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The US Ban on Russian Oil Will Have Little Impact on Russia's Economy
By admin On Mar 9, 2022
The US is banning Russian energy imports, including oil, President Joe Biden announced Tuesday.
It's the latest US move to sanction Russia as a response to its invasion of Ukraine.
However, Europe imports significantly more oil from Russia than the United States.
The United States will no longer import energy — including crude oil and refined products like gasoline and jet fuel — from Russia, President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday morning.
"We will not be subsidizing Putin's war," Biden said in announcing the hotly awaited move.
It's the White House's latest and boldest step to debilitate Russia's economy in response to its invasion of Ukraine in late February, but it may have muted effect without other countries joining in step.
The US, alongside the European Union, UK, and other allies, has deployed a variety of sanctions on Russia — from banning Russian flights to freezing assets tied to its central bank. As a result, the value of Russia's primary currency has collapsed and its citizens and corporations have been widely booted from the global financial network.
That unity doesn't extend to the energy import ban that the US is imposing: The European Union isn't joining the US on this sanction, Biden said.
"We're moving forward with this ban understanding that many of our European allies and partners may not be in a position to join us," he said. "We can take this step when others can't, but we're working closely with Europe and our partners to develop a long term strategy to reduce their dependence on Russian energy as well."
The US primarily imports energy — crude oil, as well as refined products like gasoline, oil, and jet fuel — from Canada, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia, according to the US Energy Information Association. In 2021, just under 10% of America's overall oil imports were from Russia, a senior White House official said Tuesday. That adds up to just 3% of total US oil consumption coming from Russian imports, according to the EIA.
In Europe, however, dependency on Russian energy is much greater: Nearly half of its gas imports are from Russia, according to the European Commission, and nearly one-third of the continent's oil imports are from the country, the White House official said.
As such, the EU is unable to outright stop importing energy from Russia without doing "more harm to ourselves than we do to Putin," EU Commission VP Frans Timmermans said at a press conference on Tuesday.
That disparity suggests that the US ban on Russian oil imports might not have too huge of an impact on the country's economy, as Russia's energy sector will still have plenty of European customers for the foreseeable future.
The Commission did, however, announce a plan to dramatically reduce its reliance on Russian energy. Dubbed "RePowerEU," the plan intends to reduce European dependence on Russian energy imports dramatically within the year.
That effort will "will diversify our gas supplies, speed up the renewable roll-out, improve energy efficiency and replace gas in heating and power," European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said. "It can reduce our demand for Russian gas by 2/3 before the end of the year."
In response, Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to cut off energy exports to Europe.
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Local officials, school personnel and WIN Job Center personnel cut the ribbon during the Vicksburg WIN Job Center grand opening in the Blackburn-May Building on the Hinds Community College Vicksburg-Warren Campus Thursday. (Courtland Wells/The Vicksburg Post)
Officials welcome new WIN Job Center
By John Surratt
Published 8:02 am Friday, September 20, 2019
Officials with the state Department of Employment Security joined local and Hinds Community College officials Thursday at the Hinds Vicksburg Campus for a ribbon cutting officially opening the relocated Vicksburg WIN Job Center on the campus.
The center was moved recently from its previous location on Walnut Street to the Hinds Vicksburg campus.
The new location, said Mary Powers, workforce director for the Central Mississippi Planning and Development District, provides the staff with a pleasant atmosphere to work in, and its location off Mississippi 27 makes it more accessible for people needing the center's services.
"I feel this will afford the citizens of Vicksburg and Warren County and Claiborne County a chance to come here and be served more efficiently," she said, adding its location on the Hinds campus provides job seekers access to programs for training.
"This is a wonderful opportunity," Powers said. She told the officials and other guests "to spread the word. We are open for business."
District 3 Warren County Supervisor Charles Selmon said having the WIN Job Center on the campus is an advantage for people, calling the relocated center "a one-stop shop for workforce development."
"Everyone in Warren County and Vicksburg, we need to grab this opportunity, because only good things are going to come after this," he said. "We've to make it a success."
Dr. Chad Stocks, vice president career and technical education and workforce development at Hinds, said the new center was another step for the partnership of business, industry, Hinds and the state Employment Security Department and other agencies in their efforts to develop the state's workforce.
After the ceremony, Vicksburg WIN Center director Jerry Jackson said having the new center at Hinds has several advantages.
"One of the most important things is the access it gets to other partners, with Hinds Community College with all the training opportunities, and with the adult education program next door, we can have the opportunity of instead referring people and telling people to call this individual and go see them, they're right here," he said.
It makes it easy, Jackson said, to have partners readily available to meet the needs of people looking for employment or education or need additional training to get a better job or career.
"The biggest advantage is that there are more of our partners on the same campus with us," he said. "Instead of giving somebody a phone number and a name, we can walk them over to that person and introduce them."
About John Surratt
John Surratt is a graduate of Louisiana State University with a degree in general studies. He has worked as an editor, reporter and photographer for newspapers in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. He has been a member of The Vicksburg Post staff since 2011 and covers city government. He and his wife attend St. Paul Catholic Church and he is a member of the Port City Kiwanis Club.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Italy rules out joining Syria air strikes, says another strategy needed
ROME (Reuters) - Italy has no intention of joining a U.S.-led coalition that is attacking Islamic State targets in Syria, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Sunday, warning that the air campaign would only add to chaos in the region.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi takes part in an informal meeting of European Union heads of state and government in Valletta, Malta, November 12, 2015. REUTERS/Yves Herman
Center-right opponents have urged Renzi to follow in the footsteps of Britain, which last week agreed to take part in missions over Syria, but Renzi told Corriere della Sera newspaper that Italy would remain on the sidelines.
"If being a protagonist means playing at running after other people's bombardments, then I say 'no thank you'," Renzi was quoted as saying.
"Italy's position is clear and solid. We want to wipe out terrorists, not please the commentators. The one thing we don't need is to multiply on-the-spot reactions, without a strategic vision," he said.
He compared the Syria bombardment to NATO's 2011 air assault against Libya, which helped rebels topple Muammar Gaddafi and then ushered in more than four years of civil strife.
He said Italy had been pushed by the then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy to take part in the air strikes. "Four years of civil war in Libya show it was not a happy decision. Today there needs to be a different strategy."
He added: "The one thing we cannot allow ourselves is a repeat of Libya."
The United States and its allies have been bombing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria to try to drive the group from swaths of territory it controls in both countries.
In the wake of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people, the British parliament voted last week to extend its military missions to include raids over Syria.
Renzi said Italy had already committed troops to numerous peacekeeping missions and military operations around the world, including in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Lebanon and Somalia.
The center-right Forza Italia party said Italy's refusal to heed France's recent call for help in the fight against Islamic State would only isolate Rome.
"The truth is that Renzi's Italy counts for very little on the international stage despite the fact that our military is involved in highly delicate operations, because (the prime minister) is incapable of presenting a valid, coherent strategy," said Forza Italia senator Lucio Malan.
Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Digby Lidstone


In 1990, footballer Paul Gascoigne was named Sports Personality of the Year.
He was an integral part of the England team that reached the last four of the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
His performances and passion - as well as his iconic tears during the semi-final defeat by Germany in Turin - made him hugely popular.
The midfielder eventually won 57 caps.


Trusting God is risky business.
Pesach (English: Passover) this year begins the evening of Friday, April 3. This means that the normal Torah-reading cycle is preempted for two weeks due to both the beginning and end of Pesach occurring on Shabbat (English: the Sabbath). But as it turns out, the special Torah reading for the first day of Pesach continues the theme of sacrifice that we have been looking at in the normal Torah readings. In the last two TorahBytes messages I have mentioned how foreign the concept of animal sacrifice is to most of us even though it is central to the Bible and especially the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Few incidences underscore the foundational role sacrifice plays in the Scriptures as does Pesach.
In response to Pharaoh King of Egypt's stubborn refusal to let the people of Israel leave his domain, God struck Egypt with ten destructive plagues. On several occasions Pharaoh appeared to give the go-ahead for Israel's release, but each time changed his mind. The tenth and final plague, the killing of the firstborn of humans and animals was different in two ways. First, it was decisive, being the impetus to Pharaoh's decree for Israel to finally leave, and second, Israel's protection from the Angel of Death was conditional upon their following God's instructions. Let's look a little closer at this second difference.
It appears that the Angel of Death was assigned to indiscriminately kill the firstborn regardless of their nationality. God through Moses told the people of Israel to take a one-year-old male sheep or goat into their households for four days and then kill it. They were to put the animal's blood on the top and sides of their doorframes and eat the meat roasted with bitter herbs and matza (English: unleavened bread). Regarding the blood smeared on their doorframes, God said, "The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt" (Shemot/Exodus 12:13).
"The blood shall be a sign for you." To us, such an application of sacrificial blood is strange, even disgusting. But for the people of Israel at that time, their concern would have been the risk incurred by identifying themselves with God's plan for them. Up until then Egypt may have viewed Israel's hope for release as nothing more than the whim of Moses and Aaron. But once a family expressed their trust in God by indelibly staining their home with blood, they placed themselves in the crosshairs of their taskmasters, personally marking themselves for all time as rebels against the Egyptian regime. Thus their act of faith in God required risking death at the hands of the Egyptians. But unless they took that risk, they would never be free.
So today, finding the freedom God offers us through the greater Pesach lamb, Yeshua the Messiah, requires similar risk. In order to experience release from the tyranny of sin and death, we need to personally identify ourselves with God's freedom plan. While we don't literally smear Yeshua's blood anywhere, true faith is evidenced by the indelible marks of loyalty to him. The godly lifestyle that emerges from trusting in the Messiah will inevitably set us apart in the eyes of the world and place ourselves in the crosshairs of its oppressive regime. But ironically, that's the only way to be released from its control.


