest them, as you wrote, is simply a slight shorter way of writing the conjunction, but it is important to realize that it is a shortcut to a conjunction, not "individual valued frames". > Nether syntax, nor semantics of BLD covers such use, and I am actually > fine with this in principle. The only problem is that the use case 4.2 > has "?buyer[card -> ?creditCard deliveryAddr -> ?address]" as the second > argument of the (positional) predicate "provide", and also > "?date[month -> ?month year -> ?year]" as a filler for "expiry", > and several other examples like this. Hopefully it is clear that this is supported, and again is simply a shortcut to writing a conjunction of frame terms. >>> (4) In general, it would be extremely helpful (to me as an implementer) to >>> see a reference translation to FOL. >>> IMHO, the standard would be the right place for it. >> >> By "reference translation to FOL" do you mean to take a set of BLD Formulae >> and translate them to FOL sentences? Or a logical embedding of the semantics >> of BLD in FOL? > > The latter. As an implementor, I would prefer the semantics > written as a translation to FOL to the model-theoretic semantics (this one > is good too, but for other purposes). I think I know what you mean, but I don't think you said it. FOL semantics is normally expressed as a model theory, and a fully first-order model theory is how the semantics of BLD were specified. But I believe you would like to see the entailment rules of BLD expressed as FOL axioms. Assuming that is what you mean, then we don't have the resources to provide such a translation within the working group. Hopefully someone outside the group will take the time to do it. I agree it would be useful. One thing you may find useful are the test cases. See http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wiki/Category:Test_Case for an evolving list. >>> (5) Minor thing: isn't External(c) a well-formed (base) term when c is a >>> constant? > >> No, See Section 2.2, Item 8. External is meant to be an anchor for an >> external function call, so External(c) is not a term, but External(c()) is. > > Then it overrides clause 7 in 2.4 in the FLD spec, that > says "If t is a constant, .. then External(t) is an *externally defined term > *." This can be a bit confusing. FLD provides a *framework* that allows a RIF dialect to make External(t) valid. So you can imagine a dialect where a frame identifier could be used in an external, indicating e.g. some kind of query to an external source for an object. In BLD, however, there is a syntactic restriction against this. You'll note, in fact, throughout FLD are elements that are not supported in BLD. Thanks again for your comments. -The RIF WG -- Dr. Christopher A. Welty IBM Watson Research Center +1.914.784.7055 19 Skyline Dr. email@example.com Hawthorne, NY 10532 http://www.research.ibm.com/people/w/weltyReceived on Sunday, 19 October 2008 00:18:06 UTC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.1 : Tuesday, 6 January 2015 19:49:19 UTC


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Reports conflict on North Korea's nuclear capabilities
World leaders urged North Korea to end what has been described as its "belligerent" and "paranoid" rhetoric after it threatened to reduce its enemies to a "sea of flames." Deborah Gembara reports. Powered by NewsLook.com Newslook
WASHINGTON — With newly-revealed U.S. intelligence showing that North Korea may already be able to arm a missile with a nuclear warhead, President Obama said on Thursday that North Korea must end its "belligerent approach."
After meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon at the White House on Thursday, Obama said they both agreed that it was time to "lower temperatures."
"Nobody wants to see a conflict on the Korean peninsula," Obama said. "But it's important for North Korea, like every other country in the world, to observe the basic rules and norms that are set forth, including a wide variety of U.N. resolutions."
Obama's rebuke came as a new U.S. intelligence report was made public showing North Korea probably has advanced its nuclear knowhow to the point that it could arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, though the weapon wouldn't be very reliable.
The latest U.S. intelligence assessment on North Korea was revealed Thursday at a public hearing on Capitol Hill. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., read from what he said was an unclassified segment of a classified Defense Intelligence Agency report on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
The report shows that DIA has "moderate confidence" that North Korea possesses the ability to put a nuclear weapon on a missile, according to a senior Pentagon official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the report. The report, the official said, concludes that the reliability of such a weapon would be low.
A Capitol Hill aide familiar with the report but not authorized to speak on the record downplayed its significance. It is one of many perspectives within the intelligence community and does not represent a consensus view, the aide said. North Korea does not appear close to having the capability to match a nuclear warhead to a rocket capable of ... reaching the United States and detonating, the source said.
Pentagon press secretary George Little also downplayed the threat. "It would be inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested, developed or demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced in the passage," he said.
The report is one of many in the intelligence community about the North Korean threat and is not considered the final word, the official cautioned. In fact, some government analysts do not believe the North possesses the capability, the official said.
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said in a statement late Thursday that the passage Lamborn read is not an intelligence community assessment. Clapper said North Korea has not yet demonstrated the full range of capabilities necessary for a nuclear armed missile.
The United States, South Korea and other countries have become increasingly alarmed by Kim Jong Un's increasingly provocative rhetoric.
For weeks, North Korea has made threats against the United States and South Korea.North Korea also this week told foreign diplomats that it would no longer be able to guarantee the safety of foreigners in Seoul.
Obama and the secretary-general met hours after reports that a North Korean missile had been briefly raised to an upright firing position, stoking concerns that a launch is imminent.
"We will continue to try to work to resolve some of those issues diplomatically even as I indicated to the secretary-general that the United States will take all necessary steps to protect its people and to meet our obligations under our alliances in the region," Obama said.
Earlier Thursday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told the House Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon will have enough resources under Obama's new budget proposal to cope with North Korea.
Republicans weren't convinced the budget will provide for the nation's security.
"I'd like to hear which missions we must now abandon, reduce or cancel outright to comply with the president's budget — because I don't see the world getting safer," said Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of Armed Services.
Hagel also told the committee that neither North Korea nor Iran had the capability to launch a nuclear weapon against the United States.
"Now does that mean that they won't have it or they can't have it or they're not working on it?" Hagel said about North Korea. "No."

subset: commoncrawl


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Samudrika Pattu
The exact transformation from kanjeepuram sarees to Samudrika is not as simple as it look. What happens when the designer pours his heart and soul into a Kancheepuram saree and the end product embodies the characteristics of a perfectly created woman? A Samudrika Pattu is born. These meticulously designed and crafted sarees, which have become the last word in craftsmanship in silk, are the quintessence of ethereal beauty and can multiply the grace of the woman wearing it. Buy pattu sarees from our exclusive collection and rejoice in the knowledge of owning a masterful creation. The perfect sarees collection for wedding which are in highly demand.


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DetailsThe real thing - heavy duty, extra thick, hand finished forged switch plate and outlet covers...not a flimsy stamped metal plate you find at discount superstores.Medium:Hot forged, heavy duty solid brass switch plate covers with hand rubbed antique copper finish. Not a light stamped, metal switch plate you'll find on other sites.Screws:Matching 6-32 x 1/2 screws provided by manufacturer are included."Cleaning:Clean Mottled Antique Copper switch plate covers with mild soap and warm water. Do Not use abrasives.
Usually Ships: within 24 hours.
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Don't be fooled by our competitors' inexpensive zinc switchplates which are probably manufactured in China. They may look the same as far as the design is concerned, but that is where the similarity ends. It is common knowledge in manufacturing circles that Forged Brass like Switch Hits offers makes for a better quality item over lighter weight cast zinc as is commonly found in the big box stores.
Switch Hits has the opportunity to offer less expensive zinc switchplates but refuses to do so...the quality just isn't there. Put a zinc switchplate in one hand and our forged brass in your other hand and you will readily see and feel the difference. As one of our customers remarked who bought our product after buying the big box store brands, "you get what you pay for."
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Our Modular Data Jacks feature the Allen Tel Versatap system designed for maximum performance, reliability, flexibility, and ease of installation. Simply choose the Modular Plate (below right) with the number of ports needed, followed by your selection of any combination of snap-in jacks:
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The Cat 3 and Cat 5 jacks require assembly; instructions included. Each of the jacks is marked where you simply insert the corresponding colored wires into the jack and snap the entire unit into the modular plate...it's that easy. More information at
- Phone (Cat 3) Instructions
- Data (Cat 5) Instructions
The Coax jacks come with an 'F' connector already installed. Simply screw the end connector on your video cable onto the back of the jack


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About Clicksor
Do you want to remove Clicksor infection away from your PC? Are you facing operating issues with your PC? Did you find any proper way to get rid of Clicksor ? If you are waving your head in "Yes" for all the above questions then you really need instant help for the removal of this infection from your PC as soon as possible. Clicksor threat is one of the harmful infection which has been already infected lots of Windows computer system around the World, the infection has been designed by rouge hackers to infect nay Windows PC easily once it gets inside of that computer. With the help of its rogue algorithm the infection is meant to help its tracker or the cyber criminals who want to access or collect the personal information of yours.
Personal information here is meant to account logins and password of it, just imagine the scenario if infection like Clicksor collected your bank account login information. Any user facing such scenario could go through a financial crisis or worst situation. His IP address could be used anywhere else to perform rouge activities like hacking etc. Clicksor infection could be a big threat for security reasons of your Windows PC, because stealing valuable and confidential data can easily spoil anyone's working track. The worst part of Clicksor infection is that it can easily execute itself on any part your PC, which will definitely degrade the performance of your PC as well as also interrupt processes while executing numerous default applications as well. The infection can interpret itself as a useful software but its a rouge software which can easily invite other troubles to your PC.


