text:
Paul Bhatti
Paul Bhatti is the Pakistani Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs and brother of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs assassinated on March 2, 2011.
Since receiving a Medical Doctorate from the University of Padua in Italy in 1984, he has worked as a medical doctor in various hospitals in Pakistan and Italy. In 2011, he was appointed Chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance. Besides being appointed as Minister of National Harmony and Minority Affairs, since April 2011 Bhatti has served as the Chairperson of the Shahbaz Bhatti Memorial Trust, named for his late brother.


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MPS partners with Zoological Society for scholarship program
By Angelica Duria
MILWAUKEE -- Some of Milwaukee Public Schools' youngest students got a free lesson on reptiles at the Milwaukee County Zoo Tuesday.
Kindergarten-age students and their parents from 81st Street School took a class on snakes and chameleons as part of a new scholarship program with the Zoological Society of Milwaukee.
"They have different stations around the room where the children can choose which ones appealed to them. So there's some activities where you might be catching bugs, like a chameleon, or some activities where they're making snakes to slither along the floor," Marylynn Conterstrack, the enrichment program coordinator for the Zoological Society said.
Students and their parents are able to attend the classes for free, which focus on early childhood development and kids with special needs. The classes were made possible by a new scholarship program through the Zoological Society of Milwaukee and MPS.
"It's fun, it's fun. We're enjoying it and they seem to be enjoying themselves," parent Michael Terry, who brought his twins Mason and Shia to the classes, said. "They've had no interaction with any reptiles at this age, so they're getting to expand their horizons."
The program allows for interactive, hands-on learning in a not-so-typical school environment. "As opposed to just sitting and being lectured or being told what an animal is like, instead to act like that animal or make a project. To be able to have that animal slither on the ground and make the movements of that animal, it really helps foster that learning," Conterstrack said.
Under the scholarship program, parents can also take their kids to special classes at the zoo during their own time.
Right now it's a pilot program, but school leaders hope to extend it through the summer.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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/ Getting Started
/ Newbie Questions
how to reset an incremental Id number value when a row is deleted in a SQL db
Started by Bombett12 Aug 29 2018 04:05 AM
sql delete row incremental id table set
Bombett12
I've create a table in SQL to save object name, position, etc
every row is an object and the first column is the id (that is INCREMENTAL)..
the save process works and I'm able to show the table correctly,
now I've insert a button in every rows that let you delete the row and it works
but when I try to create a new object the id number is always the one after the last.
id | objectName |
1 object1
what I'd like to see is that after delete the row number 3, the id numeber of the row number 4 become 3..
how can I do? Thank you
thomas6
Hi - you can't do that in most databases, unfortunately, although there are good reasons for this. ID numbers are usually set up to be completely unique and, uhm, what's the right word... Immutable? The idea is that you need a way to uniquely and completely foolproofly a database entry. If you would allow an entry with id number 3 to have a certain value, and then later on insert another entry with this same id number it could lead to uncertainties.
But is there really a problem? When you do a query on the database, you get a nice ordered list as a result, without "gaps". If needed you can sort by date created, if you add a column for date created.
If this still doesn't work for you, you need to update the database table everytime you delete an entry, with your own code, to set the values correctly in a sort of ID column.
But the "real" basic ID column is impossible to change in most databases, in order to be able to completely uniquely address a row entry.
I think I'd like to add to this in that it helps to understand the basic concept of MVC or Model-View-Controller. It can be some confusing terms, but to simplify things, the "Model" is the database or database table. It's your data, how it's defined. Then you have the view, or how the data is displayed. The controller is the glue in the middle.
How it's important here is if you want to display sequential numbers, you do that as part of the view. Let's say you're using a widget.newTableView() to show the data, when you insert the rows into the tableView you can give that row a number that's not tied to the database's unique ID. It could be something like:
View No    Database ID No   Description
1             1          Record #1
3             4          Record #4 (3 was deleted)
4             7          Record #7, but 4th in the view
The database ID's don't need to map 1:1 to the numbers you might show in the view if you don't want it to appear to have gaps.
I'm speaking as a MySQL/Maria developer here and currently have no experience with databases in Corona, so apologies if this turns out not to be supported by whatever dB engine you're using, but the following for example would reset the auto_inc to 10 ready for the next insert:
ALTER TABLE tblName AUTO_INCREMENT = 10;
You could therefore technically do this after every delete op, but if deleting a record from the middle of a table you'd need to then shift all the other records down one before the reset, which is an unnecessary strain. Additionally the purpose of ID's like this is for building relations between tables, so if you mess with them you're potentially breaking those relations. I.e. if you have a table of names and a table of addresses, the names table might reference the ID of an address in the addresses table so if you shift those records you're changing which address is attached to those names.
Very bad idea to mess with auto_inc fields in this way. They're indexed internally anyway so there's a solutely zero performance gain in closing those gaps.
Back to Newbie Questions


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Gulzira Auelkhan, who spent close to two years trapped in China where she said she was forced to work as part of Beijing's so-called "re-education" efforts in the troubled Xinjiang region, speaks during an interview at the office of the Ata Jurt rights group in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 21. | AFP-JIJI
From camps to factories: Muslim detainees say China using forced labor in Xinjiang
AFP-JIJI
Online: May 07, 2019
ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN - As Gulzira Auelkhan toiled to stitch gloves in a factory in China's troubled Xinjiang region, her managers made no secret of where her production would be sold.
"They told us openly that the gloves will be sold abroad, so we should do a good job," Auelkhan recalled of a labor stint she says was enforced by Chinese "re-education" officials.
Auelkhan, a 39-year-old Chinese citizen of Kazakh descent, says she was part of a network of mostly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang who pass from what China calls "vocational training centers" to factories where they are forced to work for far less than the local minimum wage.
China says the education centers are part of its efforts to fight terrorism and separatism in Xinjiang — a region populated by mostly Muslim minority groups — and denies any use of forced labor.
But rights groups, and former workers like Auelkhan, say the practice used against Chinese minorities is widespread and at least one foreign company has dropped its Chinese supplier over the concerns.
Auelkhan says she was transferred to the glove factory at the Jiafang industrial estate in Xinjiang's Yining county after spending 15 months in two different "re-education" facilities.
More than a million people from Muslim minorities — mostly ethnic Uighurs, but also Kazakhs like Auelkhan, Kyrgyz and Hui — are being held in internment centers across Xinjiang, according to a United Nations panel of experts.
Auelkhan has residency rights in Kazakhstan but had traveled to China to see family when she was detained and put into a re-education center.
She said life in the camps was brutal, with residents struck over the head with electrified batons for spending more than two minutes in the bathroom.
So even though they were not free to leave, it was an improvement when she and hundreds of other camp inmates were transferred to work at the factory, Auelkhan said in an interview in Kazakhstan's biggest city, Almaty.
"Every day we were taken to and from a dormitory three kilometers from the factory," she said, hugging the five-year-old daughter she didn't see for nearly two years.
"When we were studying at the camp they told us we would be taught a trade and work for three months," Auelkhan said.
Auelkhan said she was paid only 320 yuan ($48) for close to two months' work before her time at the factory was curtailed in December and she was allowed to return to her family in Kazakhstan.
Xinjiang's average minimum wage ranges between 820 yuan and 1,460 yuan per month, according to official statistics.
Beijing and officials in the region have fiercely denied any connection between the camps and underpaid labor.
A representative of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Government Press Office said by email that there was "no labor contract between Education and Training Centers and enterprises" and "no enterprise obtains labor from training centers."
But rights groups insist the connection exists and some companies have started taking notice.