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Q: Inheriting handles with ShellExecuteEx CreateProcess has bInheritHandles parameter that allows inheritable handles to be inherited by new process.
Does ShellExecuteEx provides such possibility? Especially with runas verb.

A:
Does ShellExecuteEx provides such possibility?

No, it does not.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Successful content marketers are constantly looking for strategies to improve their marketing performance, everything from content strategy to writing, graphic design and social media marketing. While it's great to get social shares and new leads from your content, if they don't ultimately convert into actual sales and revenue for your company, your marketing ROI just won't be good enough.
So what's one strategy that will bring you the greatest possible return on your content marketing investment in the long term? According to this MarketingProfs article, the answer is SEO.
If you've ever taken a business course or talked to a financial investor, you may likely have learned about the principal of compound interest and how powerful it is. It's one of the many reasons that explain the financial growth and success of some of today's millionaires and billionaires.
How compound interest works is that, when earning a consistent interest rate, your principal – the amount of money you initially invest – will grow, and as your principal grows so will the interest you earn, and this ultimately creates a snowball effect producing greater returns on your investment.
The author of the MarketingProfs article Timothy Carter states that SEO works the same way, given the right strategy is implemented properly. For example, when you create a piece of content that adds value to your target audience and industry, and you have a good distribution strategy to get it in front of the right people, including high value prospects as well as influencers and popular sites for promotion and syndication, your content will earn hundreds (and even thousands) of reads, social shares, inbound links and quality leads that ultimately convert.
This piece of content will continue to earn new readers, links, visibility and sales for your company over time, and as you create more related content, you'll see the same growth pattern. Carter argues that this is what differentiates SEO from traditional marketing and advertising tactics.
Take pay-per-click ads, for example, you spend a specific amount of money for a certain amount of clicks. If your return on every dollar you spend is two dollars, that rate will remain consistent over time. You may be able to increase it by making changes to your ad copy or adding a new channel for promotion, but ultimately you will hit a ceiling with your growth.
SEO, on the other hand, works like compounding interest and so your growth won't hit a ceiling. While one could argue that other strategies like email marketing also share qualities similar to compounding interest, Carter claims that SEO has one mathematical reason that gives it a winning advantage over other strategies – its exponential growth in search ranking, readership, referral traffic and visibility.
Relevant, valuable content will continue to earn links over time, regardless of when it is published. This in turn improves the ranking of the individual webpage, moving it closer to the first page of search results. At the same time, any new content you subsequently create, which your audience finds relevant and valuable, will grow in a similar way. Together, all your content will help multiply growth in your brand's total search rank.
Your readership will grow as you publish content more regularly and consistently and syndicate to popular, high traffic sites related to your industry. When you reach a level of popularity, you will start to see your readership grow exponentially simply as a result of your existing readership.
One of the many obvious benefits of creating relevant, valuable content is that it helps to reach, engage and ultimately convert your target audience. But another big benefit is that quality content helps you build inbound links.
The more inbound links you receive externally from authoritative websites in your space, the higher your content will rise in search results. And these external posts will continue to drive more referral traffic for you, even long past their publication. As you build more inbound links, your website will rank higher in search engines, driving more awareness, traffic and readership to your site.
As you continue to build relationships with more publishers and influencers and grow your social media following, your overall visibility in your industry will grow. You'll also want to regularly track and identify any gaps and opportunities for improvement for each point of visibility, to ensure continuous, sustainable growth in the future.
These are just four of the many benefits you'll see with developing a well-rounded SEO strategy. When combined with an effective content marketing and social media marketing strategy, you'll see a much higher ROI than any other marketing strategies in the long haul.
While you may not see a big change in your marketing performance overnight, if you build a solid SEO foundation early on and continuously measure and improve your strategy as you go, you will see exponential returns in your marketing efforts like how compound interest adds up.
What do you think? Has SEO delivered the kind of marketing ROI the MarketingProfs article said it would? What strategies have you found to be most effective in accomplishing your marketing goals and objectives? I'd love to hear your thoughts, so please share in the comments section below!
Hi Michael, agree that creating content and then distributing it to relevant content platforms around the web, including repurposing it into different media, is one of the best investments you can make in the future success of your business.
The benefits aren't limited to SEO. You're also benefiting from the viral potential some of these sites have to build exposure for your content within their own captive audiences and through your own network on them. Content on Quora for example can readily gain hundreds of views within just a few hours, same goes for YouTube, Medium, etc.., and engagement levels can be a lot higher than you might otherwise achieve with the same content on your own blog.
And then you have more content to share on social and keep in front of your market, more opportunities to attract social followers… it's a virtuous cycle of increasing benefits.


If you're anything like me, there is so much at the Walt Disney World Resort that you love and want to do but there is no way you can possibly have enough time to do it all. You end up having to pick and choose your priorities. It becomes a real Disney Dilemma. Again, if you're anything like me, you just go back to Walt Disney World again and do the things you didn't have time for last visit! However, that doesn't make the picking and choosing any easier.
When I first brought my boyfriend to Walt Disney World in May 2017, I found many instances of this sort. He had never been, so picking and choosing priorities was involved with every decision we made. My boyfriend and I are big Star Wars fans and when we were at Hollywood Studios, we both really wanted to see the nighttime projection show, "Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular". This was something that I hadn't even seen yet! That being said, I LOVE Fantasmic!. I have seen it every time I've been in Disney World and it is one of my absolute favorite shows. This made it a huge priority for my boyfriend to see it as well. We decided we would go to both Hollywood Studios nighttime shows (note: Fantasmic! starts at 9pm and A Galactic Spectacular starts at 9:30pm). I naively believed we could successfully do this and simply miss the beginning of the Star Wars show.
If you have ever been to Fantasmic! and left the amphitheater post-show, you know that it is a slow and painstaking process. That place is huge and the masses of people they can fit into it is incredible. My boyfriend and I had seats deep inside the theater, which made a fast exit even more of a challenge. Fantasmic! ended and we slowly attempted making our way up and out. We could see the fireworks and lights from the Star Wars show over the tops of the theater we were inevitably stuck in. We then made the mistake to abandon our current strategy and turn around to go down and back up the theater in another area. This, of course, made no difference. When we finally had exited the theater and made our way to the center of the park where the Star Wars show takes place, it was still going on! We then ran around all sorts of people in all sorts of spots to find a location to watch the show. We finally found an area that had some kind of view and watched the remaining two minutes of the show. A huge bummer for our Star Wars hunger.
In retrospect, we could have opted to take a seat close to the exit of the Fantasmic! theater and maybe left a few minutes early for a better chance at viewing most of both shows. But when the timing is that close, picking one will cause the least stress.
The following year, this past May, we made the decision of forgoing Fantasmic! in order to fully view Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular. While it made me very sad not to see it because I always see it, the Star Wars show is 100% worth watching if you are a Star Wars fan. The lights and the lasers really make the show a lot of fun.
Having seen both now, I don't really know that I can decide which to see! Star Wars is super fun but Fantasmic! has a special place in my heart. I think from here on out, I might let the decision be up to whoever I am traveling with!
How about you? What's your Disney dilemma and how do you handle it?
Follow Felicia and her Disney adventures through her blog Adulting DisFe! If you'd like to learn more about these experiences and find out which is the right choice for your next Disney vacation, contact us at info@getdowntodisness.com.
Meet Felicia Tiberi! She has been to Disney World 11 times (soon to be 12, November 2018) and has gone on one Disney Cruise (The Dream)! Her first visit was when she was 5, then 9, then every year since she was 16! She has done the Keys to the Kingdom tour, had tea at the Grand Floridian, stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge (in style: club level), and celebrated her 21st birthday at the California Grill in the Contemporary! Some of her favorites include staying at Port Orleans Riverside, dining at Sci-Fi Dine In Theater, and riding Splash Mountain! Her favorite pastimes include being called Princess by cast members and formulating excuses to buy Disney merchandise. She has her own blog, Adulting DisFe where you can follow along as she explores ways of finding Disney magic in the adulting world!


Home Tags Posts tagged with "succession"
As you prepare for retirement, it's a good idea to identify some trusted resources you can contact to learn more. Here are some good places to start.
Your retirement plan can change many times, but you should at least know your goals and how you will achieve them.
Farmers may not have the same financial options to save for retirement as large companies, but they still have options. Learn more about those options.
How you want to spend your retirement is determined long before you reach your senior years. Learn how to plan ahead to retire from farming.
Are you planning the future of your farm?
As farmers plan to transfer the family business to the next generation, there is a myriad of decisions to be made.
The workshop is open to any farm group/family, and there is no registration fee, though attendees must preregister by March 27.
When it comes to change, who among us loves it? Change is challenging, inevitably hard on either the heart or the brain, sometimes both.
Prepare for the future. Form a succession plan for your farm.