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Easter Tin of assorted bunnies, eggs and duck
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On Monday, editors were invited to tour Monsanto's headquarters in St. Louis, Mo., and see the work the company is doing in its Asgrow soybeans, particularly in fighting major pests and diseases which can be devastating to yields. Here is a look at the research being done at Monsanto to fight these yield-robbing problems.
Like photo galleries from Farm Industry News? Subscribe to Farm Industry News Now e-newsletter to get the latest galleries and more straight to your inbox twice weekly.
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DIARY / 3 Jun
3 Jun / 9:00pm - 12:00am / FREE ENTRY | DOORS 6PM | HAPPY HOUR 6-8PM | JAM STARTS 9PM
Every 1st Monday of the month is the very popular Blues Jam! Our resident band will jam the night away with players of any standard, so bring your guitars, mouth organs, sticks or vocal chords and play the blues. Just seek out Franny when you arrive and he will give you the lowdown on how it works. All welcome to join in or kick back and watch the players in action!


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Column: Who knew NHL playoffs would score so big with fans after lockout-shortened season?
The season that almost wasn't has turned out better than anyone dared expect.
The NHL still ranks fourth among North America's five major professional sports leagues, but don't look now — hockey is gaining ground again.
TV ratings for the playoffs are through the roof, relatively speaking, thanks to scintillating games and a final four — Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and Pittsburgh — that any league would love to have.
Last weekend's Bruins-Penguins matchup handily beat baseball's time-tested game of the week, Red Sox-Yankees, in a head-to-head matchup — nearly 2-to-1 in the desirable 18-49 age demographic, and that was after a lockout-shortened NHL regular season that already saw ratings climb by 18 percent. Telecasts in a few towns are setting records and even approaching NFL levels.
What were the odds of that happening last winter, when the league's owners and players squared off across a bargaining table, hell-bent on driving off fans and sacrificing the schedule to labor strife for the second time in less than 10 years — and the third during commissioner Gary Bettman's 20 years in charge?
Just as improbable, perhaps, is how they got from there to here.
"After the 2004-05 lockout, hockey changed in lots of important ways," Sam Flood, executive producer for NBC Sports and the man most responsible for the improved TV product, said Tuesday. "It got faster. There was less clutching and grabbing. The stars became stars again. Our job was figuring out how to showcase those skills, to make them accessible to even the most casual fan."
Fifteen years ago, Bill Clinton became the first sitting U.S. president to make it down to the rink by taking in a playoff game between the Buffalo Sabres and his hometown Washington Capitals. During a quick interview, Clinton said he was struck by how much faster, rougher and dramatic the game seemed sitting in the stands than looking in on TV.
"I explained that's no surprise," NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said then, "since time after time, our research tells us we've got the best in-person experience in sports."
For the longest time, that was hockey's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The NHL played its games in arenas filled to more than 90 percent of capacity, on average, but almost nobody watched it on TV.
There was a perception that despite its national footprint, hockey was a regional game; strong where it's played and barely a blip on the radar screen everywhere else. Even more troubling was research suggesting that among the NHL's target audience of 70 million fans in the United States and Canada, more than two-thirds quit watching once their favorite team was eliminated.
Compounding the problem was Bettman's sometimes-haphazard search for a TV partner. ESPN and FOX both took turns, without much success, and hockey appeared doomed to remain a niche sport. Things were so bad when the league threw in with NBC in 2004 that it received no money up-front and instead agreed to only a revenue-sharing deal.
In hindsight that may turn out to be the smartest deal Bettman made. Last year, the NHL renewed with NBC through 2021, this time for a reported $2 billion in rights fees. Based on early returns, both sides have plenty to like about the deal.
NBC needed live sports programming and it's given the NHL top-shelf treatment in return, borrowing ideas from other sports and coming up with a few innovations of its own.
This year's best launch was a weekly Wednesday night regular-season game between teams — as Flood put it — "that really hated each other."
For the second year in a row, every playoff game is available nationally — what he calls the "March Madness effect" — building momentum and retaining more of the "avid" NHL fans that used to depart once their teams did.
Wider screens, high-definition broadcasts, improved audio and slow-motion replays seem tailor-made for hockey, if only because they've made the game easier to follow, even for the most casual fans.
For all that, the innovation Flood considers his best is the in-game segment called "Inside the Glass," which features analyst Pierre McGuire in a section between the benches, updating viewers in real time with information he's picked up from that unique vantage point.
"It changed the way the game was perceived at home, offering things we'd never get from an announcer two decks above the ice," Flood said. "Coaches barking orders at players, players challenging each other — that kind of access is critical.
"It's one more piece of the puzzle, like what NASCAR was doing with reporters in the pit, giving fans access to a place they weren't previously allowed. The feedback's been great," Flood chuckled. "People tell us it's like being part of a secret club."
It's been one step forward, two steps back for much of Bettman's reign.
The Winter Classic outdoor games have been a rousing success and the U.S.-Canada rivalry at the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 pulled in fans the sport didn't know it had. On the flip side, the labor stoppages, ambitious expansion into non-traditional hockey towns and shortage of Canadian teams has handicapped growth.
But for the first time in a while, the sport looks up and sees nothing but clear ice ahead.
"We can't control who reaches the finals," said Flood, the son of a hockey coach and a fair college player himself, "but nobody's complaining about the way this one worked out."
Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org and follow him at Twitter.com/JimLitke.