In January, Badger Sportswear, a firm based in the U.S. state of North Carolina, announced it would stop sourcing clothing from its Xinjiang supplier Hetian Taida over concerns it was using forced labor linked to the "re-education" campaign.
Auelkhan believes she was only released from forced labor because of a public campaign launched by her husband and supported by a Xinjiang-focused rights group in Almaty.
Originally, re-education officials had told her and other center residents that they would be "at (their) disposal" for at least six months, she said.
Oil-rich Kazakhstan's government is a Beijing ally that positions itself as "the buckle" in China's trillion-dollar "Belt and Road" trade and investment agenda, a strategy for infrastructure and development projects throughout Asia, Europe and Africa.
Kazakh diplomats have entered into a dialogue with Beijing over Xinjiang, without publicly mentioning the re-education centers or criticizing China's policies.
In December a representative of Kazakhstan's foreign ministry said during a briefing that China had allowed more than 2,000 ethnic Kazakhs to travel to Kazakhstan as "a kind gesture."
The ministry refused repeated requests to clarify the remarks, which lent hope to many in Kazakhstan that they would be able to bring Xinjiang-based relatives over the border to safety.
For most, however, this has been a crushing false dawn.
During a recent visit to the Almaty office of the Ata Jurt rights group dedicated to supporting relatives of the Xinjiang missing, AFP spoke to several Kazakhs who claim their relatives have merely swapped "re-education" for other forms of confinement.
One of them, Aibota Janibek, 34, said her sister Kunikei Janibek telephoned her from Xinjiang in January after months without contact to confirm she had been "assigned a job" by the state at a carpet factory in Shawan county.
Aibota Janibek has since lost touch with her sister, but heard from other relatives that she was transferred from the carpet factory to another position.
"A relative told me she is now at a factory that makes paper towels for airplanes," Janibek said.
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The hydrolysis can be done in either acidic or basic conditions, (liberating the acid as required) and a variety of catalysts can be used, including ion exchange resins. In the case of esters, we have the added value proposition of valorisation of the waste alcohol by either recycle or potential use in other products or sale into the solvents market.
Often the acids are processed in house to make esters.
Chemoxy produces acids and uses both technologies, handling raw materials such as aliphatic and aromatic acids and anhydrides and uses a range of acids and bases.
Chemoxy's skill set, allows the products to be produced in high purity with low water content, often required as part of the acid specification, whether used in pharma, agrochemicals, F&F, electronics or other performance applications.
Products are isolated by intensive distillation fractionation, and thus there are benefits in the ability for us to achieve high purity and low water content, and to recycle acids and alcohols.
Our preference is for liquids, or products that melt below 50°C.


text:
Richard Hazelton Papers
Identifier: MS-MS-ms131
The Richard Hazelton Papers consists materials relating to William Gaddis including correspondence, lecture notes, clippings, print material, and an interview with Hazelton.
Hazelton, Richard M., 1918-2009 (Collector, Person)
Users of the collection must read and agree to abide by the rules and procedures set forth in the Materials Use Policies.
Providing access to materials does not constitute permission to publish or otherwise authorize use. All publication not covered by fair use or other exceptions is restricted to those who have permission of the copyright holder, which may or may not be Washington University.
If you wish to publish or license Special Collections materials, please contact Special Collections to inquire about copyright status at (314) 935-5495 or spec@wumail.wustl.edu. (Publish means quotation in whole or in part in seminar or term papers, theses or dissertations, journal articles, monographs, books, digital forms, photographs, images, dramatic presentations, transcriptions, or any other form prepared for a limited or general public.)
1.00 boxes
Biographical or Historical Information
Richard M. Hazelton was a medievalist and Chaucerian scholar. Born in Camden, New Jersey, he served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army Air Corps and U.S. Air Force from 1943-1949. During World War II, Hazelton was a bombardier and a prisoner of war in Germany.
After returning home, Hazelton went to college under the G.I. Bill. He earned a bachelor of arts in English at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1951 and a master of arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1952. He earned a doctorate in English from Rutgers University in 1956.
He joined Washington University's Department of English in 1958 as an assistant professor after teaching at Ohio State University. He was promoted to associate professor in 1961 and to professor in 1964 and was named emeritus in 1984.
He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1964 to conduct research in Oxford, England, and in Florence, Italy. Hazelton also taught for a year at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he developed a passion for Asian art and culture. Hazelton also was active in civil rights, antiwar and other political movements in the 1960s and 1970s.
After retiring, Hazelton traveled extensively in Mexico and Spain. He died at age 91 on November 13, 2009.
Method of Acquisition
Accession number 23032. Gift of Richard Hazelton, 2003 October 25
Accession number 23036. Gift of Richard Hazelton, 2004 August 9
See also the William Gaddis Papers (MSS049)
Gaddis, William, 1922-1998 (Author)
Collection Subgroups
MS. Manuscripts
MS/MS. Manuscript Collections
Revision Statements
2020 November 6: Resource record updated in ArchiveSpace by Sarah Schnuriger.
Collecting Area Details
Part of the Manuscripts Collecting Area
https://library.wustl.edu/collecting-area/manuscripts/
Joel Minor
Name of the Collection, Washington University Libraries, Department of Special Collections


text:
Loyalists accused of stoking up tension ahead of marching season
Sinn Féin North Belfast councillor Carál Ní Chuilín has accused Loyalist paramilitaries of stoking up tensions ahead of the marching season after the latest in a series of suspect devices planted by Loyalists in North Belfast caused traffic chaos in the Carlisle Circus area.
Cllr Ní Chuilín said:
"The UDA is responsible for the vast majority of Loyalist activity in the North Belfast. Despite fine words indicating that the organisation is on ceasefire the evidence on the ground in North Belfast would indicate that the organisation is still very active.
"We have had a series of devices left throughout North Belfast since the start of the year and we have had ongoing attacks and intimidation.
"This latest round of traffic chaos only serves to stoke up tensions ahead of the marching season.
"Unionist politicians and civic and church leaders need use their influence as a matter of urgency to tackle this problem.
"Loyalists seem intent on creating chaos and a continuing with a widespread campaign of intimidation throughout North Belfast. This is unacceptable." ENDS


text:
© R.A. McBride
By Laurel Leigh • June 2010
The gal looked young in the body and old in the face standing alongside I-80 with a flowered suitcase held over her head to block the sun. Stop! Darrell said when we drove by her, but Jake didn't take his foot off the gas. She's not such a looker, gentle Glenn whispered. He was by me in the back seat. They all look the same when they're talking to your johnson, Darrell told him. He rolled his window down and hung his head out to stare at her disappearing shape.
She got better-looking the farther away we got and maybe that's what gave Darrell inspiration. You can't leave a live human standing out there in this heat where there ain't a drink of water for miles, he said. Jake slowed the Falcon and made a U-turn across the median strip. Trouble, he said when we came closer to the gal in a short blue skirt. He cut the wheel again to get back over to her side of the freeway. She waited, cucumber cool in tall heels, hardly seeming to notice us as she lowered the suitcase and propped it against one white thigh.
Darrell was out of the car before it came to a stop. He put the gal's suitcase in the trunk and I hoped he remembered not to squish my good dress that was laid across the top. I was climbing between the bucket seats when he leaned in through the window and asked if I wanted to ride shotgun, like he was doing me a favor. He wedged himself in the back seat between Glenn and the skinny gal, who said her name was Shoe. Darrell and Shoe whispered to each other the rest of the way across Nevada and by the time we crossed the California state line they were kissing on the mouth.