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Xian Horn
Xian Horn is a joyful half-Asian woman with Cerebral Palsy, who serves as teacher, speaker, beauty advocate, blogger, and Exemplar for the AT&T NYU Connect Ability Challenge toward the creation of Assistive Technology. She was named one of the
Xian Horn is a joyful half-Asian woman with Cerebral Palsy, who serves as teacher, speaker, beauty advocate, blogger, and Exemplar for the AT&T NYU Connect Ability Challenge toward the creation of Assistive Technology. She was named one of the 21 Leaders for the 21 Century by Women's eNews in 2017. Xian has worked to reconconceptualize leadership at companies like Viacom, AppNexus, and AXA Equitable; using her testimony and ongoing mentoring work, Xian Horn is invested in contributing positively to our concept of self-esteem and the collective purpose, especially for women. Xian has been featured in The White House Blog's Women Working To Do Good series, NPR, Forbes, Fast Company, NBC News, Fox 5 and Yahoo Lifestyle among others. Xian founded her 'Give Beauty Wings' Self-Esteem program at NYU's Initiative for Women with Disabilities, the Jewish Community Center Manhattan, and M.S. 131. She is also a blogger for Positively Positive, a community of over 2.5 million readers.
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Power Women: Arianna Huffington, Angela Duckworth And Desiree Gruber Discuss Strategies To Rebuild A Better Normal
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The One Barrier To Employment No One Thinks About Unless It's Happened To You (And The Good News)
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The Authentic Advocate, A Warrior For All Women
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Uber Has Left Us Behind: A Call To Care and Action
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Keith Piper: Keith Piper: Body Politics. Work from 1982 – 2007, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, installation view, 2019. Photograph: Elona Photography.
Q & A with Roma Piotrowska
Roma Piotrowska (right) with artist Phoebe Cummings during installation of her exhibition, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 2020.
We speak to Roma Piotrowska, Curatorial Officer for Arts and Culture at the City of Wolverhampton Council about her role, Wolverhampton Art Gallery's collection and British Art Show 9.
Can you give us a little summary of what your job entails?
I am the Curatorial Officer for Arts and Culture at the City of Wolverhampton Council. My job involves coordinating and shaping the programme of exhibitions and events across Wolverhampton's cultural sites, including Wolverhampton Art Gallery (where I am based), Wolverhampton City Archives, Bantock House and Bilston Gallery. I spend most of my time working on the Gallery's exhibition programme.
What has it been like working with a collection?
Ikon Gallery (where I worked previously) does not have a collection, so I was keen to gain this kind of experience. I couldn't have dreamt of a more exciting collection to work with than Wolverhampton Art Gallery's. Our collection is vast, and part of our strategy is to link it closely to our contemporary programme, which excites me the most. Last year for example, we organised an exhibition of works by Keith Piper, which originated from the fact that we have two of his works in our collection.
In the 1960s the gallery started to amass a significant collection of Pop Art, including work by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Richard Hamilton among others. We now have the largest collection of Pop Art outside of London. This remains a collecting priority. We also have a significant collection of work by Black British artists. Building on the social and political issues inherent in the Pop collection, the gallery chose to focus on art which responded to contemporary society, especially looking at the themes of gender, identity and conflict. All these themes have been important to me in relation to art since I started my first gallery job at Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, Poland in 2005.
Image: Keith Piper, The Seven Rages of Man (1984), installation view, Keith Piper: Body Politics. Work from 1982-2007, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 2019. Photograph: Elona Photography. Courtesy the artist and Museums Sheffield.
Do you have a favourite piece in the collection?
No, I don't really. It is very difficult for an art professional to have a favourite work of art. There are pieces that I am proud we have in the collection because they are by artists whose practice I follow and admire, for example works by Yinka Shonibare, Richard Billingham, Keith Piper, Gillian Wearing, Larissa Sansour and Siobhan Hapaska.
Sometimes items that may seem to be less interesting, become fascinating in the right context. We have for example a collection of memorabilia connected to Royal Weddings, which normally wouldn't be of my interest. We wanted to represent different stages of family life in relation to our Wolverhampton and Me exhibition, so we chose objects connected to Royal Weddings, such as stickers, commemorative beer bottles and 'Charles & Diana' brick. It was fascinating to learn more about those quirky objects and display them in a completely new context of an exhibition about family ties.
What are you working on at the moment? What are you looking forward to in the programme?
Before the Coronavirus outbreak we were working on our immediate programme but since the crisis started, the next few months are very much up in the air for us.
Very exciting and more in the future is British Art Show 9, which is planned to take place in Wolverhampton from February to May 2021. It is the most anticipated exhibition of cutting-edge contemporary art in Britain and it will be exhibited both at the Gallery and University of Wolverhampton. We are anticipating that the show will bring thousands of art-lovers to Wolverhampton from across the UK and beyond, putting our cultural offer firmly in the spotlight.
Find out more about Wolverhampton Arts and Culture here.
Melanie Pocock
Q&A with new Ikon Curator Melanie Pocock
We speak with Melanie Pocock, the newly appointed curator at Birmingham's Ikon gallery, to find out more about her background, research interests and plans for the future.
What attracted you to your role at Ikon?
Ikon provides the kind of environment that artists and curators crave: a beautiful, signature architecture, where it's possible to take risks and create vision. I was also attracted to Ikon's size. It's large enough to create ambitious exhibitions, yet small enough to feel their effects on artists and audiences.
I knew Ikon from my time working at Modern Art Oxford during my MA in Curating Contemporary Art. When Ikon advertised the role, the gallery was presenting The Aerodrome, an exhibition dedicated to the memory of Michael Stanley, who was curator of Ikon from 2002 to 2004 and Director of Modern Art Oxford when I was there. While not a deciding factor in my application, the exhibition did feel like a calling card! Michael's desire to work side-by-side with artists greatly influenced me and is an approach which Ikon's programme directly reflects.
The role came at a time when I was looking for a new challenge in an institution closer to home (I'm originally from London). I felt that the internationalism of Ikon's programme, fostered over many years by current Director Jonathan Watkins, would enable me to contribute my on-the-ground experience in Asia.
What are you most looking forward to about working at the gallery?
In addition to Ikon's scale and focus, I'd say the opportunity to work with a highly skilled, multi-disciplinary team. In the three months I've been here, I've been amazed by the expertise and achievements of Ikon's staff, from the Facilities team's development of the 'Ikon lights' (the gallery's bespoke lighting system) to the Learning team's incredible work on artist residencies and offsite programmes.
Since last week, and because of the confinement measures owing to Covid-19, myself and the Ikon team have all been working from home. It's a big change, but one which I'm embracing—in the interim, at least! We're already starting to use digital platforms and communication tools more effectively. The Facilities team has been incredible, helping us to get set up for remote working in an incredibly short amount of time.
Ikon exterior
What do you hope to achieve in the role?
Bringing artists to Ikon whose work has not yet achieved adequate recognition from the global art 'system', or which remains less visible due to issues of language or access, is a priority. I'm interested in consolidating strands of Ikon's current programme—the role and meaning of painting today, as evidenced in John Walker's recent exhibition, as well as contemporary artists' relationship to Indigenous practices. Creating exhibitions and projects which embed artists' ideas within the socio-cultural and material fabric of Birmingham is also something that I'd like to work towards.
What has excited you so far about Birmingham and/or the West Midlands region?
The history of art schools in the region—the Birmingham and Wolverhampton schools of art, established in 1843 and 1853 respectively, for example—is one that I find fascinating, especially having come from the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Singapore, which is affiliated with an art school (Lasalle College of the Arts). The aim of art schools in the West Midlands to foster artistic approaches to craft and design is vividly reflected in the region's art history. It's also a strong current in the work of younger artists, who are reviving this history through their employment of craft techniques like glassblowing and welding.
Can you tell us something about your upcoming projects at the gallery? What can audiences look forward to?
Yes—I certainly can! One project is a group exhibition, which will survey Ikon's programme in the 1990s. Focusing on Elizabeth Ann Macgregor's tenure as Director, it will include photography, painting, installation and video by over 40 artists whose work was presented at the gallery during this time. Apart from major works by renowned artists—Mark Wallinger, Adrian Piper and Yinka Shonibare, to name a few—the exhibition will reflect many of the decade's critical debates on race and class politics. I'm also working on an exhibition by Krištof Kintera, a Czech artist who is known for his macabre sculptures and installations critiquing hypercapitalist systems and societies. It will be his first major solo exhibition in the UK and will occupy both floors of Ikon's galleries.
www.ikon-gallery.org
Judy Watson review – pain and persecution in a lush and stunning landscape
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/mar/05/judy-watson-review-pain-and-persecution-in-a-lush-and-stunning-landscape
The artist's great great grandmother escaped a massacre by hiding underwater and breathing through reeds. Such astonishing stories of Indigenous Australian experience feed into this beautiful show that packs a punch. Hannah Clugston reviews Judy Watson at Ikon – via The Guardian
Not Your Harem Girl (2018), Farwa Moledina, detail shot, (digital print on fabric)
Q&A with artist Farwa Moledina
Artist Farwa Moledina, who showed at the end of 2019 as part of New Art West Midlands x Coventry Biennial, has recently taken part in an exhibition in Lahore, Pakistan. Curated by Ikon's Director Jonathan Watkins and Aisha Khalid, A Rich Tapestry featured works by Farwa as part of Lahore Biennale collateral activity. Her works were shown alongside those by Mahtab Hussain, Matthew Krishanu and Osman Yousefzada, alongside Pakistani artists Ali Kazim and Imran Qureshi.
We spoke to Farwa to find out more about her experiences of the project.
Can you tell me more about how the project opportunity arose?
Ikon will be showing the work of Aisha Khalid as part of their winter exhibition, and so this project came about through conversations on possible cultural exchanges between artists in Lahore and Birmingham.
Which works are you showing? How have these been developed?