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Kaleidoscope of Care: Responding to the Challenges of HIV and Substance Use
August 2004
Boston University School of Social Work Center for Innovation in Social Work and Health
Cross-disciplinary training curriculum to increase knowledge and awareness of the relationship between HIV infection and substance use. Modules include Health Promotion and Adherence, Incorporating Harm Reduction into Our Work, Interdisciplinary Care, Strategies for Engagement and Retention in Care. Available in English and Spanish. Developed under HRSA SPNS Initiative on substance abuse and HIV/AIDS care.
Supporting Files
- Module I: Introduction
- Module II: Strategies for Engagement and Retention in Care
- Module III: Incorporating Harm Reduction Into Our Work
- Module IV A: Health Promotion and Adherence, Full Curriculum
- Module IV B: Suggested Replication Training for Clinicians
- Module IV C: Suggested Replication Training for a Mixed Audience of Clinicians and Non-Clinicians
- Module IV: References
- Module V: Interdisciplinary Care
- HIV and Substance Abuse Resources
- Appendix A: Trainer's Tips
- Summary of Replication Trainings
- Un Caleidoscopio de Cuidado y Servicios: Respondiendo a los retos del VIH y uso de drogas
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Thursday, December 10, 2009
A Look into the Life of Katie Cook…
Download Here
Country Music Commentary and Information from Country Music Alive
Record Of The Year
Beyoncé Knowles & Ryan Tedder, producers; Jim Caruana, Mark "Spike" Stent & Ryan Tedder, engineers/mixers
Track from: I Am... Sasha Fierce
[Music World Music / Columbia]
Album Of The Year
Shondrae "Mr. Bangledesh" Crawford, Ian Dench, D-Town, Toby Gad, Sean "The Pen" Garrett, Amanda Ghost, Jim Jonsin, Beyoncé Knowles, Rico Love, Dave McCracken, Terius "The Dream" Nash, Radio Killa, Stargate, Christopher "Tricky" Stewart, Ryan Tedder & Wayne Wilkins, producers; Jim Caruana, Mikkel S. Eriksen, Toby Gad, Kuk Harrell, Jim Jonsin, Jaycen Joshua, Dave Pensado, Radio Killa, Mark "Spike" Stent, Ryan Tedder, Brian "B-LUV" Thomas, Marcos Tovar, Miles Walker & Wayne Wilkins, engineers/mixers; Tom Coyne, mastering engineer
[Music World Music / Columbia]
Song Of The Year
Best New Artist
Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals
Best Rock Instrumental Performance
Best Female Country Vocal Performance
Best Male Country Vocal Performance
Best Country Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals
Best Country Collaboration With Vocals
Best Country Instrumental Performance
Alison Brown
Track from: The Company You Keep
[Compass Records]
Best Country Song
Best Country Album
Best Southern, Country, Or Bluegrass Gospel Album
Best Americana Album
Best Bluegrass Album
Best Musical Show Album
Best Long Form Music Video
Well... country music is back on XM/Sirius Radio for Christmas. Last year, it was not available... this year, thankfully there is.
Here are the country music related winners of the 2009 American Music Awards:
Taylor Swift
Female Artist: Taylor Swift
Male Artist: Keith Urban
Female Artist: Taylor Swift
Band, Duo or Group: Rascal Flatts
Album: Fearless, Taylor Swift
Artist: Taylor Swift
T-Mobile BREAKTHROUGH ARTIST (ALL GENRES)
Well, another CMT Crossroads has been announced. This one sounds like a lot of fun...
Zac Brown Band and Jimmy Buffett will be the focus of the next episode. It will be recorded in December, and then set to air sometime in March of 2010.
Wow, I wanted to see the tour really bad to begin with, but now Lee Ann Womack has been added to the George Strait / Reba McEntire tour... it is now beyond a required attendance event. Event doesn't even quite come close to the magnitude of talent appearing in one night. This lineup even beats out some of the previous George Strait Country Music Festivals I've attended.
I can't imagine how truly special this show will be.
Once again, here is the tour dates for the 22-city tour:
22-Jan Baltimore, MD 1st Mariner
23-Jan Greensboro, NC Coliseum
29-Jan Knoxville, TN Thompson Boling
30-Jan Charlottesville, VA JPJ Arena
5-Feb Phoenix, AZ US Airways
6-Feb Las Vegas, NV MGM Garden Arena
18-Feb St Louis, MO Scottrade Center
19-Feb Wichita, KS Intrust Bank Arena
20-Feb Tulsa, OK BOK Arena
25-Feb Atlanta, GA Philips Arena
26-Feb Orlando, FL Amway Arena
4-Mar Memphis, TN FedEx Forum
5-Mar New Orleans, LA New Orleans Arena
6-Mar Little Rock, AR Verizon
26-Mar Portland, OR The Rose Garden
27-Mar Tacoma, WA Tacomadome
8-Apr Omaha, NE Qwest Center
9-Apr Kansas City, MO Sprint Center
10-Apr Des Moines, IA Wells Fargo Arena
This April, Kenny Chesney will be on the big screen, and no, not the those big ones that you are used to seeing him on at his sold-out shows. The movie theater big screen, but it will be a lot like those big screens at the concert venue... the movie is titled "Kenny Chesney's Summer In 3-D."
This special event movie will bring Kenny Chesney's concert right to you in your local movie theater as a limited engagement. The 3D footage for the movie was shot over six nights in five locations -- Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Seattle, Foxboro, and Indianapolis -- using a total of 22 3D camera rigs.
The 3-D movie concert experience is set for release in April 2010. You can get more information and sign-up for alerts at http://www.thehotticket.net for when tickets will go on sale in your area.
Sounds and looks very cool to me...
Here is the new Board Members of the Academy of Country Music....
Directors are elected from each category based on the number of members in that category. Each director serves staggered two-year terms, with half the board membership changing each year.
ACM Board Members:
Directors At Large
ACM Lifting Lives Chairman Gary Haber and President Gayle Holcomb and their new Board:
Looks like George Strait will be starring in a new movie titled "A Pure Country Gift."
Reports are saying that the movie will be about three angels who give the gift of a beautiful singing voice to a newborn girl. As she gets older she breaks some of the angels' rules and they take away her singing voice.
Katrina Elam will also be acting in the movie. She is played as a 9-year-old by Kaitlyn Dorff, daughter of Steve Dorff, who composed the music for the original "Pure Country" and will also compose the music for the upcoming movie.
The movie will be directed by Chris Cain, which directed Strait's previous movie "Pure Country" and is being filmed in Nashville where there has been a few chance to be an "extra"
It appears to be a holiday themed movie, and possible release date during the holiday season of 2010.


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Annabelle Comes Home
Annabelle Comes Home isn't entirely without its guilty pleasures.
Annabelle Comes Home isn't entirely without its guilty pleasures.
Nastier, more playful, and just as good if not better than the original film.
Roger Ebert on James Ivory's "Howards End".
"The Ballad of Narayama" is a Japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. What a space it opens…
It's Roger's birthday and we're celebrating by highlighting our favorite reviews and essays by the master.
The managing editor of RogerEbert.com picks one of his favorite reviews by Roger Ebert.
It's Roger's birthday and we're celebrating by highlighting our favorite reviews and essays by the master.
The managing editor of RogerEbert.com picks one of his favorite reviews by Roger Ebert.
A piece on the premiere of a film about Rodrigo Duterte.
One of our foreign correspondents looks at Cold War.
On the four '80s and '90s Batman films now available on 4K Blu-ray.
An interview with the multi-talented Rachel Bloom about the end of her show, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.
Spike Lee's "Red Hook Summer" plays as if the director is making it up as he goes along. That's not entirely a bad thing, although some will be thrown off-balance by an abrupt plot development halfway through that appears entirely out of the blue and is so shocking that the movie never really recovers. Here is Lee at his most spontaneous and sincere, but he could have used another screenplay draft, and perhaps a few more transitional scenes.
The movie takes place in yet another Brooklyn neighborhood, the fifth to grace a Spike Lee film. Red Hook was founded long ago as a community to support the docks and shipyards, and indeed the Queen Mary 2 floats by so close, it seems you could jump on board. This is not the Brooklyn of recent gentrifications (although that's nibbling on the fringes), but a poor African-American neighborhood with 80 percent unemployment.
We learn that fact, and many more, in one of the several sermons delivered by Bishop Enoch Rouse (Clarke Peters), pastor of the poorly attended L'il Peace of Heaven Baptist Church. He has a small congregation and a growing financial crisis that may put his storefront operation out of business.
To live with him for the summer, he welcomes someone he has never seen: his grandson, Silas (Jules Brown), who prefers to be called Flik. The kid is dropped off by the bishop's daughter, Colleen (De'Adre Aziza), who hasn't seen her father since he left Atlanta some years before. Nor is she happy to see him now. No reason is given for her leaving the boy with the bishop, and given all we know by the end, this seems like a huge gap in the screenplay by Lee and James McBride.
Flik goes everywhere with his iPad 2, holding it up in front of him as if documenting every waking moment. He holds it up like a wall, the bishop complains, and indeed this new world is as strange to Flik as a YouTube he might be watching (we learn that he attends a private school in Atlanta and is a vegan).
He makes one friend his age: Chazz (Toni Lysaith), the daughter of Sister Sharon Morningstar (Heather Alicia Simms), a pillar of the congregation. They have a shy, unstated courtship, often interrupted by fights, and although Sharon and the bishop predict it, the teens don't swap any spit.
The movie was made in three weeks on a small budget, guerrilla-style, like Lee's first film, "She's Gotta Have It." The speed and economy aren't fatal, but they certainly needed more time on the screenplay, and the only outstanding performance is by Clarke Peters (from "The Wire"). His fiery sermons carry the film's message, and probably Lee's, as he deplores the problems of the neighborhood: joblessness, homelessness, drug-dealing, AIDS, schoolgirl mothers. This litany applies to a neighborhood that doesn't look like a typical movie slum; the streets are tidy, but empty of opportunity.
For an hour the film seems to drift as slices of Flik's "Red Hook Summer Camp." These scenes would be more involving if Flik, or Jules Brown the actor, were more open, but that iPad truly does seem to build a wall. Then, with no preparation, the plot unleashes its thunderbolt. It inspires the best scenes by Peters, but as you'll see, the other characters are left confused and adrift, and nothing he says clears much up.
Spike Lee has feeling for these people (including the alcoholic Deacon Zee, played by Thomas Jefferson Byrd), and he has a feeling for the neighborhood. Some of his scenes are strong in a free-standing way. I'm not sure what they add up to. I was happy to get a glimpse of Mookie, the pizza deliveryman played by Lee in his masterpiece "Do the Right Thing" (1989), who is still delivering pizza. But Mookie brings along so much resonance, he might better have been left out. Or better yet, the movie could have been about him.
A review of the third and final season of Jessica Jones, now playing on Netflix.
Who and what you should nominate for Emmys this year.
One of the more singular moviegoing experiences that I can recall attending.
This message came to me from a reader named Peter Svensland. He and a fr...