Jake pulled over on the triangle of asphalt separating the expressway from the second Richmond exit. After nineteen years, three owners, and 278,519 miles, the white '63 Falcon had died. Son of a gun, Jake said. He got out and popped the hood and jumped away from the steam that went up like Old Faithful. Darrell leaned forward between the bucket seats and reached his big freckly arm to tap the horn and it still worked. He yelled at Jake, Should we take everything now or come back for it? We all piled out — me, Darrell, Glenn, and Shoe — and ringed around the front of the Falcon. The cars rushing by trying to outrun each other made me jangly and I went closer to Jake so as not to feel so small, even though he says I'm tall for twelve years old.
We gonna have to walk? Shoe wanted to know, as if sizzling metal under the hood wasn't an answer. Jake's brow crinkled under dark bangs that were a little crooked but I was getting better at cutting them. He looked at Darrell like, She's your problem. Darrell asked Shoe what in her suitcase she could do without, because the less we had to carry the better. She pouted, but then something changed about her eyes and she said, Leave it all. Who cares? Darrell said sorry and he'd make it up to her. No you won't, her eyes said. Jake looked at Shoe's feet. You got any other shoes?
She'd be gone in a few days or a week — that's how it went with Darrell. He patted her shoulder and told her, Don't worry, sugar pie, even if he did look a teeny bit sorry for talking Jake into stopping for her and he could find another just like her in Richmond. One with decent shoes. Gentle Glenn had small feet and allowed that she might wear his work boots, but she didn't seem too happy about that.
We were spitting distance from the Golden Gate but we couldn't catch a look at it yet. Jake said we'd make it there before we headed to Alaska. He'd promised I could get out and take a picture of where he first saw Celia, her belly already showing with me, walking on a sidewalk that goes right along the bridge. My Kodak disposable had five pictures left and I was saving them for the bridge and Chinatown. Darrell said Chinatown was a waste of gas and likely smelled worse than Nam. Darrell didn't like anything that reminded him of Nam. Him and Jake and Glenn had been there together, which made them brothers, and Darrell had taken a bullet for Jake that he still had in him and that ached him in the winter.
I used one of my pictures on the Falcon. It had been a good car for us. It had brought us across the wide states, plus all the job chasing we did back in Wisconsin before Jake and the boys decided to throw in together for Alaska. Jake knew about boats, and his uncle, who I'd never met, had died and left him a cabin and a boat. Land of cold milk and warm honeys, Darrell said about Alaska.
I turned my head for one last look at the Falcon as we left it behind. The sun glinted off the metal parts like a halo and I thought of angels coming to take it to heaven. Then I put my face forward and walked where Jake did, so I wouldn't trip. It was hot and sweat ran in my eyes and it was hard to wipe it away while holding my sack of clothes and my dress. We reached the next exit and Glenn said, What do you think? and Jake squinted first at me and then at Shoe's shoes and said, Time to get off the freeway. I told him, I'm all right, and Darrell asked how much money we got. Four hundred and fifty-seven dollars, I answered.
I wonder what the Motel 6 in Richmond looks like, Glenn said. That made us laugh — all but Shoe — because that was his joke every time. We walked down the exit ramp, which led to streets with gas stations and carwashes, some gone out of business, and Jake said Richmond was a town where we had to watch our back, although people anywhere could be bad or good. He'd hit a spot of trouble in this same town years ago, but it was nothing to worry about now and we weren't staying long.
We found a strip mall with a smidge of grass where we could sit and Jake pulled money out of his billfold and asked Glenn to find us some eats and a paper. Then he pulled off another ten and said Darrell should take Shoe inside the Payless for some shoes. I was mad at Shoe for costing us so much of our money. She said thank you, and I think she meant it, because she'd walked a couple of miles in heels. She hadn't complained much and I allowed to myself she had some grit.
While the three of them went off, Jake sat down for his one smoke of the day and I wandered around checking out storefronts. My feet were tired, but I couldn't make myself sit still. That's how I was in a new town: I had to get the lay of it and see if there was a laundromat with a bulletin board where I could find a baby-sitting job. Once, sitting for a lady in Iowa, I taught her kids how to do handsprings and had a contest for them. They liked it and behaved for me — even the oldest, who was eleven and didn't think she needed a baby sitter. I couldn't blame her since our ages were so close, but I had a way about me that made people think I was older, especially women, and if I stood up straight and held out my hand to shake and said, Very pleased to meet you, I could pass for fourteen.
I went by an ice-cream shop and stood reading the flavors through the window. Jake came up behind. Do you want a scoop? he asked. No thanks. I was embarrassed to be caught drooling. Go ahead, he told me. I said, But we need money for a car. He surprised me by pulling me in for a hug. He said Richmond was a pretty good town for work and I shouldn't worry about it, that we'd have a car in no time and be on the way to the Golden Gate and then to Alaska. He gave me a dollar and I thought I might cry, so I quick ran inside the shop.
When we got back to our spot, the boys and Shoe were already there, and Glenn handed me a bag from the burger joint. Shoe had on new white tennis shoes with blue laces. I sat by Jake while he circled the want ads. There were two for baby sitters.
Road crew is hiring temporary, Jake said. I hate that, Darrell said, but he'd do it. Even though Darrell had his ways and a brawl or four in his past, he and Glenn were good workers, and once they fixed on what they should try for, they'd give it their all. Shoe didn't seem interested. Already she was costing money and not helping. But then she squared up and looked at Jake, not Darrell, and said, If you can get me a place to clean up and take me downtown, I can make some money. You don't have to do that, Jake told her, and I could hear the steel that came into his voice when he was angry.
Darrell kept his mouth shut. She was his problem, but she was making herself our problem, because Jake would have to feed her or put her on the street. Jake said, We got our next move planned. I could tell she was thinking she'd taken up with the wrong one. Jake wouldn't take up with you, I felt like saying, but like before, I had to allow she had grit because she'd given herself away by offering.
Do you want the rest of my french fries? I said to Shoe. She said no and then yes and we ate them together. Sometimes it was nice to have another gal to talk to even if she was older and mostly batting her eyes at Darrell. Once, in Wyoming, one of his gals had done my hair real cute. She'd promised me a french braid but then her not-quite-ex-husband showed up and got into it with Darrell in a parking lot. Darrell broke the man's nose and got probation and I never saw the gal again.
We didn't find a Motel 6 but someplace just like it that must've bought furniture from the same store. I took the first shower, then Shoe, and then everyone else. Darrell, who went last, hollered that the hot water was gone. Glenn turned on the color TV and we watched a couple of western movies. Shoot'em-ups, Darrell called them. I almost fell asleep on the floor until Jake lifted me onto the bed and pulled off my shoes.
Three weeks, four at the outside, Jake told me after he and the boys got hired on and knew the wage. We're still going to the bridge, aren't we? I asked. He'd gone out of our way to let me see Mount Rushmore and it was neat how we drove through some tunnels and had a glimpse and then all at once we were right there and I got a picture. But the Golden Gate was more important because of Celia.
Jake said to me, when we had a minute alone, that he didn't trust Shoe. He told me I shouldn't go following her around and to be careful where I put anything of value. The only things I cared for were my garnet ring from Celia and my dress. I didn't think Shoe would be interested in the dress since she had more clothes than I did and was taller and filled out. Still I waited for her to go into the bathroom and then hid the dress underneath the motel bed.
She came out with her hair curled. Want to get something to eat? I asked and she said sure. In the Safeway I asked if she wanted to marry Darrell, just to see what she'd say. She shrugged. Never been married; don't know why I'd start now. Do you think you'll stick around for a while then? I said, making my voice polite. Instead of answering, she asked, Why do you call her Celia? I said I always had.