I am interested in 19th Century Orientalist artworks and the way in which Western male painters depicted highly exotic and erotic versions of Muslim and Arab women from the Middle East and the Maghreb. Through my work, I try to subvert and reclaim the Orientalist narrative that is still so prevalent in current society.
For A Rich Tapestry, I am showing two new works entitled No one is neutral here and You must choose your part in the end. These works are a series of digital prints on polyester. In these an anonymous woman is photographed wrapped in a cloak that has been designed using elements of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' La Grande Odalisque, a well-known Orientalist artwork from the 19th Century. The pattern includes a scanned-in image of an embroidery I created with the words 'Not Your Harem Girl' and also an image of a hand with a henna design I made from the same text; when combined these elements form a pattern that resembles Islamic geometric art.
I often work in layers, taking time to create embroidery and henna that then feature in the work – so even though the pattern is not entirely obvious within No one is neutral here and You must choose your part in the end, the process of making the cloaking fabric itself together with the text is an act of defiance and challenging Western male perceptions of Arab, Muslim and WOC, both in the 19th Century and even now.
The images are taken at the Ayasofya (Hagia Sofia) in Turkey, although that isn't made obvious. I have attempted to negate the 'exotic' that is often associated with the East by steering away from the elaborate mosaic tiles and stereotypical 'otherness' that we are often identified with. Even though the location is not evident, I felt it was important to take this fabric back to Turkey and physically carry it around to photograph. This was part of the process for me, and my practice is as much process as it is the final work. The images are taken beside a column and beside a window, when paired, they speak of enduring gender politics both past and present, whilst also challenging the West's voyeuristic view of Muslim and Eastern womxn.
You must choose your part in the end (2019), Farwa Moledina, Lahore Biennale: A Rich Tapestry, Aisha Khalid Studio 2: January 2020 (digital print on polyester)
How do these works respond to the sites they are shown in and the contexts of Lahore?
I feel the works respond really well to the sites and to Lahore in general. There are some incredible female artists in Pakistan, Aisha being one of them. Showing my work in spaces that she has created and lived in, surrounded by farmland that she has cultivated is a real honour. Pakistan is no stranger to the effects and consequences of colonisation and British rule and I feel strongly that displaying the series in Lahore served to elevate the pieces, which reflect the difficulty of reclaiming a sense of self separate from the colonial gaze. As such, I feel very privileged to have been given the opportunity to showcase my work in such an appropriate context.
No one is neutral here (2019), Farwa Moledina, Lahore Biennale: A Rich Tapestry, Aisha Khalid Studio Gardens, January 2020 (digital print on polyester)
What has been your experience in Lahore and as a part of collateral events for the Biennale?
Visiting Lahore was such an incredible and enriching experience. There is a rich history and culture in Pakistan that is sometimes forgotten. The Pakistani people were incredibly kind and hospitable, and constantly went out of their way to make us feel welcome and cared for. Pakistani art has also been incredibly inspiring, and I have so much to think about and reflect on.
What do you hope the impact of this exhibition might be upon your work?
Showing work in South Asia and the Middle East is really important to me given my roots and the nature of my work and I am grateful for this opportunity. The art scene in Lahore is really thriving and I hope this leads to further exhibitions within the region.
What do you hope to make/research/show next?
As always, I'm interested in the issues surrounding Muslim/womxn of colour and hope to continue making work around these themes. I will be undertaking a research residency at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in the next few months where I will have the opportunity to respond to their collection, so I'm very much looking forward to that!
Artist Farwa Moledina, who showed at the end of 2019 as part of New Art West Midlands x Coventry Biennial, has recently taken part in an exhibition in Lahore, Pakistan as part of Lahore Bienniale collateral activity.
Meryl McMaster: As Immense as the Sky Reviewed
Meryl McMaster: As Immense as the Sky
Anneka French reviews a solo show of work by Meryl McMaster, her first in the UK – via Photomonitor
Ikon's Zou Zou Group exhibition reviewed
http://thisistomorrow.info/articles/zouzou-group-door-open
Betsy Porritt reviews ZouZou Group: – door open at Ikon Gallery – via this is tomorrow
Photo: Ken Cheong
Melanie Pocock appointed curator at Ikon Gallery
https://artreview.com/news/news_3_january_2020_melanie_pocock_appointed_curator_at_ikon_gallery_birmingham/
Melanie Pocock who has been appointed as curator of Birmingham's Ikon Gallery, will begin her new role this month – via Art Review
New Publications launched – Photography for Whom? and Forward
Two new publications launched in the region last week, at events at BLAST! Festival in Sandwell and at Birmingham School of Art respectively, aiming to forefront some of the best photography, art and writing happening in the West Midlands.
Photography for Whom? is edited by Anthony Luvera, with support from Grain and Multistory. Published bi-annually, its focus is upon socially engaged photographic practice. Bringing together past projects with contemporary practice, the publication aims to connect themes and concerns that continue to resonate within the field.
Issue 1 of Photography for Whom?, available to buy online, and in bookshops around the country, features a text by Luvera that situates community photography in grass roots political activism while considering its lack of profile in contemporary accounts of the medium. Heinz Nigg's article explores the WELD Photography Project (the Westminster Endeavour for Liaison and Development) in Birmingham in the 1970s, while Kieran Connell considers the political nature of community photography. Photographs by Trevor Appleson, John Reardon, Derek Bishton, Brian Homer, many of which have been recently on display at MAC Birmingham, are interspersed throughout the publication.
Forward, a free publication edited by Dion Kitson and Tom Glover, locates critical writing, interviews, poetry and artworks at its core, and is available to buy online or free to pick up in galleries across Birmingham. The editors describe Forward as "your principal port of call for art in the West Midlands: what's good, who's good, where's good … It is the beating heart of art in Birmingham and the West Midlands, celebrating the connection between the region and its cultural output."
Forward's inaugural issue features contributions from artists Fred Hubble, Foka Wolf, Abi Mardell and others, and interviews with Ikon Director Jonathan Watkins and drag queen Twiggy. A feature on the elitism of the art world by Charlotte Russell, the painting practice of Annette Pugh written by Ruth Millington, and a playful feature by Kitson that connects a historic Halesowen park and a bench proposed by artist Ian Hamilton Finlay to Saddam Hussain and the 'Iraqi Super Gun' are all included in this wide-ranging issue.
Two new publications launched in the region last week – Photography for Whom? and Forward, which aim to forefront some of the best photography, art and writing happening in the West Midlands.
Ruptured Histories: How Hew Locke is Peeling Back the Layers of Britain's Colonial Past
https://frieze.com/article/ruptured-histories-how-hew-locke-peeling-back-layers-britains-colonial-past
A new exhibition at Birmingham's Ikon Gallery feels at once reminiscent and foreboding. Aurella Yussuf reviews the Ikon Gallery exhibition – via Frieze
Hew Locke Interviewed by Studio International
https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/hew-locke-video-interview-heres-the-thing-ikon-gallery-birmingham
Currently exhibiting at Ikon Gallery, Hew Locke discusses monarchy, nationhood, bigotry, boats, Brexit and the seductive silliness of TV's historical dramas – via Studio International
Sheela Gowda, Ikon Gallery, 2017. Photo: Stuart Whipps
Sheela Gowda at Ikon: Review by Selina Oakes
Selina Oakes reviews Ikon gallery's current exhibition of work by Indian artist Sheela Gowda.
Resembling abstract cut-outs from a constructivist painting, Sheela Gowda's newest work draws an unwavering line between geometric form and everyday materials. The circular bowls that litter Ikon's concrete floor – lain down in a choreographed and communal manner – bare the markings, scathes and scratches of their previous life as metal drums used to transport resin and oil across vast distances. Flattened into uniform sheets and reformed into traditional 'Bandlis' – objects used to carry building materials in India – these pieces create a synergy between mass transportation and individual craftsmanship. Whilst the sourcing of these materials remains undisclosed to the viewer, there is a sense of a conscientious recycling of materials and skill-sets.
Much of Gowda's work looks at handmade processes – typically those from her hometown of Bangalore – and how, in a fast-paced and technology-driven society, these local skills can be revered, transferred and shared with new audiences. At Ikon, the bowls within Gowda's walk-through installation have been shaped by hand-operated machines; their perforated counterparts lay propped on the walls to provide a 'workshop' aesthetic. Whilst tarnished with abrasion and rust, the drums' original colours are used to their optimum potential; they become layered, sculptural gradients reminiscent of a symmetrical Rodchenko graphic revamped into three-dimensions by a John Chamberlain workmanship aesthetic. The material's uneven surface is made uniform through Gowda's composed pulling together of objects. This also reflects on themes of community; the bowls in particular resonating with the mechanics of a communal meal.
An interconnecting room filled with plaster-covered objects creates a displaced purgatory; one that is colourless and almost formless as the white props fade into their stark background. The familiar shapes of bowls can be distinguished amongst items that resemble piping – all of which lay propped unceremoniously on the outskirts of the space. The viewer's desire to rejoin a sense of colour is met by vivid, jauntily-cut bunting which half-heartedly clings to a collapsing black frame. Oddly enough, this make-shift assemblage – titled It Stands Fallen – simultaneously hints at a dystopian abandonment of place as well as a celebratory and ritualistic space. The intentional convergence of abstract line and colour creates an installation where interior and exterior aesthetics collide: the red pigmented fabric provides a reminder of the domestic and handmade, whilst its unsteady support enables the bunting to pour outwards, into a violently-strewn pile on the floor.
Opposite, a riot scene of lawyers throwing stones at the media, and in conflict with the local police, suggests a breakdown of society; their censored eyes adding an element of obscurity and anonymity – a visual that displaces culpability and is perhaps suggestive of the media's irresponsible free reign across digital platforms. This vast print, which spans the width of the room co-occupied by It Stands Fallen, contrasts harshly with the highly sculptural and handmade aesthetic of Gowda's other pieces. It does, however, establish a political and social backdrop with which these handmade traditions and rituals must now compete; perhaps Gowda's intention is to illustrate the potential of age-old craftsmanship to reference humankind's ever-changing yet cyclical way of life.
The exhibition runs until 3 September 2017.
Ikon's Sheela Gowda exhibition reviewed in Frieze
https://frieze.com/article/sheela-gowda-0
Emilia Terracciano reviews Ikon's Sheela Gowda solo exhibition in Frieze magazine.