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Following is a guest post from Chris Cole. Chris posted here on Cincinnati Losers a few months ago and is STILL going strong. I think you'll agree his journey is inspiring!
Hello again, Cincinnati Losers! The last time you heard from me was in February when Shannan asked me to submit something. At that point, I had lost 63 pounds and was feeling pretty good.
Today, I'm down 101 pounds and feeling great! My last submission was titled "The Tipping Point," and as each day passes it becomes clearer to me that what separates successful weight-loss efforts from the countless unsuccessful ones is just that – a tipping point. A moment when you decide, once and for all, that you've had enough. Enough of the aches and pains of everyday life. Enough of the dread of going to certain restaurants or sporting events or getting on an airplane because the seats are too small. Enough of losing your breath walking from the car to the office. Enough of growing out of expensive clothes you purchased just months earlier. Enough.
So you change. It starts slow with little things. Frankly, early on you have no idea what you're doing. You start counting calories. Maybe you get a gym membership. You go and you look around at the machines and it's all overwhelming and intimidating. You see beautiful people. Everywhere. They're lifting the big weights; they're sprinting on the treadmills faster than you could run if a bear was chasing you – and they're not even sweating; they're living beautiful people lives, and that in and of itself intimates you. You pick out a machine that doesn't look too complicated – maybe a recumbent bike – and you hop on. You start pedaling. You ride until your butt is just too sore to continue. You burned 250 calories. Is that good? You have no clue. You're too sore to go the next day, but the day after there you are again. With the same damn beautiful people. (They go every day.) You hop back on that same bike and you go again. You crank up your iPod with some up-tempo music you love now but will soon come to detest because of its Pavlovian effect on you. This time you're able to burn a few more calories, but you still have no clue if its even worth the effort. Two-hundred and seventy calories sure doesn't sound like that much. And how can the human butt get so sore so quickly?
As you pedal on, the miles turn into weeks and the weeks turn into muscle. You're amazed. You never noticed your quads before, but hmm…there they are. And you don't get as sore as you used to. Oh, and you're burning closer to 500 calories each visit now. And you're not as sore the next day, which is good because that means you can think clearly enough to do some Googling and you find out that burning nearly 500 calories isn't that bad. And you realize how important it is to keep an eye on fiber and sodium and fat too. You see references to net calorie burn and other scientific-sounding stuff, but that's all a bit much for now. It's enough of a challenge for you to just track the calories, pedal the bike and not kill the beautiful people.
After a few months, you're bored with the bike. So you hop on the elliptical machine and holy hell. How can something that looks so simple cause such misery? It's everything you can do to last three minutes. But you notice that in those three minutes you burned more calories than five minutes on the bike. So the next day (you're able to go to the gym back-to-back days now) you do the bike awhile and then hop back on the elliptical. Eight minutes this time – SCORE! The trick, you figure out, is to bend your knees a little and get into a rhythm. In no time at all, you're master of the elliptical. You can go 40, 50 minutes. Granted, you sweat so much you literally slip from time to time on the puddle gathering below you. You begin to think, "If I can do this, surely I can go join the beautiful people on the treadmill." You do. At first you walk. Slowly. And flat. Over time, you speed up and begin to work at an incline. Soon you're running. Damn – you haven't run since…the 1980s. Literally. Your day-to-day aches have been replaced by sore hips and joints from running and ellipticaling, but it's such a good feeling.
You've lost some serious weight at this point and you start to think about things you've never thought about before. You're sitting in your office, daydreaming about the run you'll get in tonight. It's sick, but you love it. Your body is feeling great and you realize there is nothing you cannot do. You do some more Googling and decide that you're going to start training for a 5K. You think back to before you started this madness when you didn't even know what 5K meant – it's 5,000 something, but it might as well have been miles. Now you're planning. Next year, you'll do some version of the Flying Pig Marathon. Probably not a 5K – you could do that now if you really worked hard. Nah, half marathon at least. Maybe the full 26+ miles. Why not? You're getting stronger – much stronger. The comments and compliments are coming pretty regularly now. It's all a bit embarrassing, but at the same time it fuels you. And you finally feel comfortable venturing into the weight training area of the gym. You realize the beautiful people are actually quite welcoming. They show you how to use the crazy-looking machines. You start small. On some of the machines, you don't even use the weights – you can only manage the weight of the machine itself. But you do it. Then the real muscles come. You begin to notice things like biceps, triceps and collar bones. You have collar bones – who knew?
As frustrating as it was to grow out of expensive clothes in no time at all, you're now thrilled to shrink right back down through those same clothes. The shirts you wore at your previous job 10 years ago…now too big. The T-shirts you wore in college begin to hang off of you. You keep the belt you wore before your tipping point as a reminder. You've been poking holes in it for awhile now and it's getting ridiculous. There are 15 new holes in the thing and it wraps halfway around you when you put it on. You bought a new belt last month, but you've already started to poke new holes in that one too. It's a nice problem to have, but it's a problem nonetheless. You need new clothes, and the realization hits you that for the first time since you were a teenager you don't have to shop at some specialty store. You secretly cry in the dressing room the first time you get an XL to fit you – the same way you did the first time you realized a 5XL fit you.
Just when you start to think you have this thing beat, you hit your first real, stubborn plateau. It's like quicksand. You work hard – real hard; you eat healthy – real healthy. But nothing. You lose one pound this week but gain two the next. You start to get frustrated and so you work even harder. You up your weekly gym visits to eight (one each day and twice on Saturday). Still nothing. As quickly as things got started, things have stalled. What do you do? You ask the beautiful people. Their advice is all over the board – lift more, lift less, take supplements, mix it up, stop working out completely for a week. Hmm…given the exhaustion, this last option seems like a good one! So you do it. And it takes everything you've got not to go to the gym for a week. Your body heals and the rest does wonders for those sore hips. A week later, there you are back at the gym. You're shocked how much you actually missed the beautiful people. You hop on the scale, full of fear and dread for the first time in months. And to your utter amazement, you've lost 7 more pounds. Seven. How in the hell did that happen? You get your workout in (four miles on the treadmill, 30 minutes on the elliptical and 15 minutes on the rowing machine) and then head home to once again work the Google. You begin to realize just how complicated the human body can be. Ahhh…that must be what makes weight loss such a challenge, you conclude. It's half art, half science.
Back on track, you decide that it probably is time for you to mix things up. You've been using the same three or four cardio machines for months now and while you're not completely bored, you're ready for something new. A coworker tells you about a class he's thinking of taking – something called Muay Thai (back to the Google). Wow. It looks serious. It's like kickboxing on steroids. Something the beautiful people would do, but probably not for you. After a few days of heavy persuading, you agree to give it one shot and so you go. Great…more beautiful people. But these are even nicer than the ones at the gym. Once they realize you're taking it seriously and actually want to improve yourself, they welcome you with open arms. Soon, you're kicking the bag so hard your shin will look like a medium-rare ribeye steak the next day. Your left big toe is blistered from pivoting on the mat, your right big toe is bruised and swollen from kicking the bag wrong and your ankles aren't thrilled with you either. But you love it. The next week, you're the first to arrive.
You're down 101 pounds and your life is literally changing every day. What once seemed completely impossible (running, taking mixed martial arts classes, shopping for clothes at the mall) is now your day-to-day life. And you know to an absolute certainty that you'll reach your ultimate weight loss goal. You've really known it since your tipping point, but now others look at you and they know it too.
Yep, as I said in February, life is good.
Chris Cole
Starting Weight – 370
Current Weight - 269
Friday, May 14, 2010
Becoming One of the Beautiful People3 comments
Posted by ShannanB at 4:04 AM
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Auckland Pride (in the name of love)
I got to take my daughter to her first Auckland Pride parade on Saturday. The tolerance, the genuine sense of community and joy shows all the reasons why I like living in Auckland. Welcome back pride parade - you make our city a far better place to live.
Thanks to Nikki Kaye and Kevin Hague for all their championing to help see this return.


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Jordan Initiative
The Jordan Initiative
The Jordan Initiative is a movement to eradicate hazing and other practices inconsistent with the Fraternity's values. Its members believe in honoring their oath of initiation and holding Sigma Chis accountable to the highest standards of the International Fraternity, while taking the best possible care of Sigma Chi. If a brother believes in these principles, he is a member of this movement.
The Jordan Initiative is also the name of the Fraternity's educational program that deals with preventing hazing. The objectives of its curriculum are as follows:
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For more information and to request a Jordan Initiative workshop at your chapter, please contact Brian Wilson, DEPAUW 2002, director of education and leadership programs, at email@example.com, or (847) 869-3655, ext. 257.