Shoe wanted to get tiny shrimps to toss in a salad and that would put us over our allowance, but I halved the amount of lunch meat and said OK. It could be good if she owed me a favor. Her fingernails were silver this morning, which meant she had polish I could borrow. When we got back to the motel it was after eleven. I hurried to make sandwiches to take to Jake and the boys. Guess I'll come with you, Shoe said.
Darrell didn't look too happy when Shoe showed up with me at the work site, but she wriggled her hips and pretty soon he was smiling and calling her honey. You're so sweet to bring lunch, he told her. I asked Jake about baby-sitting. He said OK if it wasn't too far away and I should leave the address with the motel manager. It's right there in the newspaper, I told him, but he said do it anyway. I left Shoe swishing around Darrell and went hunting for the house. I found it pretty easy. A tan house with white trim and a balcony off the front and flowerpots.
Very pleased to meet you, I said to the lady. She swallowed my story that I was in town visiting my California relatives who owned a shoe store and who'd taken me to see the Golden Gate Bridge. I'm too old to sit around all summer watching western movies, I told her, and I baby-sit all the time back home in Boston. You live in Boston? Yes, near Fenway Park. Her husband had always wanted to see a game there. She had me meet her six-year-old kid, who liked to draw. The lady had a part-time job selling perfume at a department store — it was a growth experience for her — and she would need me in the afternoons. We settled on $1.50 an hour and I felt bad I would have to ditch her in a few weeks.
The kid, Dominic, gave me the picture he was coloring. When I got back to the motel I borrowed some tape from the manager and hung it over the bed. It was a sun and three stick figures meant to be the kid and his parents. I thought what it would be like if Celia was alive and how Jake and her and I would've come out here in the Falcon and how Celia would've liked to see the Golden Gate again. I missed the picture of her I used to have. It got washed with my clothes in a laundromat in Minnesota and I cried so hard Jake sat me down and said all I had to do was look in the mirror because I was a dead ringer.
Jake and the boys got back from working and said it had gone fine. They could pick up some night shifts to get us on our way in no time. Glenn plopped down on the couch. Things will be so smooth fishing in Alaska we'll think we died and went to heaven, he said.
At the end of my first week of baby-sitting, Dominic's mother paid me and I walked back to the motel with my hand in my pocket. Thirty dollars. The most I'd ever made. When I held it out to Jake, he said, That's yours. A girl needs things. I don't need anything, I said. Isn't there anything you want? he asked. I guessed maybe a bottle of nail polish. He told the boys how much money I'd earned and Glenn kissed me on the forehead. Darrell took my hands and danced me around the room until we were laughing hard and I let go and fell on the bed. We could get plane seats to Alaska with Moneybags over here helping out, Glenn said and winked at me. Jake thought about it. I liked the idea of a plane ride. But, Jake said, how can we drive across that bridge if we fly? He was like that. He'd been talking about sending me to school again in Alaska; it had been too long, he said. I could read as well as anyone, and who needed math, besides for counting money? But I said I'd go to school again if he wanted.
Two weeks later on a Wednesday we were all in the motel room except Shoe, who was tanning again by the crummy pool outside the manager's office. I never went with her because the manager could look right out his window and see you there in a bathing suit and he was one of those types who didn't need an excuse to look and say, Hey, baby, even to a twelve-year-old. I've been thinking of just staying here, Darrell said. Me and Shoe want to get a little place. Darrell, for all his gals, had never said a word about keeping one. You're kidding, Glenn said, just to check. Jake dropped his cigarette butt in the soda can he used for an ashtray. Why would you want to go and live in a shoe box? We all laughed, even Darrell, because it was funny and Jake rarely told jokes.
Jake said, You stay and keep your share of what we've made, but Darrell looked Jake square in the eye. I wouldn't take anything from you but a few bucks to tide me over to payday, he said. I'm the one changing lanes, and anyway you got Celia's girl. He said that because it was the one thing that would make Jake keep the money. Jake held out his hand and Darrell did too and they shook. Each man has a say for himself, Jake said, and Darrell was being stand-up about it.
After that Darrell kept his share of the wages to save for his shoe box. A few days later Shoe showed up in a new dress that was yellow with daisies on it and after that it was a pair of high heels and then some dangly earrings. When Darrell said he'd rented him and Shoe their own room to have some privacy, Glenn asked Jake, Do you think she's working him? I stopped painting my toenails Silver Fantasy and looked over at Jake to see by his face what he thought. You aren't spending your whole paycheck on her, are you? Jake asked Darrell the next time we were all together and Shoe was out tanning by the pool. She does have a way about her gets me worked up, Darrell said.
One day I got back from baby-sitting and Jake and Glenn were watching another shoot'em-up. Guess what, Jake said. I knew right away and yelled, What kind? A '71 Comet, he said. I ran outside for a look. She was a green beauty, all shiny, with just one little dent on the right rear fender. I could tell by looking she'd drive like a dream. Jake took me around the block a few times and then to a drive-through. Even though I wasn't hungry it was fun to go by the order window in the Comet just like old times in the Falcon. We'll be on our way in the morning, he said. I was so excited to see the Golden Gate and Alaska that I wondered how I would sleep at all. Land of milk and honeys, I said and that made Jake smile.
Late in the evening Darrell burst through our door. His bomber jacket was torn and his left cheek was red. Jake was on his feet in a flash, pulling Darrell into the room and shutting the door behind him. Glenn switched off the lights and all three of them crouched down on the floor, so I did too. How bad? Jake asked and Darrell said, You got to come see. Jake said, Stay here, but I disobeyed and followed them to the little room behind the motel manager's office, where Shoe and the manager lay sprawled on a pullout bed. She was partly underneath him with her dress high and her pale legs showing and one foot hanging off the bed and she was shoeless.
I nearly screamed and had to put my hand over my mouth and say in my head the names of states we'd been to. She got in the middle of it, Darrell said. You know I'd never clock a gal on purpose. He was frazzled about Shoe and worried he'd hit the motel manager too hard because the little bastard wasn't fighting fair and had come at him with a pocketknife. Glenn picked up a tipped-over lamp and set it by the bed. It didn't work so he got a reading lamp from the manager's desk and plugged it in. Jake took hold of Shoe's skinny wrist and counted her pulse while Darrell fidgeted. After feeling her forehead and listening to her breathe Jake said she ought to be OK. You sure? Darrell said and Jake nodded. I felt less scared knowing Shoe was just knocked out and not dead.
Glenn found the manager's knife on the floor and handed it to Jake, who went around and rapped the manager on the knuckles with the flat side of the blade. His hand jerked, but he didn't make a sound. He's out pretty good, Glenn said softly. I got to clear out of here, Darrell said like he'd just thought of it. You got to help me, Jake. The two of them faced each other across the bed. Darrell looked scared and was calling in his marker on the bullet Jake owed him for. Jake put one hand over his eyes like he was tired. This is it, Darrell, he said. I'll carry you a ways up the road. Then you're on your own.
Glenn went and picked up a towel and hung it over the gap where the curtains didn't quite shut. The manager's eyelids fluttered for a second. Jake said sharp, Celeste, go pack. I jumped at hearing my name out loud and ran from the room and down the walkway to ours. I could pack really fast, I'd done it so many times, and I quick put mine and Jake's things in Payless bags and had a start on Glenn's when the three of them came in. Darrell had his stuff but not Shoe's.