The MOST popular hiking trail in Florida.
The Florida Trail (aka Florida National Scenic Trail) extends 1300 miles from the Everglades up around through the Panhandle. It offers hikers a chance to discover Floridas natural subtropical and tropical beauty along a trail linking wild and rural areas.
Presently, there are more than 500 miles certified and another 250 miles are under development.
The southern terminus is in the Everglades National Park within the Big Cypress National Preserve. The northwestern terminus in the Panhandle is in the Gulf Islands National Seashore on Santa Rosa Island.
The Florida Trail Association maintains and develops the route.
Overall, Florida Trail is the 1st most popular hiking trail of all 43 hikes in Florida. Several of the better hiking trails are nearby Florida Trail including Ocala - Florida Trail, Paisley Woods Trail, Black Prong Trails and Apex / Tidewater Trails.
Local Contact(s): The Official Guide to the Florida Trail from Florida Trail Association (800) 343-1882; Florida Visitor Information (850) 488-5607.
For hiking the Florida Trail in Florida, our printable trail guides offers trail descriptions, maps, lodging suggestions, driving directions, levels of difficulty and points-of-contact.


Questioning the traditional norms of the male role,they show how some male problems are unfortunate by-products of the current process by which males are socialized.
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There are four kingdoms you can choose in principle to fight in the world of Terra . Who knows what the future holds ... At the moment, these four heroes will explain how his kingdom philosophy is based and how to fight your enemy.
I am Azrael Thronhonor, Great Priest of Theridom. It's been years since we started our resistance against demons and barbarian hordes. Every priest of Theridas, god and creator of the human being, support us healing our wounds, increasing our morale and praying Theridas for the angels to come and help us. Thousands of soldiers and knights join them in the battlefield.
Our forces are balanced in number and power, and they are able to overcome our enemies with a fast charge or by bearing their attack until our great legions arrive. We will keep fighting and resisting their sieges until Theridas himself comes and destroys all of them!
Lutien is my name, although most call me The Conjurer. I serve Mother Terra since centuries ago. I still remember the day we were attacked by demons for the first time, and our dead brothers began rising from their tombs and started killing us. We thought thas was the end of times, that gods got tired of us and just decided to destroy their creation. However, Terra infused us enough wisdom and strenght to fight. Shamans watched in their visions how savage creatures would become our allies, and it happened.
Energy of earth, oceans...we take it in order to convoke our powerful beasts of nature. Maybe faeries, elves and dryads aren't enough, but once tiger and rhino warriors join the battle...the stampede cannot be stopped by anyone or anything.
Hello my lord, it's Bellatrix, great demon of the Abyss. Our thousands of imps will flood their cities, raze their fields and kill even the last of those weak and pathetic humans. We will sacrifice as many imps as necessary, but the cost will be much higher for our enemies. Using the power of blood, we'll make them lose their best champions while we only spend little pawns. And if it's not enough, our allies, the servants of fire, are really powerful.
They will burn'em before they could even scream. Their troops will perish in agony, and their lords too. Nobody can face the power of blood, fire and demons!
My name's Targos since long ago. As long as I ended being an elf anymore, refused by those who said to be my brothers. Poor little creatures. We left our old houses in forests, and goblins, trolls and other disowned joined us. It wasn't easy, but we conquered the mountains, and now we live there away from everyone else. We live from looting other kingdoms' towns, as life in mountains is hard and we need to eat.
Sometimes, Theridom envoys come bringing messages from their lords. They say they want to "hire our services", and our answer depends on the day. Some days we accept and have fun killing demons and earning some supplies, other days we just laugh, kill the envoy, and then laugh more. It's just a matter of how we feel, hungry or bored. We're unstoppable, and our assaults are fast as none else. When they want to react, they're almost all dead. If not, giants, cyclops or even the Big Red Dragon finish the job.


text:
New broadband map of San Antonio may overstate internet availability
By Missy Evans On Jan 6, 2023
A new map that will be used to allocate federal money overestimates the availability of internet service in San Antonio, officials say.
A new national broadband map that will be used to allocate federal money to states for future high-speed internet projects overestimates the availability of broadband internet service in San Antonio, local officials say.
And the timeframe to correct the map — the deadline is Jan. 13 — means the city and county could miss out on crucial federal funding that could help expand broadband access.
In a joint letter sent to the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications Information Administration Wednesday, Bexar County, the City of San Antonio and SA Digital Connects condemned the new map, saying it "unquestionably overestimates the availability of broadband internet service in our community. "
The letter notes that according to the digital inclusion survey conducted by the city and county in 2020, one-fifth of San Antonio households — approximately 130,000 homes — do not have access to reliable broadband internet. Most unconnected residents are concentrated in low-income areas on the city's South, East and West sides, according to the letter.
Yet the map, officials noted, does not reflect "any difference in availability throughout our community."
This screenshot of the new broadband map from the FCC's website shows Bexar County with nearly 100 percent coverage. Credit: Courtesy / FCC
The letter ends with the request that the agencies delay funding allocation decisions "until a fuller picture of broadband availability is made clear."
Local officials aren't waiting around, however, to see if they'll get more time to challenge the map's inaccuracies.
SA Digital Connects, a relatively new non-profit that aims to ensure all San Antonians have access to internet service, has partnered with Bexar County to launch a "Map Challenge" web page where San Antonians can submit a form to correct the FCC's new map if their information is incorrect.
Marina Alderete Gavito, executive director of SA Digital Connects, said the federal government has made it extremely difficult to challenge incorrect information on the map; filling out their challenge requests are complicated, even for experts to navigate she said.
Because of how complex it is to submit a challenge to the map, SA Digital Connects said it was vital to create an easy one-stop online form to help San Antonio residents and business owners who need to correct their information, Gavito said.
Responses submitted through their form will be used to submit a mass dispute for the area to the feds, Gavito said.
Gavito acknowledged that those without broadband likely won't be able to have access to the online form, so the nonprofit is also pursuing other avenues to submit challenges. That includes gathering existing data from the city, county and local school districts so it can report known areas without internet service that were incorrectly labeled on the map.
The nonprofit is also encouraging its 200 partner organizations to inform community members through their own outreach networks, Gavito said. She said she's hopeful that residents who do have internet access can help report neighbors or family members who don't.
"We must work together to prove where our neighbors need internet access so that the FCC has an accurate picture of internet connectivity for our community," she said.
Marina Alderete Gavito is a San Antonio Report board member.
Midland is the latest Texas city to issue a boil-water notice
Buffalo Bill's Damar Hamlin's cardiac arrest emphasizes importance of CPR training, UTHealth Houston doctor says


text:
Photo courtesy of Clanfan Stirling Clansmen Facebook page
Clansmen build momentum with second win of the season
Loughborough Students 7-26 Stirling Clansmen
The Clansmen took to the road for the second game of the new season, making the long trip down to Loughborough. Before this match the Clansmen had never won at this ground, but that was about to change.
The Clansmen started on defence and again started out strong, forcing Loughborough to a 3 and out to start the match. Alongside the strong start for the defence, the offence was working well from the start. After some nice rushing yards picked up from the quarterback, a short Thomas Campbell run for a touchdown got Stirling off to a terrific start.
On the next drive again the defence stepped up and forced the Students into punting the ball, but the Clansmen's offence started on their own 3 yard line and disaster struck after a forced fumble got the Loughborough Students offence onto Stirling's 3 yard line. They took advantage and scored on their first attempt, with the quarterback finding a receiver running a slant into the end zone.
The next drive from the Clansmen took the game into the second quarter at level terms and both teams still very much in the match. Momentum seemed to swing into Loughborough's hands however, as they made a defensive stand on fourth down to get their offence the ball on their own 10 yard line. The drive then went for successfully as they marched the ball up the field, with a lot of passing yards, to the Stirling 10 yard line. However, with the play of the season so far, Jens IJdema read where the quarterback was throwing, ran to intercept it and took it the length of the field for a Clansmen touchdown.
That play not only gave Stirling the lead but effectively won them the match. The defence stepped up and snuffed the rest of the Loughborough drives and the Students could not find an answer to the Clansmen offence. At the end of the second quarter, the field goal attempt was blocked, keeping the score at 14- 7 going into half time.
In the second half it was all Stirling, with the defence managing to shut out and not concede any points and the offence managing to punch in two more touchdowns, one in each quarter. However, both PATs were missed, leading to it being another 12 points scored by the offence instead of 14.
The third quarter started with a very impressive kick return from Alex Crowe, which started the offence on the opponent's 17 yard line which unfortunately never led to a score. However, the next drive for the offence resulted in a touchdown. After receiving the ball at midfield, the offence eventually found themselves in a fourth and goal scenario. Instead of kicking the field goal however they made the brave choice to go for it. This paid off as they pulled off a very neat play which caught the opposition defence off guard, a very effective play action which lured the defence into thinking it was run and a wide open Felix Klei caught it after evading his marker.
The fourth quarter started at 20-7 with Stirling still comfortably in control of the match. After more solid defence, the offence picked up the ball with the momentum still in their favour. From the 28 yard line, on third down, quarterback, Andres Donat Garcia, found a wide open Felix Klei, who again managed to shrug off his marker and make his way into the end zone for a touchdown. After another defensive stop the time ran down confirming the Clansmen's 2-0 start.
The MVP for this match was Felix Klei, with him showing his ability to constantly create space for himself and be a target to throw to, and using this to grab himself two touchdown receptions.
After such a great start it will be interesting to see if the Clansmen can keep this momentum up, but they will need to perform well on their next outing against fierce competitors, the Durham Saints, who have also started out their season 2-0. If the Clansmen can play like they did against Loughborough then they will be in with a great chance of winning.
stirling university
Gold for Stirling Curler at World University Games
Live Review: Everything Everything @ O2 ABC, Glasgow
Creative Writing: Pathfinder