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Cal loses to No. 21 UNLV 76-75
But for something as mundane as a made foul shot or two, Cal might have knocked off the nation's 21st-ranked team.
Instead, the Bears gagged at the line in the very place where they practice every day and left Haas Pavilion on the agonizing end of a 76-75 loss to UNLV on Sunday afternoon.
Cal, at one point in the second half, was 3-for-14 from the free-throw line before finishing a little above 50 percent at 15-for-28.
No place like home? Not on this day.
"If you're going to beat a good team like Vegas, you're going to have to not have a glaring deficiency," Cal head coach Mike Montgomery said. "Free throws killed us. We just missed free throws. We can't afford to do it in a game like this and have a chance."
This would have been a dandy win for the Bears, playing a ranked team on national TV in a significant nonconference game. Cal has one more chance, against an even tougher opponent, to make a statement before Pac-12 games begin in early January when it hosts No. 16 Creighton (9-1) on Saturday.
"It hurts," said Cal's leading scorer, Allen Crabbe, who had 18 points in 27 foul-shortened minutes. "It was there. There's so many other things you could think of so we could win the game. Today was a perfect day to show we can compete. It came down to one play."
That one play won the game for the Runnin' Rebels in the final second.
After trailing most of the second half, the Bears fought back and took a 75-74 lead on two Justin Cobbs free throws with 11.4 seconds left. UNLV brought the ball upcourt with time running out.
Guard Anthony Marshall put up an airball against good defensive pressure but teammate Quintrell Thomas was in the right place to secure the rebound for the put-back that won the game with 1.2 seconds to go.
"I should have (gone) out and got that rebound," Cal forward Richard Solomon said. "I was boxing out and I should have (gone) up for the rebound."
On the final inbounds, the ball went to Cobbs near halfcourt. His shot was blocked by Justin Hawkins at the buzzer as Cal lost at Haas for the first time this season to drop to 6-2. UNLV is 7-1, losing only to Oregon.
Another big factor in the game for the Bears was the foul trouble for Crabbe. He picked up his third foul in the first half on a flagrant call with 6:49 to go and the game tied 28-28. Crabbe did not return the rest of the half and it was no surprise Cal trailed 45-38 at the break.
The flagrant foul by Crabbe was on Marshall, who hit the deck and got up to make one of two free-throw tries.
"He flopped," Crabbe said. "I didn't even touch him. He got up into me. I felt like it was a bad call. Can't do anything about it."
After the game, Crabbe stared in disbelief at the final statistics that showed him making seven of 10 from the free-throw line. He came into the game shooting 87.5.
"It just wasn't our day on the free-throw line," he said. "I really can't believe I missed three free throws. If I had made two (more) free throws, we could have won the game."
Cal went to a zone defense in the second half and limited UNLV to 31 points but was hurt by a big game from Runnin' Rebel freshman Anthony Bennett. The 6-foot-8 forward contributed 25 points and 13 rebounds as he filled a void left by teammate Mike Moser, who dislocated his right elbow in the first half.
John Crumpacker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: email@example.com Twitter: @crumpackeroncal