The Comet had a tank of gas and we got in with me in my old spot behind the passenger. Glenn rode shotgun and Darrell hunched down in back so no one would see his face. Where we going? Glenn asked but Jake didn't say anything until we'd left town and were on the highway winding north. He drove just the speed limit. Did you tell anyone about Alaska? Jake asked. I might have, Glenn said, but just in passing. Darrell didn't remember. Yes or no? Darrell guessed most of his talk had been about plans with Shoe. Jake was quiet again and forty miles rode by. None of us said anything because he had to think.
If there's a way to go into Alaska and claim what's mine, we could risk it once things settle down, Jake finally said. I sensed Glenn nodding his agreement in the dark. Darrell stayed silent and hidden. Jake reckoned we could keep low and when the coast was clear make a beeline for Alaska. We would have to stretch our money. How much we got right now? Glenn asked. I said, Six hundred eighteen after the Comet, plus anything Darrell has. A buck fifty, Darrell said. Six and change will do, Jake said like he hadn't heard Darrell, and I knew he wasn't going to change his mind.
I stared through the window at the empty landscape and tried not to hate Shoe. You couldn't teach an old dog new tricks and why had Darrell thought he could and he must've loved her to try. Because of him we were in trouble but I couldn't help feeling sorry for poor, dumb Darrell whose hopes were bundled in a flowered suitcase in an empty motel room — dresses and shoes and earrings for a weary-looking gal.
Miles later, when we stopped for gas with Darrell hiding under a blanket, Jake asked Glenn to switch places with me. When we were driving again he said, I'm sorry about this. I meant to do better by you. I knew he was thinking about Celia. It's OK, Jake, I said. I'm sorry about the bridge. It's OK; it's just an old bridge. You scared? and I had to say yes because I would never lie to him. He pulled his billfold out of his pocket and put it in my hand. Celia's older sister, he said. You know her number? Yes, my aunt I'm named for, but he made me say the number to make sure. But nothing will happen, right, Jake? He didn't answer and I saw the police lights in the side mirror before they turned on the sirens.
Laurel Leigh
After All This Is Over
By Doug Crandell
Love And Death In Paris And London
By Andrew Boyd
Troubled Youth
By Poe Ballantine
By Theresa Williams
Our Son At One Year Old
Elegy For Phil
By Dina Ben-Lev


text:
An Intimate Conversation with Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan
It's been a while since we caught up with Dave Gahan. In the two years since we chatted with the Depeche Mode staple for our print magazine and sent Max Dax to record a video interview with him, Gahan has returned to the studio with UK songwriting duo Soulsavers to create a new album. Angels & Ghosts will appear in stores on October 23. The accompanying tour started on October 19 in Los Angeles. That's where he was stationed when Max Dax (who also recently spoke to Gahan's Depeche Mode partner Martin Gore) gave him a call to look back at the past and reflect on how far he's come.
Max Dax: Mr. Gahan, how are you? It's midnight in Berlin, the autumn rain is falling, I'm sitting in my kitchen and the city is asleep.
Dave Gahan: I'm in Los Angeles right now. It's 3 p.m. here.
Are you still living in Manhattan? Or have you moved to L.A.?
I live in New York, but I used to live in Los Angeles for about seven or eight years. I moved here in 1989. In 1997 I relocated to New York, and I've been there ever since.
You own a studio in Lower Manhattan.
Yes. I mean, it's rather more a small working room. But in New York you gotta get what you can in terms of space. And in that sense I'm very fortunate to have a space there and to have Kurt Uenala, with whom I collaborate. He's pretty much there all the time, and that's where we write songs together. We've actually recorded a lot of stuff there, a lot of vocals, especially for the last couple of Depeche Mode records. And, of course, we also recorded the last two Soulsavers albums there.
In other words, you feel comfortable there, within your own four walls.
Absolutely. And I especially love to record with Kurt. He's recorded most of my vocals for the last seven or eight years now. When you're working with your voice, it's always very important to feel comfortable. Otherwise you can't feel inspired or free to do things that you might not usually do. I like to be able to experiment with my voice. I like to try out different types of microphones and pre-amps, and Kurt's very good at setting that up for me so that I can literally walk into my room at any time I feel inspired and to be able to record ideas.
There's a reason why I asked you about New York and Los Angeles: you've lived in American cities, but you were born and raised in England. America has such a strong musical tradition, and it's deeply rooted in Irish and the Scottish traditional ballads as well as the African-American heritage of the blues and gospel. How do you adapt to that?
I find blues and gospel—and let's not forget jazz—very inspiring. All this music comes from America, and New York City really represents that in many ways. When I moved to Manhattan, I finally could really understand the music of John Coltrane, for example. "A Love Supreme" suddenly made more sense to me musically. It's the sound of New York, you know? Jazz is the sound of New York. And apart from that, blues and gospel music, to me, is where everything began. Combining these musical influences in what we do with Soulsavers, and even in what we do with Depeche Mode, feels like a natural conclusion.
In addition to downbeat blues and gospel, I hear a third strong influence on your new record: a David Lynch kind of Twin Peaks twang.
That's very intuitive of you. Your question confronts me with the visual aspect of the music I'm doing. The music I do with the Soulsavers is very visual, if not filmic, and it touches this aspect of America that most of us don't get to see that much. Many people don't get to see that much of America besides New York and Los Angeles, but there's a big, huge Americana that exists in between these two cities! These landscapes and these amazing, large areas of land that seem to go on forever. I'm inspired by that. Sometimes I have an empty feeling as well. Visual emptiness and sometimes very beautiful silence—that's where the inspiration really comes from.
Did you travel the hinterlands of Americana to feel what you're describing?
Well, of course, over the years I've crossed the U.S. many times with Depeche Mode. But I've also done a little bit of traveling myself. I just feel very inspired by the visual side of what you can hear in American music. When we talk about my music, we have to talk about influences that express feelings that're deep within your soul. And these feelings ask questions about who we are, or "Who am I?" Especially when you consider that you face what's going on around in the world around you. You ask yourself, "What does it all mean to me?"
So you're basically reckoning with the human condition on your new songs.
I believe so, yes.
Let's focus for a moment on a new song that you've recorded. It's called "One Thing".
Why did you pick that particular one?
"Just lay down next to me / And we can watch these tasteless shows on our TV". That's genuinely evocative songwriting to me.
Thank you for saying that. In this song in particular I'm trying to show some vulnerability and how I feel about life and the world that surrounds us. I wanted to show that particular balance between vulnerability and beauty. To me, the beauty comes in the melodies and in their reflection in the lyrics.
In the song you also quote David Bowie's famous line "Is there life on Mars?"
Of course I am referring to that Bowie song. It still means a lot to me. I can still play that song and I can still hear a person who's lost. But at the same time, I can see this beautiful landscape he's lost in, and how we desperately try to find things to numb ourselves from the way we feel. And today, of course, television is what we find ourselves sitting in front of and watching addictively for no apparent reason, other than to numb us from our real feelings. Having said that, music really enables me to dig deep into my soul, and with this record I think I really have allowed myself for the first time to just appear, rather than edit it too much or push it too far in a certain direction or for you, as the listener, to be steered in any particular direction. I wanted to contrast a lot of things in the new songs — the beauty of melody and the open space of introspection. This may have led to, I guess, some dark lyrics. But such is life, isn't it?
You're basically saying that, in our digital present, we're losing our spirituality.
That's so true.
But you have an answer ready. In the chorus of "One Thing" you sing, "You need just one thing: love."