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text:
Q: How to prove that $H^1(0,1)/H^1_0(0,1)$ is isomorphic to $\mathbb{C}^2$
*

*Edit 2: As posteted I was missing crucial information.
"Let $H^1(0,1)$ be mappings $f:(0,1) \mapsto \mathbb{C}$ "
The right result can be proved using $$T:H^1(0,1)/H^1_0(0,1) \rightarrow \mathbb{C}^2; \quad f \mapsto T(f):= \lim(f(x_n),f(y_n))$$

Prove that $H^1(0,1)/H^1_0(0,1)$ is isomorphic to $\mathbb{C}^2$.
Here $H^1_0(0,1) := \overline{C^{\infty}_c(0,1)}$
I figured out a proof, but I'm quite uncertain if its right.
First define a mapping $T$. Let $x_n \rightarrow 1$ and $y_n \rightarrow 0$ then $$T:H^1(0,1)/H^1_0(0,1) \rightarrow \mathbb{C}^2; \quad f \mapsto T(f):= \lim(f(x_n),f(y_n),f'(x_n),f'(y_n))$$

*

*Edit 1 : Here $f'(x)$ denotes the weak derivative.
Now show : 1) $T$ is injective ;  2) $T$ is surjective ;  3) $T^{-1}$ is continuous
1)
 Let $$f,g \in H^1(0,1)/H^1_0(0,1) \text{ with  }  T(f)=T(g)$$ then:
 $$\lim f(x_n \to 1) = \lim g(x_n \to 1)
 $$ $$\lim f(x_n \to 0) = \lim g(x_n \to 0)$$
 For  $h_0 := f-g $ we see that $h_0(x_n \to 1) = 0 = h_0(y_n \to 0)$ so  $h_0 \in H^1_0(0,1)$.
 Now $(g+h_0 = f) \Rightarrow (g \sim f)$ hence T is injective.
2) For $(a,b,c,d) \in \mathbb{C^2}$ define:
 $$f(x) := \begin{cases}
     cx+a   &\text{for } x\in  (0,\frac{1}{4})\\
     \frac{1}{4}c+a+(2x-\frac{1}{4})(-\frac{1}{4}d+b-\frac{1}      {4}c+a)&\text{for } x \in [\frac{1}{4},\frac{3}{4}]\\
     dx+b-d &\text{for } x \in (\frac{3}{4},1)
   \end{cases} $$
Then for the weak derivative we get:
  $$f'(x) := \begin{cases}
     c   &\text{for } x\in  (0,\frac{1}{4})\\
     2(-\frac{1}{4}d+b-\frac{1}      {4}c+a)&\text{for } x \in [\frac{1}{4},\frac{3}{4}]\\
     d &\text{for } x \in (\frac{3}{4},1)
   \end{cases} $$
Note: $f(y_n \to 0) = a, \quad f(x_n \to 1) = b, \quad f'(y_n \to 0) = c, \quad f'(x_n \to 1) = d $
From $ f \in L^2 $ and the existence of the weak derivative it follows that $f \in H^1(0,1)$
Concluding: $$\text{For every } z \in \mathbb{C}^2 \text{ we get a } f \in H^1(0,1)/H^1_0(0,1) \text{ with } T(f)=z$$
$T$ is surjective.
3) Take a look at the mapping defined in 2) and call it $T^{-1}$.
 $$T^{-1}: \mathbb{C}^2 \to H^1(0,1)/H^1_0(0,1) \quad (a,b,c,d) \mapsto f (x)$$
Now for $(a,b,c,d)_n \to (0,0,0,0)$ we get
$$ \lim T^{-1}(a,b,c,d)_n = 0 \quad \text{for } x\in (0,1)$$
Hence $T^{-1}$ is continuous
As a bijective continuous mapping $T$ is an isomorphism and $H^1(0,1)/H^1_0(0,1)$ is isomorphic to $\mathbb{C}^2$.

Its a pretty unaesthetic proof and im not quite sure if it's right.
Mostly I wonder about the correctness of 3).
I would really appreciate some improvements :D
Thanks in advance.


The New Brunswick Backflow Prevention Association exists for the professional who seeks knowledge and up-to-date information in a constantly changing field. Membership in the NBBPA is open to anyone with a professional interest in backflow prevention, cross-connection control and the maintenance of water quality standards.
Why become a member of the NBBPA?


I need to copy rows with a certain dropdown to another sheet or file and update automatically.
How can the holiday list be specified for NETWORKDAYS in a macro?
Are there currently any projects underway to provide porting of vba to LibreOffice Basic?
how can I run VBA scripts in Libre office?
Does LibreOffice (fully) support VBA?


text:
What's working in the energy-conserving Pittsburgh 2030 District?
"Most building owners don't know how their buildings are performing."
By Bill O'Driscoll
The Pittsburgh 2030 District is among the city's more ambitious green initiatives. This Green Building Alliance project has a quantifiable goal: getting participating buildings to reduce their energy and water usage by 50 percent by 2030. As importantly, the goal actually acknowledges the scope of larger environmental challenges. Scientists say that preventing the worst effects of climate change, for instance, requires cutting greenhouse-gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. Unlike the many less-rigorous green initiatives, the 2030 District's conservation goals, if achieved, would actually put at least some of us on track to do that.
Recently, Pittsburgh's District — one of 10 in North America — announced that it was indeed on track: Through 2014, energy use in 436 participating buildings Downtown and in Oakland was 6.3 percent below national baseline numbers for similar buildings. That bodes well for meeting the interim goal of 10 percent by 2015, said District Director Anna Siefken. And water usage is already down 10 percent from the District's locally compiled baseline.
What's working? Siefken says the three-year-old District combines appeals to pragmatism with awareness-building and peer networking. Buildings account for 40 percent of U.S. energy use. But while some of the 85 participating building owners (who include some of the city's largest landlords) are motivated by environmental concerns, she says, the District makes its case solely on the bottom line: conserving energy and water saves money. However, she says, "Most building owners don't know how their buildings are performing": They assume utility costs are fixed. So simply informing them about new techniques, technologies and resources to phase in over time (as old boilers wear out, say) helps a lot. And the District holds monthly meetings where building owners share their challenges and success stories with one another.
One such story: The Wyndham Pittsburgh University Center recently replaced its kitchen ventilation system — which previously ran full-blast 24/7 — with one that automatically runs only as needed. The electricity savings is projected to be $15,000 a year, says hotel general manger Coleman Hughes. He adds, "If you do a lot of little things right, you can see the efficiencies begin to pay off."
Another participating structure making incremental changes is Downtown's City-County Building. City of Pittsburgh Sustainability Manager Grant Ervin says the CCB has been doing things like improving its HVAC system, upgrading its lights to LEDs and replacing employees' energy-sucking individual hard-drives with a virtual network. The building, which the city co-owns with Allegheny County, also now has sensor-equipped "smart-jacket" insulators on its basement steam-valve traps, which county sustainability manager Cathy Hrabovsky says is expected to save $106,000 a year. And the county has a green-behavior program that urges employees to turn off unneeded lights, use communal rather than personal printers and adopt other energy-saving habits.
Perhaps surprisingly, given its age, the City-County Building is among the highest-performing large buildings in the 2030 District, with energy use 47 percent below the national baseline for office buildings. But environmentally, there's an asterisk. When the CCB joined the 2030 District, its energy usage was already well below average. That's largely, says Ervin, because the building's thick stone walls retain heat well, and its wealth of working windows provide ventilation and natural light. (Many newer buildings suck energy because they are poorly insulated and their windows don't open; as Ervin says, "design matters.")
Climate change, however, doesn't know from baselines. It cares how fast we're reducing our energy use. By that standard, the CCB still did quite well, cutting usage 7.7 percent from 2013.
Can the CCB — and other 2030 District structures — keep improving? The example of Conservation Consultants, Inc. says yes. CCI's South Side office building recently came in second (out of 5,500 commercial buildings) in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Battle of the Buildings competition. CCI cut its energy use by a mind-boggling 61 percent from 2013.
Granted, this energy-auditing nonprofit's building was renovated with conservation in mind. But not recently. That means that most of that 61 percent happened because occupants behaved differently, keeping the A/C off, the thermostat down, the lights doused when daylight would do. Says building manager Indigo Raffel, "People are really surprised at the little bit of energy we use."
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For those of you not interested in, what I think may be, my final journey in therapy, please read no further. Assuming that you are interested enough to still be with me, I'm writing about how, a lifetime later, things can come back to bite you on the bum.
Those of you've who've heard me speak will know that I carry a few cards, with notes on; prompts, in fact. I don't refer to these much and they are, largely, a comfort blanket. What is interesting is not that I feel that I need them but that I write more than I need to on them, just in case I miss anything. Yet, when I was a charity Director, I must have spoken hundreds of times about the work the particular charities did. This, however, was always with slides to demonstrate this. With that "skeleton" on hand, I was able to talk for hours. And did!
So, when I joined the Professional Speaking Association, I never even thought about not being able to talk. How wrong I was. Without those prompt cards, correctly written, my mind could occasionally go blank. What is interesting, however, is precisely when this would happen. My talk, you see, describes my life and what I've achieved, while helping people on the receiving end in our society to solve their own problems. How they were able to develop their potential and release, what Jesse Norman, MP described as, "the vast amount of untapped talent" in this country.
So, the cards signpost these events for me. However, they also describe the transitions from one part of my story to another and these transitions are where my mind can go blank. I talked about this yesterday and that's the bite on the bum bit. You see, transitions for me have always been extremely traumatic events and I have exorcised the effect of these from my life. So that, although I may remember the events, I don't have any feelings about them. Well, it seems, not as much as I'd thought.
Yesterday, some of those feelings came back and I was able to see the problems that had, previously, been hidden to me. Another milestone is being passed and, this one, almost at the end of what has been a very long and fascinating journey. Perhaps, in future, there will be fewer abrupt transitions and more of a seamless process. In fact, there already is and that feels very, very good. Long may it continue.