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Statement by Dr. Shirley Chater,
Commissioner of Social Security,
before the House Committee on Ways and Means
Subcommittee on Social Security
June 13, 1995
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:
Thank you for inviting me to discuss the field structure of the Social Security Administration (SSA). SSA faces formidable challenges in striving to improve the way we deliver service, while at the same time facing shrinking resources. I am pleased that this hearing gives me the opportunity to discuss how we can meet these challenges.
In addition to reviewing our field structure, I would like to share with you some information about our planning process so that you may mo e easily understand the role which the field structure plays in meeting our service delivery objectives.
Let me state at the outset that our field structure is - intended to support our service delivery objectives . In all that SSA does, three fundamental objectives remain constant:
- To provide world-class service in an equitable, effective, efficient, and caring manner;
- To rebuild confidence in the Social Security program; and
- To provide a nurturing environment for employees.
Resource Constraints
Mr. Chairman, the law mandates a reduction in the Federal workforce of 272,900 full-time equivalent employees by 1999. This equates to an overall reduction of about 12 percent of the Federal workforce when compared to the number of people on duty in 1993. To meet its share of this reduction, SSA must reduce its staff from about 66,000 to about 61,000 full time equivalent employees by 1999. This is a reduction of about 7 percent when compared to 1993. In the recent past, SSA has already experienced major downsizing from about 83,000 full-time equivalent positions in Fiscal Year 1984 to a current Fiscal Year 1995 estimate of about 66,000 positions. During this same time, the number of beneficiaries served increased from about 40 million to almost 50 million--a 25 percent increase in beneficiaries served and a 22 percent decrease in full-time equivalent positions.
I believe SSA's plans to make more effective use of its staffing resources, which I will further explain later, will yield savings by 1999 that can be applied to the qovernment-wide reduction. Redirected resources, coupled with our increasing use of technology, will permit us to keep up with growing workloads, implement recent legislative mandates, and provide the public with the level of service it deserves.
Automation Needs
To support our technological improvements, our Fiscal Year 1996 budget request includes $357 million to continue our 5-year, $1.1 billion investment in the Intelligent Workstation/Local Area Network project. In conjunction with our process reengineerlng efforts, this investment is a fundamental prerequisite to make our business processes more efficient, streamline administrative operations, and enhance customer service.
SSA' s current systems infrastructure is a highly centralized, mainframe- based architecture that relies on very aged, "dumb" computer terminals used by frontline employees to get information to and from SSA's mainframe computers. SSA is moving towards the establishment of a truly cooperative architecture (an automated systems configuration that uses both centralized and localized processes) that will use intelligent workstations as the basic automation platform. The cooperative architecture will allow SSA to determine the optimal mode of processing for each workload and to take advantage of emerging technology in the delivery of services to the public. It will also improve the availability and timeliness of information to employees and appropriate users and help build a more reliable capability for backup and recovery in the event of a crisis.
We appreciate the support we have received thus far from the Congress for our automation initiatives, and we ask for your continued support in this regard as we seek to make full use of technological advances to help us provide world class service.
Direct Service Delivery Offices
Since there may be various understandings of what constitutes an agency's direct service delivery structure, I want to explain briefly the functions of the SSA offices which are organizationally located outside SSA headquarters. These offices can be grouped in two general categories--those which provide service to members of the public by dealing with them directly or by processing their claims and other requests for service and those which perform activities in support of SSA's mission, generally at a regional level, but which do not involve direct service delivery.
Most of our employees who provide direct service to our customers work in our 1,299 district and branch offices l ocated throughout the country. (Branch offices are smaller field facilities which report to district offices, but which generally offer the same services as district offices.)
SSA has a long tradition of providing tailored public service through a network of accessible, community-based offices. Our field structure has to be viewed in the context of our responsibilities to the public . SSA's field offices provide a wide array of services to our customers, including processing applications for benefits, handling reports of events which affect a beneficiary's payments, processing request for Social security numbers, investigating allegations of unreported earnings and making appropriate corrections, and answering general inquiries. To make you aware of the magnitude of our responsibilities, let me point out as examples of our workloads that, in Fiscal Year 1996, SSA will:
- Pay benefits to about 48 million people;
- Process more than 6 million new benefit claims;
- Process about 16 million requests for Social Security cards;
- Post about 235 million earnings items to workers' earnings records; and
- Handle about 70 million 800-number telephone calls.
District office employees disseminate public information in their communities to heighten awareness of and increase confidence in our programs. They help people file applications for a variety of benefits, investigate allegations of program abuse, respond to general inquiries on almost any subject dealing with government services, refer people to the other assistance programs or agencies, and assist the public in obtaining evidence needed to support applications for benefits.
District offices provide the American public with a setting where they can feel confident that personal and confidential issues are handled with the care and privacy that they have a right to expect. Customers often visit SSA offices at some of the most vulnerable times of their lives: when they are disabled, have just lost a loved one, are in need of assistance, or are facing a major transition in their life. For many, there is no substitute for the personal service that SSA offices provide.
District offices have long been the focal point for the integration of various services provided to the American public in communities throughout the United States. Working with other Federal, State, and local government agencies and social services organizations (sheltered workshops, hospitals, community based providers, etc.), local offices have developed alternatives for providing the public access to services without having to go to multiple locations and furnish similar information multiple times. Some of these service arrangements include:
- Establishing entitlement to Medicare benefits;
- Taking food stamp applications; and
- Making Medicaid eligibility determinations in some States.
Local offices are often the first line of defense against program fraud. Employees review evidence and are trained to detect fraudulent documentation. Through personal review of documentation and client observation, employees are often able to make determinations concerning the appropriateness of an application that would not be possible without face-to-face contact. As members of the communities in which they work, district office employees are usually the first to become aware of potential fraudulent situations. Many of the investigations that have uncovered instances of program abuse started because one local office employee alerted investigators to a problem.
A growing number of SSA's walk-in visitors do not have the means or the ability to access government services through other than direct contact. Local offices provide service to many clients who are not able to read, who have difficulty communicating in English, who live in inner-city neighborhoods or remote rural locations where they do not have access to the transportation and communication services that the general public has become accustomed to, or who have severe disabling conditions which restrict their ability to communicate. These clients need the personal service, e.g., face to face interviews, assistance in obtaining documents, and referrals to other agencies for additional services, that are available through the local office. We also consider the following offices to be providers of direct service:
- 38 teleservice centers are staffed with employees who answer general inquiries, schedule appointments for district and branch offices, and process some workloads that do not require face-to-face contact;
- 132 hearing offices are staffed with administrative law judges and support employees who hear and process appeals of decisions;
- 9 processing centers are staffed with employees who perform activities, including telephone calls and correspondence with the public, related to earnings record maintenance, debt collection, and benefit adjustments.
Regional Office Functions
SSA's regional offices (ROs) were established to provide supervision and direct support for other SSA facilities located in their service areas. The Regional Commissioner (RC) is the senior SSA official for the geographic region that comprises the RO service area. Therefore, the RC represents the Commissioner in regional matters and is the primary spokesperson for SSA i n the r egion. The RC has line authority for district offices in the region and provides administrative support for other SSA components and State Agencies that are not directly under the RC's supervision.
The ROs are responsible for ensuring integration of all of SSA's service delivery operations, including the network of district and branch offices, teleservice centers, and processing centers. Be caus e o f t he ir vantage point which promotes the consideration of t he unique economic, geographic, and cultural needs of our diverse public, ROs have the ability to provide world class service tailored to meet regional needs by:
- Ensuring consistency in the national program while also ensuring that any needs unique to the regions are accommodated;
- Ensuring sound working relationships among all SSA components; State disability determination services; large employers; unions; medical associations and organizations; Federal, State and local agencies; regional and local media outlets; and community service organizations throughout the region;
- Interacing with numerous other agencies (Federal, State, local , private) to ensure effective administration of income maintenance and social services activities (e. g., food stamps, Medicaid);
- Working with Members of Congress, governors, and executives from other agencies on a wide-range of regional governmental issues;
- Identifying and responding to regional or local problems (e. g., the unprecedented recovery efforts following Hurricane Andrew and the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, issuance of timely emergency procedures in response to local disasters, and responding to fast-breaking issues in the local media);
- Developing and supporting cross-boundary partnerships with State and local governments and institutions to enhance customer service;
- Providing local offices with essential support in core areas such as training, human resources, facilities, management, financial management, program operations, systems/automation support , disability administration, service delivery, security, and program integrity which meets each region's unique demographics and individual characteristics;
- Ensuring that SSA complies with court-ordered actions that require specific remedies by SSA within specific jurisdictions;
- Promoting activities devoted to rebuilding public confidence in Social Security through enhancement of public understanding and awareness of SSA's programs and activities;
- Providing legal advice; and
- Performing audits and investigating fraud.
Restructuring Field Offices
I would now like to discuss SSA's plans to restructure our field offices and the strategic reasons for restructuring. In view of our growing workloads and decreasing staff, we need to concentrate as many of our resources as possible where the public is directly served, either in person or on the telephone. Therefore, our restructuring will focus on how we will be able to provide the public with the service it deserves while faced with shrinking resources. SSA has in place a formalized process, known as Service Delivery Assessment (SDA), for assessing the need for and the location of its field offices. SSA's Regional Commissioners are required to evaluate each field office service area at least once every 5 years. In considering site locations, SSA looks at six factors: demographics, workloads , accessibility, special needs, unique service criteria, and resource considerations. The process also includes consultations with interested Members of Congress, key community leaders, and advocacy groups before final decisions are made on any proposed changes. The National Performance Review (NPR) has cited SSA as an Agency which has successfully trimmed staff while enhancing service. This was achieved through our ongoing SDA process. We plan to continue using this process to adjust and fine-tune our service delivery network.
We have decided to consolidate our 10 regional offices into 5 offices, thereby reducing administrative staff while maintaining staff who process claims or answer telephones. In addition to consolidating regional offices, we will delegate increased authority from headquarters to the regions. Putting more responsibility in the hands of those who work in close proximity to our customers will result in improved public service. As a result, Regional Commissioners will have greater responsibility for public affairs and personnel administration. Headquarters components will provide support, guidance, and technical assistance.
During the past 5 years, overall staffing in SSA's field office components, and the number of such offices, have remained relatively stable. Rather than reduce the numbers of our direct service staff, SSA has reduced staff in its regional offices by more than 15 percent since October 1993, in order to make sufficient resources available for direct service to the public. Siimilar reductions have been made, and will continue to be made, in headquarters staff.
In our field office structure, we will eliminate at least one level of management between the local field office manager and the Regional Commissioner. Depending on the office size and its service area responsibilities, field office managers will report directly to an area director, who in turn will report to the Regional Commissioner, instead of to an Assistant Regional Commissioner. We have also reduced the number of area direct or offices by approximately 20 percent in the past year, in keeping with Agency streamlining objectives.
We are also setting specific year-by-year targets for meeting the goal of expanding the span of supervision so that the supervisor-employee ratio will increase from one-to-seven to one-to-fifteen by the end of 1999. In our smaller field offices, there will be only one level of supervision. Where there are compelling service delivery demands, there may be more than one level of supervision in the field office, such as in some large urban offices.
Most importantly, SSA has a firm commitment to provide optimum support to the offices and employees engaged in direct service to the public. To help us meet this commitment, we have implemented a Redeployment Program, which has the potential to allow about 300 eligible employees to voluntarily move from headquarters, regional office, and management positions to direct service positions throughout the country. The program provides a unique opportunity for eligible employees to make a career change to the location of their choice while helping us meet our goal of redi rec t i ng l imi t ed staf f resources to where they are most needed.
SSA's Strategic Management Process
I would now like to describe our overall planning process. SSA has instituted a process of strategic management that drives decisionmaking and action. This process was created to ensure that SSA takes into account such critical strategic drivers as customer expectations and shrinking resources as it describes and works to achieve its vision of the SSA of the future. Even before the Government Performance and Results Act required Federal agencies to develqp strategic plans, SSA had published a plan and established it as the central feature of a comprehensive, coordinated process by which the Agency could identify its goals and objectives for the future and chart a course of action for achieving them.
The 1991 Agency Strategic Plan (ASP) included important objectives a round service delivery that led us to focus on critical service issues. It committed SSA to a number of principles, some of them specific commitments to the public in such matters as using public input to help us design service delivery systems and balancing the use of technological solutions with the need for the "human touch. " Our assessment at that time of the customers ' desires resulted in an operational vision of the future, a cornerstone of which was our intention o permit people to choose the method of contacting SSA that best fit their needs.
Recent efforts to obtain information directly from the public concerning their preference for service delivery confirm that convenience is important. For them, a major aspect of convenience is the ability to choose from among a variety of options for dealing with SSA, and our customer service pledge, "Putting Customers First," commits us to continuing to offer traditional access methods while working to give the public other , newer options such as facsimile machine or personal computer.
The most recent component of the strategic management system, SSA's General Business Plan, describes our overall business strategy for Fiscal Years 1996 through 1999. It explicitly describes the current state of the six service delivery interfaces now available in some measure. These six include face-to-face service in a field office, face-to-face service using third parties, telephone service through a field office, telephone service over our national 800 number, automated selfhelp, and service by mail. The assessment in the Business Plan makes clear that providing the full range of service-delivery interfaces is an integral part of SSA' s vision of world-class service. But it also highliqhts the fact that, despite the availability of other modes of service delivery, an estimated 24 million people visited SSA field offices in Fiscal Year 1994.
One of SSA's critical business strategies cited in the Business Plan is that we will use business-process reengineering to enable us to deliver dramatically better customer service at a lower cost. The first reengineering effort focused on a redesign of the process by which initial disability determinations are made. In undertaking this largest process-improvement initiative ever at SSA, we rethought all of our original assumptions about bow best to provide these program services. Having done so, we created an ultimate redesign that is intended to shave months off the time that claimants must wait for a disability decision. And I emphasize that such an impressive redesign calls for an expanded role for community-based field offices in the processing of disability claims for some claimants while strengthening other available interfaces depending upon the needs and desires of the disability claimant. This result supports the validity of our belief that providing personal service to certain members of the public, based upon either their preference or program need, remains of vital importance.
The reengineering strategy is now being applied to the entire SSA enterprise. The early stages of this larger effort are expected to identify significant process changes that can be implemented relatively quickly. They will also target those of our processes that require the more dramatic improvement expected from a reengineerinq effort, and we will be moving forward on those as they are identified. The effort should have a positive impact on bot h the effectiveness and efficiency of how we deliver service. Some of these impacts certainly may change the organizational particulars of our service-delivery mechanisms, though at this time we do not expect a remarkable change in the overal l character of our field structure to result from the reenqineering efforts.
As part of our strategic management process, we will of course continue to revalidate and ultimately refresh the vision of the future that is contained in the ASP and translated into action in our Business Plan. In doing so, we must be open to environmental circumstances, such as changing customer expectations, that argue for a changed operational scenario. Our current projection of the future SSA includes a strong community presence. We expect our field structure to accommodate increased demand for direct customer service.
Reinventing Government
For over a year now, we have been working hard to change the way we do business in support of the principles and direction of the first phase of the NPR; that is, to make the Federal Government work better and cost less. During the first phase, we developed initiatives that emphasized putting customers first, cutting red tape, and empowering employees.
We sought input from the public and our employees about providing world-class service. We established and published "Customer Service Standards" and began the process of streamlining SSA, which will lead to decentralized decisionmaking and give employees more say over the way they do their jobs. As a result, same aspects of the reengineered disability claims process will soon be implemented, procurement rules have been simplified, and all non-legislative rules are being reduced by 50 percent.
On December 19, 1994, President Clinton and Vice President Gore announced the second phase of the NPR. The emphasis of this Reinventing Government initiative will focus on what vovernment ahould do , rather than how government should work.
I am pleased to tell you about some of the Reinventing Government initiatives that involve SSA:
- SSA wi l l establish a controlled third party claims taking environment where large employers will be able to assist retiring employees in filing their Social Security claims electronically. This will result in improved service in that it will provide retirees with total benefit/health insurance considerations at one time and place.
- We wil l also increase the use of direct deposit. Since direct deposit is a more reliable and vastly more cost-effective method to disburse payments than checks, SSA will increase the number of recipients who are paid by direct deposit in three phases over the next four years. The first phase, already underway, is directed to all new beneziciaries who have bank accounts. The second phase will focus on all beneficiaries who have bank accounts and do not use direct deposit. The final phase will require that all beneficiaries without bank accounts select one of the electronic benefit transfer services that will be available to receive their monthly benefit payments.
- We plan to pay future beneficiaries on one of three additional dates staggered throughout the month, rather than on the third of the month, when monthly benefit payments are currently paid to Social Security beneficiaries. This will improve service to all beneficiaries by beginning to reduce the current crush of telephone calls and workload spikes that occur at the beginning of the month when payments are made.
Finally, we are looking at several telecommunications initiatives which will enhance the delivery of services to members of the public who prefer to conduct their business with SSA by telephone. For example, we are purchasing additional software which will improve 800-number response times. Although we believe that we need to continue to improve telephone service, I am happy to report that, based on its 800-number, SSA was recently rated the #1 telephone answering organization in both the public and private sectors in an independent survey conducted by Dalbar Financial Services, Inc. We are pleased to be recognized for the hard work and committment of our employees. I will be glad to make a copy of Dalbar's report available for the record .
To summarize, Mr. Chairman, we believe that our current field structure delivers services to the public in a way that is responsive to their needs. Our streamlining and technology improvement plans will allow us to deliver service with even greater efficiency, despite increasing workloads. Of course, we will evaluate our field structure on a continuing basis to ensure that we continue to meet our objective of providing world class service as the public's demand for service evolves.