It's weird because at some point a song takes on a life of its own. All of a sudden the song becomes much bigger than any idea you ever had about it when you started writing it. It leads you into a melody, or in this case a word—love—that maybe is something that I'm still desperately trying to find. I know that's the truth. I know that word encapsulates everything we really should be. But sometimes I feel so far away from that, you know? We're all here on this planet together, and you can't possibly be unaffected by what goes on. I feel fortunate that I can put these feelings into music and I feel very privileged to have a partner like Rich Machin, who melodically, structurally and song-wise is on the same page as me.
"One Thing" seems to embrace the world with empathy. We're all getting older. Would you say that you're now looking at the world as an adult person?
You know, on one hand that's true, and getting older is a fact to me. But also the truth is that I sometimes feel that I'm just not there. But I want to be. And my hope is that the listener can reflect on that feeling. When was the last time that you asked yourself, "How do I feel about love? Do I feel love? Do I love people? Do I give the best I can? Am I kind?" You know, all these things. More often than not, I'm not so sure about myself. But I am sure about it when I'm lost in a song like that. I'm just a small part of it, as the song itself has become so much greater eventually. Love is like that. You have to hang in there and you have to believe it. At the end of the day, all this destruction that we cause around us and within us ultimately is all that we are left with. Love is the only thing that holds us together. I'm getting older and I have younger children, and hopefully they will have children too. But what kind of world are we bringing them into? I don't know. For me, music has always been the key to feeling as though I belong, and it continues to do that.
Would you say you've become more empathetic over the years?
I think so. You get beaten down. I beat myself down pretty hard for a while and then I gave up on that habit. I've been fortunate enough in the last 20 years. I feel like I'm slowly sobering.
But you don't regret the experiences of having beaten yourself pretty hard—or do you?
No, I wouldn't like to miss anything, of course. This is my life.
It was a life in the limelight almost from the beginning.
Everything was public from the beginning. When Alan Wilder left Depeche Mode, it was basically Martin and me. Martin and I had to become something together, and we're still becoming that. That's still a work in progress. Yes, we're making music together and then we perform that music. And we're very much aware of how much the music has touched people. We see it in the concerts and we feel it onstage. But I think Martin and I still have this thing between us. It's still two people coming together with music, but at the same time we've also always been very separate—even musically. But that's also what makes Depeche Mode so interesting, musically. It's that struggle between us, I believe.
You could call it a struggle, or you could call it yin and yang.
I would be interested how it'd sound if you actually mashed our last two records together. Martin did an album called MG. Like me, Martin is a big fan of blues and gospel music. But he's also a big fan of turning something inside out, taking those elements and then doing something completely different with them musically, simply to make it interesting for himself. But within the band, of course, these two elements come together. This has always been a challenge for whomever we work with. On Delta Machine, for instance, it was Christoffer Berg, who's most known for his work with Fever Ray. It turned out to be a great collaboration because Chris brought an excitement and enthusiasm to the recording sessions that I think wouldn't have been there otherwise. And certainly he and Martin became like a sort of partnership, having fun and creating with their electronics. I think I brought in an element of soulfulness or a feeling of human vulnerability to this organized backdrop. Actually, a lot of life is like that. We try and organize everything perfectly so that we can have the perfect day, but of course it's totally disorganized. It's total chaos. Depeche Mode's music has always pushed the envelope of what pop music "should" sound like. We've always kind of been on the outside of pop somehow.
As compared to Depeche Mode, how was working with the Soulsavers?
Well, it's a collaboration, and that's the only similar thing. When Rich and I write together, I might have melodies in my head or a particular phrase or a vocal line—something that's buzzing around in my head. And Rich will send me these guitar lines or organ parts that he puts in an atmospheric ambience. They're always very sparse and loosely arranged, and for some reason the sound of it inspires me. From there I live with these guitar and organ lines and try to listen to whatever words or shapes pop up into my head. And then I try to combine it all by singing these words onto the music. I often find that the song begins to write itself. Working with the Soulsavers is much less structured than working with Depeche Mode. When I wrote with Kurt Uenala on Delta Machine, everything was a lot more organized in terms of structure.
Maybe because I have an idea of what I think a song presented to Depeche Mode should sound like, whereas I don't feel that pressure with the Soulsavers. You have to present something to the producer and to Martin and whoever is working on the record. They are all there to hear this finished idea before you even discuss it being recorded for Depeche Mode. With Soulsavers, I can present sketches and ideas because I know that my song will develop over the course of time, and all I have to do is to follow it. I really don't know how a song is going to sound until it's finished.
And now you're going on tour with the Soulsavers.
I can't wait to be onstage again.
The tour schedule reads like the ultimate rock star tour: Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Milan. Only Tokyo is missing.
Yeah, that would have been the world in a week. But in all honesty, the reasons for keeping this tour short were mainly practical. First of all, I don't wanted to spend another six months just touring around the world. This record feels maybe too personal. So we came up with this idea to play these small but interesting venues and theaters and to put together a band. There will be ten musicians onstage including myself and three gospel singers.
So, it's quite a big production.
Ten people is a big band, but it's not a big production with visuals, films, lasers or a fancy light show. It's really just about the music. We will play the songs from the two records that we've made together. There will also be a few little surprises at the end of the show, if we feel that way. But it's more or less about showcasing the two records that we're very proud of. The idea of leaving home for another year or so just doesn't appeal to me at all at the moment. It terrifies me. At the moment, this is the best I can do.
You wouldn't see your children.
Exactly. They're growing up fast. Being away from home for months can be crucial. I have two sons who have left home, but I have also a daughter who just turned 16, and she's still at home. There's not much time left until she goes to college, so I really want to be around. I've spent a lot of time in their lives away from them. And when I'm not on tour I can also continue to work on other stuff. Doing only six shows is quite expensive, and we have to still rehearse like we'd go on tour for a year. But that's the price I gotta pay, I guess.
Buy tickets to Dave Gahan and Soulsavers' tour dates on Gahan's website, and enter to win tickets to the sold-out Berlin gig here.
Published October 19, 2015.


At school today, they had a thing where you put on goggles, and there was a nail you hit with a hammer, and there were dinosaurs underneath, and it let you be a Scientologist.
On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became President of a crumbling nation. Amidst the torrent of changes in his recovery plan�his New Deal�he oversaw a strange reversal. Alcohol, long stigmatized and outlawed under Prohibition, was suddenly legal again. And gold, with which Dollars were supposedly interchangeable, became an illegal substance.
In his inaugural speech, Roosevelt said "...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," by which he meant, in large part, "fear of bank failure." The cycle of withdrawal and collapse was choking the already battered economy. Forty eight hours later, Roosevelt's response was bold�and illegal.
He began on March 6 by closing the nation's banks. He called this "bank holiday" on the authority of an expired wartime trade act, and relied on a docile Congress to legitimize his actions after the fact. In the process, he declared "hoarding" (possessing one's own gold) to be a reckless, unpatriotic act.
When he reopened the banks on March 10, they were instructed to refuse all requests for gold. With all bank holdings under his control, Roosevelt set his sights on all the rest�the gold held by United States citizens. Through the Treasury Department he acquired records of all gold withdrawals from banks in the last two years, thus revealing which citizens and organizations might be "hoarding" gold.
Then, on April 5, he issued Executive Order 6102: all "individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations" in the nation were to deliver their gold to the federal government. In exchange, they would receive paper money. The penalty for defying this order was $10,000, 10 years in prison, or both.
In the following months this confiscation was aggressively implemented. People were indicted for refusing to turn over their gold�among them the daughter of a former U.S. Senator. Others were arrested at the Canadian border for attempting to smuggle gold out of the country. But the vast majority of Americans obeyed, and the Treasury's gold stockpile grew steadily into 1934.