text:
Bread of Beirut
Annia Ciezadlo
Most neighbourhoods in Beirut have a furn, a communal bread oven where men and women gather in the mornings and early afternoons to get mana'eesh. These are crisp, oily little pizza-like pies topped with zaatar and olive oil, cheese, ground lamb, or Armenian sausage scented with cinnamon and fenugreek. You get your man'oushi hot from the furn, slice it or fold it, lavish it with yogurt or lemon juice or hot pepper paste, and stuff it into your mouth, preferably while standing on the sidewalk outside the bakery. It's the perfect portable street food – especially during a social or political crisis – and so one day in December 2007, when Parliament postponed the presidential election for the ninth time, I went to get a man'oushi from my neighborhood baker, Abu Shadi.
Abu Shadi's furn is in a tiny storefront, open directly to the sidewalk, so there is nothing but a counter between you and the oven and the area where he holds court. He's a big football-playing bruiser with a meaty nose and a mane of shoulder length brown hair. Sometimes he streaks his locks with blond highlights and wears a double-breasted Black Panther-style leather jacket: the neighbourhood baker as gentleman gangster.
Abu Shadi has been feeding this block mana'eesh since 1988. In those days, the Lebanese civil war still had two years to go, and militias ran the streets. This makes him something of an éminence grise, and, along with bread and meat, he serves up news and commentary on the day's events.
Six men stood in a reverent semicircle around the bakery counter, as if at an altar, chewing simultaneously. 'Is there a president?' asked a neighbour from our block, his mouth full of bread and cheese.
This was the question on everyone's mind. The former president's term had expired a month earlier. Food prices were spiraling upward. Bread and gasoline riots were breaking out. Rumours were spreading: Hezbollah would block the streets with burning cars and tires. Rival factions would form two governments, and plunge the country back into civil war. But instead of two governments, the country barely had one, and since Beirut seemed to be keeping up its usual level of exuberant dysfunction, you couldn't help but wonder what, exactly, the government was ever for.
Abu Shadi laughed. 'President or no president, what's the difference?' he said, shrugging his shoulders as he slid a long wooden paddleful of zaatar and cheese mana'eesh into the oven. 'Okay, fine, bring him on, but it's not like he's going to change our everyday life. Will he redecorate my bedroom? No he won't. Will he bring me a new car? No he won't.'
'May God guide them on the right path,' intoned one of the men.
'God can't guide these people,' said Abu Shadi, rolling his eyes and tipping his shaggy head back in disgust. 'Look, it doesn't matter who rules. Whether he's Maronite, Shia, or Sunni, all these ones meeting today, they're garbage.' He grabbed a soft white circle of dough with his massive hands and started knuckling it into submission.
Relationships are fragile in Beirut. Instability at the top filters down into your intimate life. Neighbours, brothers, sisters, lovers – they can all turn on you overnight. Governments collapse. Friends emigrate. Houses that survived the Ottoman Empire disappear in a week, killed off by sky-high real estate values. Trust is essential; trust is impossible. That's one legacy of the long, lingering civil war, which officially ran from 1975 to 1990 but never really ended.
But the furn is another legacy. During the war, cooking gas would periodically run out. When that happened, Beirutis returned to a tradition as old as the city itself, the habit of the communal oven.
The practice of sharing an oven goes back to the ancients, when Babylonian temples fed their subjects on the leftovers from the feasts of the gods. But the urban public oven came into its own in the medieval Mediterranean. In cities all around the Middle Sea, Christians and Muslims, Arabs and Armenians alike brought bread and other foods to the oven at the pandocheion, a Greek word for inn that means 'accepting all comers'. For a small fee, the public baker would cook your food, saving scarce heat and fuel for all to share – a kind of culinary carpool. Private ovens encouraged segregation; public ovens led to mixing, cross-pollination, and negotiation – in a word, relationships. And probably, I imagine, a fair amount of food and recipe sharing across religious and ethnic lines.
By the late twentieth century, this tradition was beginning to wane. But during the civil war, the shortages revived it. For my friends who grew up here, standing in line at the bakery is one of the most enduring memories of the conflict. War being a matter of narratives, however, they all remember it differently.
My friend Barbara remembers the furn as an oasis of peace: when she was a child, her family would go every day to meet their neighbours, to share information and gossip. People would read the newspaper, passing one communal paper down the line. 'You often had brothers in the same family in different militias, fighting each other,' she says. 'But when they were in the furn, they were neutral. There was no fighting there.'
Others remember the bakery ritual in more Darwinian terms. My friend Samar would stand in line for hours, only to see militiamen come swaggering in and take the entire neighbourhood's bread without paying. Malek, another friend who was a child during the war, has the same memories. 'I would wait in line for bread, and then the grown-ups would come and take it, and I would cry,' he says.
Twenty-two years after the war ended, electricity still goes out for hours every day in Beirut. Political stalemates still end in bloodshed; minor street fights always hold the threat of escalating into a larger conflict. But to this day, whenever there's the threat of violence, people rush to the bakery for bread, of course, but also, I suspect, for reassurance.
To appreciate the importance of street food in Beirut, you have to begin in the streets. When I first moved here, in 2003, I assumed I would get a map, learn the street names, and figure out how to get around. I didn't realize that there are hardly any street signs here, and that nobody knows the names of the streets – at least, not the names that are written on maps.
Instead, Beirutis go by landmarks of memory or desire: a narcissist may tell you to go down the alley where she got her first kiss. An old-timer will direct you to a movie theatre that closed in 1982. Hypochondriacs deliver directions by pharmacy. The pious use churches and mosques; the profane, cafés and nightclubs. The mercenary types, alas, inhabit a city of banks. All of these different Beiruts, imaginary contradictory maps, all layered on top of each other, make a city as baffling to navigate as your dreams.
And so I learned to negotiate the city through food: the baker, the butcher, the greengrocer. In the Middle Ages, the public bakeries were built next to other essential urban spaces, like churches, gardens and public baths. These days, the bakery is often at the centre of an ecosystem that ideally includes the holy trinity of Beirut street food: the farran, or baker; the lahham, or butcher; and the fawwal, or maker of foul, which is stewed chickpeas and fava beans. The butcher uses bread from the baker, the baker gets meat from the butcher, and the fawwal sends his prep cook to get meat or bread from both of them.
Foul is one of those confusing Arabic words that denotes both a dish and its key ingredient. Technically, it means fava beans. But when people say 'I want foul,' they usually mean foul mdamas, a stew of fava beans and chickpeas that have been simmering for hours, perhaps overnight, over a low flame. Literally, mdamas means buried, because in the past people buried a clay pot of beans overnight in the dying coals of the day's fire – another example of conserving common resources, in this case by squeezing the last ounce of heat out of the daily fuel. These days, of course, people just use propane tanks.
When I go to my favourite fawwal and ask for foul, the first thing he does is smile. He's a thin, careful man, with large kind eyes and a permanent benevolent frown. Then he takes a battered metal bowl and a clove or two of garlic, sprinkles some salt into the bowl, and pounds the garlic and salt into a paste. With a large metal spoon, perforated with small holes, he reaches into the tall brass amphora full of gently steaming fava beans. In one continuous sequence of movements, he scoops out a spoonful of beans and their juices, ladles them into the bowl, and whisks them into the garlic and salt. Then the same series of motions, this time with warm chickpeas. Then another layer of chickpeas, then olive oil, and cumin, and salt and he's done. Like all the best street foods, you get extras: a basket of mint, bread, tomatoes, onions, pink pickled turnips and olives to eat with your foul. It's a classic workingman's breakfast, one that will keep you going all day, whether you're burning tires in front of a ministry or toiling in the bowels of a bank. You can take it to go, but the best way to eat it is sitting at Abu Hadi's tiny countertop, listening to people speculate about what the day will bring.
This part of the street is where working class people, students, and small trades people get good, fresh quick food. It also becomes a centre of gossip and information – the urban version of the village well. In some neighbourhoods, people still lower a basket down from their balconies on a rope, with money inside, and pull it back up with mana'eesh. Beirutis will ask their baker to hold packages, send messages, lend out his phone. They trust him with keys to their apartments. But the ultimate act of trust is to go to your baker and order a man'oushi 'ala zow'ak, 'to your taste,' meaning: surprise me. Make me what you would make yourself.
A really good baker, like Abu Shadi, will introduce you to something you didn't know you would like. Abu Shadi always has something new: his signature sandwich is his kafta man'oushi, topped with beef that he has the butcher grind together with hot green peppers, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, and spices – 'a special mix, my own invention!' he says. He customizes it with chopped tomatoes, yoghurt, hot red pepper paste and quartered lemons.
According to Abu Shadi, the Arabs invented hamburgers, which are but a poor and flavourless version of kafta. Eating one of his kafta man'oushi straight from the oven, the warm and supple dough soaking up the juices from the meat and tomatoes, tangy with allspice and sumac, I'm inclined to agree. 'The hamburger? Our invention!' he roars.
But the hamburger may yet have its revenge. Every time I go back to my old neighbourhood, there's a new restaurant specializing in hot dogs or hamburgers. There's even an Applebees now.
On special occasions, like the visit of a prodigal diasporan son, my mother-in-law will take an onion and a tomato to the lahham, who will grind it with lamb. Then he will take the mixture to the baker, who will spread it on the dough – ajin – and turn it into lahme bi ajin, or lahmajin: several dozen little four-inch pizzas topped with the mixture of meat, lamb, and tomatoes.
When the lahmajin are done, the baker sends them back up to her apartment in an empty box lined with newspaper. We eat them with yogurt and lemon juice, maybe red pepper paste, and put the leftovers in the fridge, where they become an indispensable tool for moral blackmail: 'You didn't eat enough! What am I going to do with all of these? A whole kilo and a half of meat! Just one more!'
All of these relationships depend on trust – does the butcher use the full kilo? Does the baker steal an ounce or two? This is all to the common good, as witnessed by the old Arabic proverb: 'Let the baker bake your bread, even if he steals half of it.'
A few years ago, I took Abu Shadi a Tupperware container of filling and asked him to make it into fatayer, which are little triangular pastries usually stuffed with cheese or greens.
He was appalled. 'You can have spinach, or cheese,' he said, as if to a slow child, looking at my Greek grandmother's traditional mixture of spinach and feta cheese with nutmeg. 'But not spinach and cheese together. This does not work. The dough will fall apart. The dough will not close. The cheese will prevent it.'
I insisted he try it anyway. A few hours later, I returned. Frowning, he handed me a box filled with two dozen toasted golden triangles of perfection. I tried one. It was still hot. The bread was crisp and flaky on the outside, but warm and wet on the inside, and the salty cheese and bitter greens nestled into the soft inner lining of the dough like a baby in the womb.
He shrugged, opening both hands to the heavens, and screwed up his chin and lower lip, as if to say this was beginner's luck, and no fault of his own. I insisted he try one, just to rub it in. But I knew he had to have eaten one already, if not several. I wouldn't have trusted him otherwise.
Several years passed. My husband and I moved to a different neighbourhood, where the bakery was inside a building, and the baker skulked in the back and didn't talk much to customers. We missed Abu Shadi, and his kafta, so we went back for a visit.
He greeted us like returning royalty. He asked where we were living, and how much we were paying, and immediately updated us on the neighbourhood rents, which had skyrocketed.
'How's business by you?' we asked.
'Well –' he did the chin maneuver again, 'not bad. The situation, it's very difficult. But my work is good. Really, very good, thanks to this new man'oushe I invented: cheese with spinach.'
He pulled out a white plastic bucket full of spinach and purslane mixed with shredded halloumi, studded with little fragments of chopped tomato and onion. 'It's my own invention,' he said, scooping out a handful for us to admire. 'Wallah, you have to try it. It's very popular – people like it, because it's healthy. Here, let me make you one!'
The spinach had wilted in the hot oven, melting into the salty cheese, and the tomatoes gave it just the occasional bite of sweetness. We ate it with our fingers, standing on the sidewalk, listening to Abu Shadi hold forth on the latest electricity crisis and the prospects for another civil war.
Photo © Julien Harneis
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In a state like Virginia with a major region named "Tidewater" the impact can be especially great. UCS has identified three Virginia communities that will face chronic inundation by 2035 and 21 more by 2100. In the highest level scenario considered by the scientists, 38 communities would be exposed to chronic inundation by the end of the century. Visit the website to see a list of communities that will be hardest hit. Of little surprise is the finding that in the highest scenario by 2080, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and Hampton and the Naval Air Station would have up to a quarter of their land chronically flooded.
These findings should come as no surprise to Virginians. In 2015 the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) completed a study on this issue at the request of the General Assembly. Its report, "Recurrent Flooding Study for Tidewater Virginia," found that "recurrent flooding already impacts all localities in Virginia's coastal zone and is predicted to worsen over reasonable planning horizons of 20 to 50 years due to sea level rise, land subsidence, and other factors." The scientists wisely did not use the term "climate change" that continues to be politically charged among some of Virginia's political leaders.
Earlier this month the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) awarded a grant to VIMS that along with its match will total $1.25 million to support "nature-based infrastructure" to help coastal Virginia counter and recover from flood events. Nature-based infrastructure includes tidal wetlands and living shorelines that can help to blunt and even absorb the effects of rising seas and recurrent flooding.
These efforts are important, but the UCS found even bolder policy changes and enhanced coordination among all levels of government must happen to protect our coastal areas. UCS concluded its report, "And even as the Trump administration seeks to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, we must work at state and local levels and with other nations to cut global warming emissions aggressively in order to help slow the pace of sea level rise." Maybe then we can keep our heads above water!