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Attackers continue to use well-worn techniques, such as SQL injection, to exploit holes in popular Web applications but have also moved on to other targets, including government sites, and newer exploit methods, such as cross-site request forgery, according to the latest report filed by the Web Applications Security Consortium.
The nonprofit industry group released the findings of its annual Hacking Incidents Database report this week, and despite the fact that cyber-criminals are still capable of using familiar means like SQL injection to victimize e-commerce sites and other transactional systems, a growing number of assailants are broadening their efforts and capabilities and going after new sets of targets, the research contends.
Based on WASC's in-depth investigations into roughly 80 individual attacks carried out during calendar 2007, the group concludes that data theft remains the primary goal of most incidents, representing 42 per cent of all the events.
Surprisingly, site defacement -- thought to be a dying art in the world of profit-driven hacking -- actually still accounted for 23 per cent of the attacks covered in the report, followed by exploits aimed at planting malware on sites at roughly 15 per cent.
And while the lion's share of the incidents studied by the group revolved around the attempted theft of sensitive data that could be sold on the underground market or used to carry out fraud, the phishing threats of years past are increasingly becoming outnumbered by attacks that utilize malware code hidden on legitimate Web applications to victimize unsuspecting end-users, the group said.
Of all the threats studied by WASC in its report, 67 per cent were designed specifically to derive some form of profit -- pointing to continued growth in the professionalism of those responsible for the attacks, researchers said.
"One of the biggest issues is that so much of this activity is being delivered directly though legitimate Web sites that are being hacked," said Ryan Barnett, a project leader at WASC who also serves as director of application security training at applications firewall vendor Breach Security, which sponsored the 2008 report.
"It used to be that as long as users didn't go to certain Web sites they'd be safe, but obviously, that's changing," he said. "SQL injection still works surprisingly well, so we're seeing plenty of those across the board, but you do also begin to see more use of things like cross-site request forgery, to which even greater numbers of sites might be vulnerable."
SQL injection, which attempts to use security vulnerabilities occurring in the database layer of applications to compromise them, still remains a weak point in some widely-used Web systems, in particular e-commerce sites, a reality that the researcher views as surprising based on the well-established history of the technique. However, CSRF threats, which attempt to hijack authenticated Web sessions to carry out their ploys, are becoming more common, while still far less frequent than SQL injections, according to the expert. Indeed, CSRF threats accounted for only 2 per cent of the incidents tracked by WASC for the 2007 report, while SQL injections represented 20 per cent, the most popular format for exploit.
Unintentional information disclosure, which involves sites that emanate such detailed authentication failures that hackers may use them to find a way in, was the second most popular format for attackers to break into applications at 15 per cent, followed by cross-site scripting exploits, which use malware planted on legitimate sites to subvert end-users' machines, at 12 per cent of the incidents.
In terms of the types of organizations being assailed by the attacks tracked by WASC, the group found that government agencies actually represented the largest group of targets.
Perhaps because financial services companies and retailers have improved their applications defenses, hackers have moved on to the government set as well as educational institutions, the report contends.
Some 29 per cent of the incidents covered in the report targeted government agencies, followed by education at 15 per cent, and retailers and media outlets tied at 12 per cent.
In addition to attempts to steal data, WASC contends that government agencies may also be getting hacked by parties looking to embarrass or disable the organizations' sites based on ideological goals. Because government agencies are forced to report more of their security incidents publicly, hackers may merely be trying to force the organizations to admit that they have been exploited in public, the researchers said.


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Here is a link to a wonderful blog entry about Saudi women driving from the Saudi Woman blog written by a Riyadh native and mother of three named Eman Al-Nafjan. The blog is great. The entry on driving has two wonderful video clips and many comments.
As an aside, to pile on arguments in favor of Saudi women driving, a few years ago, I met a prominent Saudi female economist. She told me that the sheer amount of cash flowing out of Saudi Arabia to foreign drivers would be so much better reinvested locally...if families didn't have to pay for drivers. It would help diversify the economy, and would give those with fewer means the wherewithall to consider doing things like opening a service business.


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US Offered To Write New Zealand's Three Strikes Laws
from the but-of-course deptLeaked cables have already confirmed how involved the US government has been in Canadian copyright reform, Swedish copyright reform and Spanish copyright reform. I think, at this point, it's safe to assume that anywhere in the world where we're seeing new draconian copyright laws proposed, the US is behind them.
How about New Zealand? Yup. The country that just approved a new three strikes law also faced tremendous pressure from the US. As you may recall, back in 2008, New Zealand politicians tried to sneak through a three strikes law, that would kick people offline based on accusations (not convictions) of infringement. A few months later, mainly due to massive public outcry, the government scrapped those plans and actually promised a complete rethink of copyright laws.
But, of course, the US and its entertainment industry interests couldn't have that. It quickly got heavily involved in pressuring the government. In a cable just after New Zealand decided to scrap the proposed law, the US embassy noted that it made it clear a new 3 strikes law needed to be put in place as soon as possible and saying that the US can help them write the new law.
Embassy will continue to stress with GNZ officials the need for a shorter rather than protracted timeline for the redraft and will ascertain the details of a notice and comment period for public submissions once released by GNZ. During this hiatus we've proposed holding DVC(s) between NZ and U.S. interlocutors to possibly help with drafting and as a public diplomacy tool to dispel public misperceptions about proper role of IPR protection. U.S. agencies have the benefit of 10 years worth of experience in enforcing the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act that may serve useful to New Zealand officials in their effort to implement section 92A.Yes, you read that right. Not only did the US say it would help write a foreign country's laws, it also planned to use its 10 years of experiences with the failed DMCA (as described by the guy who wrote it), as a guide for how to pass bad legislation in New Zealand.
The cables turned up a few other interesting tidbits from a bit further back, including the fact that a program -- run by the Recording Industry Association New Zealand (RIANZ) to set up a website and get people to snitch on their friends, reporting them as infringers -- was funded by the US government. Yes, the US government handed half a million dollars (New Zealand dollars) to the recording industry to get people to turn in their friends for copying music. Lovely.
Separately, the US warned New Zealand that exceptions in copyright law (including those found in US law under fair use) should not be allowed in New Zealand because:
these exceptions to copyright protection would send the wrong message to consumers and undermine efforts to curb unauthorized copying of CDs in New Zealand. They would cost the industry in revenue and profits and discourage innovation.They admit that this info comes from industry lobbyists themselves, but the embassy still seems to think it's valid. This is a complete joke, of course. As many copyright scholars and experts will tell you, it's those exceptions that are important to keeping new content coming and vibrant. The idea that concepts like fair use would "send the wrong message to consumers" is laughable, and the US government shouldn't be pushing such garbage on other countries.
None of this is a surprise, but it is a clear reminder of how much the entertainment industry's completely debunked arguments not only influence US policy on these matters, but they're also pushed by US diplomats on other countries around the globe.
Filed Under: copyright, diplomats, new zealand, three strikes, us