It was during these months that Roosevelt repealed Prohibition. Thirsty crowds lined up outside bars, counting down the seconds to 4:32pm, December 5, 1933. Roosevelt famously remarked "I think this would be a good time for a beer." Millions of Americans agreed, and Roosevelt's popularity soared. He was showered with gifts and well-wishes on his first birthday in office: January 30, 1934.
The very next day, Roosevelt finally cashed in on the confiscation. By fiat, he increased the dollar cost of an ounce of gold from $20 to $35. This effectively devalued the dollar (which people had been forced to accept instead of gold) by 40 percent. On the strength of the gold stockpile, this yielded a profit of 2.7 billion dollars for the Treasury.
Roosevelt hoped that the devaluation would stabilize the dollar against certain foreign currencies and create a more favorable environment for export. But doing so had required an unprecedented, and possibly unconstitutional, confiscation and wealth transfer.
By this time Roosevelt had been in office for eleven months.
Tuesday plus Tuesday is Foursday!


text:
PodcastNovember 18, 2021
E7: TIL about farming a warmer planet
Listen on your favorite streaming app.
Over the last fifty years, humans have made remarkable progress in reducing hunger around the world. How can we keep our farms and food system resilient in a warming climate? Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig, Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, joins host Laur Hesse Fisher on this episode of TILclimate to explain how climate change is already impacting our global food system.
Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig heads the Climate Impacts Group at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. She was Coordinating Lead Author of the Food Security Chapter for the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land as well as Coordinating Lead Author on observed climate change impacts for the IPCC Working Group II Fourth Assessment Report. In her research, she integrates impact models with climate models to predict future outcomes of both land-based and urban systems in altered climate conditions. She is a Professor at Barnard College and a Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University's Earth Institute.
For more episodes of TILclimate by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, visit tilclimate.mit.edu. To receive notifications about new episodes, sign up for our mailing list and follow us on Twitter @tilclimate.
Laur Hesse Fisher, Host and Producer
David Lishansky, Editor and Producer
Aaron Krol, Associate Producer
Ilana Hirschfeld, Student Production Assistant
Sylvia Scharf, Education Specialist
Carolyn Shea, Fact Checker
Music by Blue Dot Sessions
Artwork by Aaron Krol
Return to TILclimate homepage
[00:00:00] LHF: Hello, and welcome to Today I Learned: Climate. I'm Laur Hesse Fisher from the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative. Today, we're going to talk about climate change and food—specifically, how we grow and distribute enough of it to feed 8 billion people and counting.
Famines used to ravage the planet. Estimates vary, but it's thought that more than 50 million people, maybe as high as 80 million, died in famines over the last hundred years. And yet, today we hear almost nothing about them. And that's because things have genuinely gotten better—starting in about the mid-1960s, the risk of famine began to plummet all over the world. There are a lot of reasons for that—less poverty, more international aid, new breeds of crops and kinds of fertilizers. We haven't eliminated hunger, but progress over the past 50 years has been enormous, even as the world population doubled.
But that success in feeding our planet is built on a delicate relationship with nature—and nature is changing.
So, we were wondering, what do we need to know about climate change and our food system? So we brought in someone who's been studying this question her entire career.
[00:01:30] CR: I'm Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig. I'm the head of the Climate Impacts Group at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
[00:01:38] LHF: Does NASA do a lot of work on farming?
[00:01:41] CR: I'm trained as an agronomist. That's what my PhD is in. An agronomist studies soils and crops. Very early on at my Institute at NASA, our director at the time asked the question, what do these climate projections of it getting warmer... What do they mean for agriculture? And I started answering it and I've been answering it ever since.
[00:02:10] LHF: Let's jump right in. First, remember that the extra CO2 that humans are adding to the atmosphere is acting like a blanket, trapping in heat that normally would escape out into space. This is causing the planet to warm… which can mess with how plants grow.
[00:02:28] CR: Crops and livestock in and of themselves are highly vulnerable to increasing temperatures. Farmers are dealing with a changing climate that is altering planting and harvest dates; the length of the growing season, bringing high temperatures during critical growth stages; and shortening growing periods for annual crops.
[00:02:49] LHF: Let's imagine a wheat field in Kansas, where farmers grow wheat over the winter. If temperatures are warmer than usual during the winter, the wheat could develop much faster than normal. But then if an ordinary cold snap comes, this can damage the pre-maturely developed plants.
And this is just one of several ways that rising temperatures can stunt plant growth. but as we've talked about in previous episodes, this warming will also make natural disasters more intense.
[00:03:23] CR: Our food system is under pressure from extreme events which are increasing in many parts of the world. So, things such as heat waves, heavy downpours, droughts in some regions and floods in others. Um, so there is risk with the projected climate changes that there will be food instability. There'll be the potential for more crop failures.
[00:03:54] LHF: Scientists like Dr. Rosenzweig use climate models to make these kinds of predictions, but unfortunately, we're also seeing these effects in the real world. For example, California, which grows over 60% of all fruits and nuts in the U.S. —has been suffering a drought for most of the last ten years. In 2015 alone, in the middle of that drought, California farmers took over half a million acres of land out of production for lack of water.
[00:04:26] CR: There are some places in the world, such as Africa and South Asia, where maize and wheat yields are declining. The Pakistan floods in 2010 affected national food reserves. The heat wave in Europe in 2019 caused disruption to transport infrastructure, and food distribution was affected.
[00:04:51] LHF: Right now in 2021, after years of drought, Madagascar is experiencing what the United Nations calls the first famine caused entirely by climate change,. This is tragic and a terrifying echo of the mass famines that humans so recently seemed to be leaving behind.
[00:05:12] CR: A key message is that not all farmers and not everybody on the planet is equal in their vulnerability to climate change. So the smallholder farmers, of which there are about 500 million in developing countries, are the most vulnerable.
[00:05:34] LHF: For context, most smallholder farmers farm less than 5 acres, which is about the size of four football fields.
[00:05:43] CR: Smallholder farmers live in places in general that are warm already. So, increasing heat puts their crops and their livestock more at risk to high temperature stress, and also at risk for more drought. These smallholder farmers in developing countries don't have the wherewithal that the big farmers—let's say—right here in the US, with our land grant universities doing research night and day to help respond to climate, that infrastructure is often not in place for the smallholder farmers.
[00:06:18] LHF: Now, this doesn't mean climate change is bad for all farmers everywhere. Some northern areas like Canada and northern Europe and Asia might find that they can support new crops that do better in warmer weather.,,
And you might have heard that, in a world with more CO2, plants will grow faster, because CO2 is what plants eat to grow .
[00:06:44] CR: Great work has been now done with experiments that pipe high CO2 onto fields. Because high CO2, in general, tends to produce, under good growing conditions, increases in yield.
But then a group of scientists said, wait a minute, let's go back, take the grains that were from these experiments, and let's look at the nutrition. And they've found that the nutrient quality is reduced, less protein because you're having more carbohydrates, but your nitrogen, which is the protein, may not be keeping up. We don't know for sure how this will be translated all the way into the food that people eat, but this is a worrying result.
[00:07:32] LHF: OK, let's switch gears for a bit. We've been talking about how a warming world is going to affect our food… But here's the kicker.. Our modern food system—the very thing that has saved so many people from hunger—is also releasing a lot of the greenhouse gases that are the root cause of climate change.
[00:07:54] CR: On a farm, greenhouse gas emissions are coming from, first, clearing of the forest to create the fields; use of fertilizers, often N2O, nitrous oxide; fossil fuels burned to run the tractors; methane from rice paddies, beef and dairy cattle and manure.