You look so charming wearing this attire. Make an adorable statement in this smashy peach, orange, red and black color faux georgette anarkali salwar kameez. This attire is beautifully adorned with stones work and resham work. Product comes with a matching bottom and orange color dupatta.


text:
How to Find Out What a Person Was Sentenced to After Trial
By: Beverly Bird, Paralegal
How Do I Find Out What Someone's House Arrest Dates Are?
••• MangoStar_Studio/iStock/GettyImages
How to Find Prison Records
How to Look Up Court Cases
How to Locate a Person in Prison
Criminal court records aren't deeply hidden secrets, at least not usually. They're a matter of public record, just as a defendant's trial is most likely open to the public. These records should divulge the sentence received if the defendant is found guilty, and they also should reveal where the defendant has been incarcerated and the expected date of her release.
Accessing these records can be remarkably easy, but municipalities, counties and states often have their own procedures and policies regarding how these records are created and kept, what they include, and where interested parties can view them.
Online Criminal Background Searches
An online search for a defendant's record often is the easiest option, since you can use your tablet, laptop or phone to conduct the search. But you might want to tread carefully; a search engine will most likely cough up a literal avalanche of unofficial online criminal record databases. These sites basically just do what you could do for yourself: contacting public sources and gathering the results in one place.
The sites can usually be counted on to reveal the sentence the defendant received for a particular crime – for a fee. But there's no guarantee that these records are complete or entirely accurate. In many cases, these sites aren't privy to defendants' birthdates or Social Security numbers, and this can result in misreporting. Even reputable sites might require only the defendant's name and city of residence for their search, and they'll base results on that information alone.
If two John Does live in the same city, the results might not pertain to the individual whose record is being searched.
States Have Their Own Websites
A more logical approach for the internet-minded might be to go directly to the state's website rather than to pay to have an online service do it. This is especially the case if the interested party has more information about the case than a criminal background search provider might be privy to.
The National Center for State Courts' website provides links to civil and criminal case databases for all states, although this is where the consistency ends. Some states, such as New Mexico, include municipal, magistrate and district court cases. Others, like New Jersey, only provide Superior Court cases. Florida and California provide links to county websites, and still others, such as Alabama, make searchers pay for a hefty subscription – reportedly $150 as of 2020 – before they can search.
Federal court sentencing records are also available online at the United States Courts website.
Do It the Good, Old-Fashioned Way
Perhaps the most foolproof option is to request the information directly from the court in question. If you want to find out about sentencing, you most likely know the court where the proceedings took place, and you might even be able to find the case by docket number because you probably know that as well. Simply visit the court clerk and request a copy of the sentencing record. Remember: These are public records.
Local law enforcement agencies might have access to these records as well. If nothing else, they should be able to tell you where to locate them.
When Records Aren't Available
Not all criminal sentencing records are available, however. Expunged records are effectively removed from the system when a convicted individual successfully petitions the court to have his criminal record erased and when state law provides this option for the crime in question. The same goes when a convicted individual is later pardoned by a government entity. The records are sealed and become unavailable from that point on.
The records of juvenile offenders are often sealed by the court as well, so they won't be available. Courts can seal records for other reasons, too, such as cases in which the sentence was imposed on a first-time offender, the crime was not considered serious, and the defendant successfully completed the terms of sentencing. Only the defendant can gain access to the records in these cases.
StateRecords.org: Criminal Records
National Center for State Courts: Privacy/Public Access to Court Records
SearchQuarry: Sentencing Records Search
NOLO: Can I Check Out Another Person's Criminal Record?
United States Courts: Court Records
Find local clerk-of-courts office contact information
Beverly Bird is a practicing paralegal who has been writing professionally on legal subjects for over 30 years. She specializes in family law and estate law and has mediated family custody issues.