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Lensing Galaxy Cluster Abell 383
Astronomers have uncovered one of the youngest galaxies in the distant universe, with stars that formed 13.5 billion years ago, a mere 200 million years after the Big Bang. The finding addresses questions about when the first galaxies arose, and how the early universe evolved.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was the first to spot the newfound galaxy. Detailed observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii revealed the observed light dates to when the universe was only 950 million years old; the universe formed about 13.7 billion years ago.
Infrared data from both Hubble and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope revealed the galaxy's stars are quite mature, having formed when the universe was just a toddler at 200 million years old.
The galaxy's image is being magnified by the gravity of a massive cluster of galaxies (Abell 383) parked in front of it, making it appear 11 times brighter. This phenomenon is called gravitational lensing.
Hubble imaged the lensing galaxy Abell 383 with the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys in November 2010 through March 2011.
NASA, ESA, J. Richard (Center for Astronomical Research/Observatory of Lyon, France), and J.-P. Kneib (Astrophysical Laboratory of Marseille, France); Acknowledgment: M. Postman (STScI)


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Thomas A Traill, B.M. B.Ch., M.D.
Director, the E. Cowles Andrus Cardiac Clinic
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Expertise: Cardiology, Cardiomyopathy, Cardiovascular Disease, Clinical Cardiology, Congenital Heart Disease - Young Adult, General Cardiology, Heart Failure, Inherited Heart Diseases ...read more
Research Interests: Cardiomyopathy; Valvular Heart Disease; Aortic disease; Marfan syndrome; Echocardiography
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601 N. Caroline St. Baltimore, MD 21287
Phone: 410-614-3140 | Fax: 410-367-2654
Dr. Thomas Traill is director of the E. Cowles Andrus Cardiac Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is an expert in heart failure, heart valve disease, and inherited conditions that affect the heart such as Marfan syndrome. A professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Dr. Traill is also the associate director of the Osler Medical Housestaff Training Program for residents.
Dr. Traill attended St. George's Hospital Medical School in London, and took his medical degree at Oxford University. He pursued residencies in general medicine, cardiology and nephrology at Brompton Hospital, Guy's Hospital, Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust in London and the Nuffield Department of Medicine in Oxford. He completed a fellowship in pediatric cardiology at Brompton Hospital and then became a British-American research fellow in the Johns Hopkins Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics before joining the faculty.
Dr. Traill researches structural and inherited heart diseases such as congenital heart disease, cardiomyopathy and valvular heart disease. He is a peer reviewer for seven medical journals, including British Heart Journal and Circulation. He has authored over 100 journal articles and book chapters and has given scores of invited lectures.
Dr. Traill co-authored and edited the 23rd edition of Principles and Practice of Medicine, the 1996 update to Sir William Osler's classic and still-popular medical education textbook, originally published in 1893.
- Director, the E. Cowles Andrus Cardiac Clinic
- Former Associate Director, Osler Medical Housestaff Program
- Professor of Medicine
Departments / Divisions
- Medicine - Cardiology
- Medicine - Cardiovascular
- MBBS, St George's Hospital Medical School (1971)
- Brompton Hospital / Cardiology (1972)
- Guy's Hospital / Nephrology (1973)
- Nuffield Department of Medicine (1974)
- Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust / General Practice (1975)
- Brompton Hospital (1977)
- Brompton Hospital / Pediatric Cardiology (1978)
Board Certifications
- Royal College of Physicians (1974)
Research & Publications
Selected Publications
Christian D. Nagy; Diane E. Alejo; Mary C. Corretti; William J. Ravekes; Jane E. Crosson; Philip J. Spevak; Richard Ringel; Kathryn A. Carson; Sara Khalil; Harry C. Dietz; et al. Tetralogy of fallot and aortic root dilation: A long-term outlook. Pediatric Cardiology. 2013;34(4):809-816.
Thomas A. Traill. Valvular Heart Disease and Pregnancy. Cardiology Clinics. 2012;30(3):369-381.
Kerunne S. Ketlogetswe; Joseph Aoki; Thomas A. Traill; Oscar H. Cingolani. Severe aortic regurgitation secondary to antisynthetase syndrome. Circulation. 2011;124(3):e40-e41.
Baligh R. Yehia; Justin M. Bachmann; Thomas A. Traill. Scimitar syndrome: A rare cause of dyspnea in adults. Southern Medical Journal. 2010;103(6):578-580.
Craig T. Basson; David R. Bachinsky; Robert C. Lin; Tatjana Levi; Jacob A. Elkins; Johann Soults; David Grayzel; Elena Kroumpouzou; Thomas A. Traill; Janine Leblanc-Straceski; et al. Mutations in human cause limb and cardiac malformation in Holt-Oram syndrome. Nature Genetics. 1997;15(1):30-35.
Craig T. Basson; Glenn S. Cowley; Scott D. Solomon; Barbara Weissman; Andrew K. Poznanski; Thomas A. Traill; J.G. Seidman; Christine E. Seidman. The clinical and genetic spectrum of the Holt-Oram syndrome (heart-hand syndrome). New England Journal of Medicine. 1994;330(13):885-891.
Academic Affiliations & Courses
Graduate Program Affiliation
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Courses and Syllabi
Anatomy course
Physiology course
Pathophysiology course
Clinical skills course
Advanced clinical skills course
Pathobiology course
Rational therapeutics course
Cardiology fellows orientation course
CASE II rotation for medical residents
Activities & Honors
- Professors' award for teaching excellence., Johns Hopkins University, 2007
- Nicholas J. Fortuin Award, 2003
- Chairman's award for teaching, Department of Medicine, 2000
- Alpha Omega Alpha, 1997
- Helen B. Taussig Award, American Heart Association, 1994
- Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, FRCP, 1992
- George J. Stuart Award, 1986
- British-American Fellow, British Heart Foundation, 1976
- American Heart Association
- International Society for Heart Transplantation
Videos & Media
Lectures and Presentations
Valvular Heart Disease and Pregnancy
Valve and aortic technology symposium., London (01/30/2014)
St Georges Hospital trust and Royal Society of Medicine
Grand Rounds
Baltimore (01/01/2014)
Sinai Hospital
Heart Disease in Pregnancy
York (01/02/2010)
York Hospital
Invited faculty
6th International Congress of Iranian Society of Cardiac Surgeons, Tehran (01/27/2009)
Patient Ratings & Comments
The Patient Rating score is an average of all responses to physician related questions on the national CG-CAHPS Medical Practice patient experience survey through Press Ganey. Responses are measured on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best score. Comments are also gathered from our CG-CAHPS Medical Practice Survey through Press Ganey and displayed in their entirety. Patients are de-identified for confidentiality and patient privacy.
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Moderator: Community Team
Gengoldy wrote:Of all the games I've played, and there have been some poor sports and cursing players out there, you are by far the lowest and with the least class.
drunkmonkey wrote:I honestly wonder why anyone becomes a mod on this site. You're the whiniest bunch of players imaginable.
Ron Burgundy wrote:Why don't you go back to your home on Whore Island?
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Kalypso Media announces they will publish the Hard Reset: Extended Edition, an expanded edition of Flying Wild Hog's cyberpunk shooter, saying this will come to North American retailers in March 2012. Word is: "Hard Reset: Extended Edition for Windows PC will drop players into a dark dystopian cyberpunk world where they'll enjoy frantic FPS styled gameplay combined with upgradable weapons, insane boss fights, physics-based combat and an intense new storyline." Here's a feature list:
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Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum
Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum
Getting Ready (15 minutes)
The following information will help you focus and organize your professional development session.
Learning Objectives
Guiding Questions
Materials and Resources
Opening Steps
Discuss your expectations for this professional development workshop. You can use the Guiding Questions above as a starting place.
Before you watch the program, briefly consider the question What is art? Discuss in your group or reflect and write down comments on your own.
To download PDF files, you will need a free copy of Acrobat Reader.
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