And then of course, fossil fuels and providing energy to dry and store, cool the produce and later on in the supply chain, the transport and package. This is one third of total human caused greenhouse gas emissions coming from the food system, from producing food, from shipping food, from consuming food and from wasting food.
[00:08:42] LHF: And it's not like we can stop growing food, or shipping it to the people who need it.
So—what do we do? How can we help farmers keep reliably producing food, but also slow down climate change?
[00:08:58] CR: First of all, Laur, given the complexity across the spectrum of the entire food system, choosing one thing is just not going to transform the food system for these significant challenges of climate change.
[00:09:15] LHF: Well, where can we start?
[00:09:17] CR: So, first of all, how are we utilizing land to produce food? Land use conversion is the largest, source of greenhouse gas emissions from the food system. That's number one, reducing land clearing for agriculture.
[00:09:37] LHF: Here we're talking about vast forests around the world that are being cut down to make way for farms or for raising animals, which, as we covered in our last episode on trees, emits a huge amount of Co2.
Then there are the nuts and bolts decisions that farmers make on the land they ARE tending. Farming is a tough business. And right now, many American farmers plant fields with just one or a few crops that guarantee them a pretty stable income,. If you've ever driven by or flown over seemingly unending acres of corn or wheat or soy, that's what we're talking about.
[00:10:18] CR: But there's now a movement to use more mixed and more diverse systems. Like cover crops.
Cover crops are used by farmers when the main cash crops are not in the field For example, the main crop is harvested in the fall — Let's say corn or soybeans, and then they plant, uh, some kind of legume or a grass that then is plowed up in the spring, providing all this good stuff to the soil. This not only stores carbon, but can also tamp down weeds and other pests and increase soil moisture capacity. And that is helpful when there are droughts and floods.
[00:11:05] LHF: And new types of crops can help with extreme weather, too.
[00:11:10] CR: We need, um, genetic improvement there to develop bigger root systems. So that when there is a drought the crops are able to, uh, find more water in the soil.
[00:11:22] LHF: This is a lot else that can be done, a lot of little choices that add up to a much more efficient, more resilient, less polluting food system. But that's a lot to ask of our farmers—and we can't expect them to make all these changes without support.
[00:11:42] CR: Farmers have to make a living. And so everything in the transformation has to ensure that farmers make a good living.
There's consultants and farming groups that are coming on board together to enable an incentive program for carbon storage by farmers in the United States. And many, many agribusinesses are already taking onboard climate change, to mobilize green investment, invest in these technologies, invest in the research, and investing in those farmers.
[00:12:21] LHF: And there's one more group of people who can help a lot.
[00:12:25] CR: Last, but not least, us, the consumers. The folks who eat everyday, right. So, for those who have choices, encourage healthy and sustainable plant-rich diets, especially in developed countries.
[00:12:43] LHF: For example, you might have heard people say they're eating less meat to reduce their impact on climate change. That's because growing plants uses a lot less land and resources than it takes to raise
[00:12:56] CR: animals.
But remember we do emphasize it's for those who have choices, not everyone does. We really can't be going all around the world saying what people should eat.
[00:13:09] LHF: So there's a lot happening, and a lot more that we can do.
[00:13:13] CR: The transformation that we're talking about for the food system is absolutely enormous, but it provides opportunities for so many people who are already part of it, right? A billion people across the planet are involved in the food system. So if we can do all those things on the resilience side, soil–carbon sequestration, heat and drought tolerant crops, and a broader mix of biodiverse crops. We're going to really help farmers be able to be resilient to the climate changes that are already occurring and that are projected to get worse in the future. So on the one hand, it seems so daunting, but at the other time, it's this opportunity for this massive success in the transformation that is so needed.
[00:14:12] LHF: That's it for our episode today. If you want to learn more about what we talked about, you can check out our Twitter handle @TILclimate, or you can email us TILclimate@mit.edu. We also have an educator guide to teach about farming on a warmer planet. You can check out our website tilclimate.mit.edu, to find that. Thank you so much to Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig for joining us today. And thank you for listening.
To learn more about Dr. Rosenzweig and her research, visit: https://www.earth.columbia.edu/users/profile/cynthia-ropes-rosenzweig
The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies does fascinating work with satellites and space probes to conduct atmospheric modeling of climate change. Learn more work at: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/
Curious to know more about the technicalities of modeling climate impacts? Read our short Climate Models explainer.
Chapter 5 of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land analyzes the science of how climate change impacts our food system and how our food system impacts the climate. Read the report here.
Our explainers on food systems and agriculture, fertilizers and climate change, and soil-based carbon sequestration further break down the complexities of growing food on a warming planet.
Reducing meat consumption is a common choice people make to lower their individual environmental impact. This Ask MIT Climate explains why.
For an overview of climate change, check out our climate primer: Climate Science and Climate Risk (by Prof. Kerry Emanuel and the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative).
Our educator guides that go along with each of our episodes make it easier to teach climate change, earth science, and energy topics in the classroom. Take a look at our newest educator guide on farming a warmer planet.
For more episodes of TILclimate by the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative, visit tilclimate.mit.edu.
We fact-check our episodes. Click here to download our list of sources.
How are farmers affected by climate change? And how do farms affect climate change? Agriculture is as the intersection of many climate impacts. Students investigate plant hardiness zone shifts, and then read case studies about agroecology.
Explore the educator guide.


Gigabit for everyone! - photonics-austrias Webseite!
Every second more than 10 trillion optical pulses are transferred via optical fibres as thin as a hair for more than 10000 kilometres. Photonics makes it happen.
The internet has become the cornerstone of our modern ICT infrastructure and cannot be missed in the everyday life anymore. It allows rapid distribution of information and ubiquitous access to it. The most important key technology of the internet can be found in photonics: a technology, which has made an enormous progress in the past two centuries; A rising star, which promises huge breakthroughs and high quality of experience. About 90% of the worldwide transmitted data is conveyed over photonic networks. The optical fibre is an important transportation medium in broadband communications. Furthermore, photonic communication technologies are indispensable as scalable connections between servers and processors in data centres. Nevertheless, translating the potential of photonics into powerful products is by no means straightforward and includes numerous technological challenges.
The Austrian Institute of Technology investigates cost- and energy-efficient technologies for modern optical communication networks. This last-mile segment is mostly based on copper-based solutions, which do not offer high data rates in the gigabit regime such as required for applications like 3D television or cloud computing. Through use of novel opto-electronic components and novel system concepts an exceptional performance can be achieved. Examples are compact light modulators with sub-millimetre dimensions or energy-autarkic yet reconfigurable network nodes.


Boasting 'excellent service, knowledge, and strength in depth' Eversheds Sutherland (International) LLP > Leeds's 'outstanding' pensions team is described as offering 'London expertise at regional rates'. The 'particularly impressive' Richard Shelton heads up the team which is instructed by large well known companies, public sector clients and large insurers. The team is bolstered with the arrival of Eversheds Sutherland (International) LLP , formerly at Squire Patton Boggs , Leeds, who led advice to US healthcare logistics company Owens & Minor on UK pension issues arising from the company's $710m acquisition of Halyard Health's healthcare consumables business. In this matter the team leveraged the firm's international expertise to handle pensions and termination indemnity issues in Honduras, Thailand, Germany and France. Head of the pensions litigation department, Claire Carroll is a key name to note for contentious matters. Principal associate Gemma Hanley is also singled out for her 'exceptional knowledge' of energy sector pension schemes. Hanley has expertise representing utility companies and advises Anglian Water Services on a broad range of pensions issues. There have been some changes to the team include the departure of Simon Evans to DLA Piper UK LLP.


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