On Saturday October 14th it was a drizzly, rain-soaked morning. Two weeks into the Michigan archery season, and we were on the cusp of slinging an arrow and closing the coffin on the deer we named The Backyard Buck. We have been watching, glassing, and studying this deer for the better part of 2 months. He got his name because he literally lived in the back yard. We were located smack dab in the middle of farm country of Sanilac County, Michigan. Behind the house, Elk Creek stretches East and West for mile after mile. The farmers recently worked the ground and we were hunting the edge of a corn stubble field along the river. The Backyard Buck made this his core area.
After watching him night after night we had him patterned. The buck would come out of the designated sanctuary and work his way East through the corn stubble field; stopping only to check scrapes. He would continue East until he got to the next field over which was standing corn. He would check for does and make sure his belly was good and full. He would spend roughly 20-30 minutes before he would make his way back through the timber that sat near the creek. He rarely made himself visible in the evenings, so the plan was made to hunt the creek stand in the early mornings. It was about 52 degrees and without fail The Backyard Buck was on the move. He crossed through the corn stubble at 7:59am. We watched as he then worked his way into the standing corn. Only 20 minutes later he entered the timber where we immediately got eyes on him. He worked his way on an angle left to right in front of the stand. We quickly positioned the camera, drew back, and sent the arrow right into the pump station of one of our biggest bucks to date.
Watch the hunt unfold, click here.


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Universities increasingly look for ways to enhance the experience of their students and developments in the US in particular often herald future changes in the UK sector.
For example, there has been much talk of a facilities arms race with universities outdoing each other to provide more and better sporting and recreational facilities. As far as I am aware no UK university has yet built a lazy river, although many do have climbing walls.
In addition there is the growth of high-specification residential accommodation which offers real luxury – at a price.
Recently, it was also noted here that several companies offer an excitingly extravagant service to help students get around open days in the US by private jet.
And then a few years back one university developed the idea of a course concierge to help students with their course selections. It's a role that hasn't become widespread yet in the UK although I suspect that many student services professionals do at least part of this role.
But at least one university has taken the idea of a concierge further. Much further.
As Inside Higher Ed reports, a programme at New Mexico State University offers a wide range of concierge services for a fee. Services are provided by an external partner, Sodexo, which plans to expand to other institutions.
Bettner said that to appeal to new students, New Mexico State realised it needed to be more competitive with other institutions with flashier offerings. Without the immediate budget to improve some of the buildings that were a half a century old or more, administrators settled on expanding its dining contract with Sodexo to include the concierge service, the vendor's first. It launched in January. After a slow rollout, the program is being much more aggressively marketed toward potential students, Bettner said. It is paid not through university funds, but instead through partnerships with outside companies and charging a fee or commission on services students obtain through the concierge.
The concierge role includes sorting out travel plans for students, booking dinner at restaurants and doing the laundry and cleaning. All chargeable of course.
It's a new take on in loco parentis for sure.
Both students and their families have loved the program, which is housed in the university union. One of the staffers there is referred to as a "mother away from home" who "would do anything a mother would do," which delights parents.
Bettner acknowledged the criticism in academe of too much focus on facilities and not on academics, but said that this will help remove a "to-do list" for students and help them focus more on their studies.
The argument for improvements in retention rates may look persuasive to some. Surely the emphasis should be on providing the right services to students who really need the support though, rather than additional luxury provision for those who can afford it.
However, the Global Vice President of Marketing for Circles, the part of Sodexo that administers the concierge programme, Ronni Schorr, said the programme helped relieve student stress.
The program doesn't coddle students, but merely helps improve their lives. This benefits both international and domestic students, such as those who may be from out of state. They are the future leaders and they are very stressed. They have a lot going on in their lives. Often they are going to college and university not in their home area, and getting acquainted with the area … and we want to relieve some of the stress they might feel.
At High Point University, which also offers this kind of service, the concierge offers a similar package but also deals with communication with parents, as well as careers-related activity including (ironically) communication skills and the incredibly tedious and challenging business of "taking pictures for a LinkedIn profile".
Given that Sodexo operate in the UK too, perhaps it won't be long before some universities here are offering concierge services like these.


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Seems like Judge Kluka--who authorized the neo-Nazi raids of Chisholm and Schmitz--plays the Little Catholic Girl card on the side.
Barbara Kluka is a long-time associate who was born, raised, and has lived most of her life near Kenosha, Wisconsin. As a single person, she has pursued a life of quiet holiness since childhood, when she learned to play the organ and played at daily Masses and for funerals in her parish.
Barbara attended St. Joseph High School in Kenosha, where she became acquainted with the School Sisters of St. Francis community*. Sister Ruth La Mothe was one of her teachers. She introduced Barbara to others sisters and brought her...
...Now that she is retired, Barbara is available to go where she can be of service in many areas, such as occasionally filling in as court commissioner or doing private mediations. She teaches occasional classes in Business Law at an area college, and attends meetings and events with the sisters at St. Joseph Center in Milwaukee....
How very sweet. But it gets better!
...Her greatest cause for optimism is that the present economic situation has given people an opportunity to examine what is really important in their lives. She hopes this examination will strengthen family life and improve the care of children....
Oh, yes, FAMILIES!! Like the ones whose homes were plundered by the SturmGewehr; whose children still have nightmares over the pre-dawn armed raids.
Yes, Barbara, it's For the Children.
Perspicacious readers will recognize the importance of St Joseph/Kenosha, by the way.
*Actually, the old OSF order, which ran Alverno College and occupied the S. Layton Blvd motherhouse. Area Catholics will recall that Alverno was a hotbed of Leftism in the '60's. That Leftism is vestigially present even though the OSF order was subsumed into the SSSF's--which was another order entirely.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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THE CONSTITUTION GOES TO COLLEGE: FIVE CONSTITUTIONAL IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
by Rodney A. Smolla. New York: New York University Press, 2011. 239pp. Cloth $27.00. ISBN: 9780814741030.
Reviewed by Tobias T. Gibson, Department of Political Science, Westminster College. Email: tobias.gibson [at] westminster-mo.edu.
I was delighted when I was asked to review this book. The idea of writing a book about the impact of the United States Constitution on the country's institutions and system of higher learning is very interesting. And, to be sure, Rodney A. Smolla, former dean of University of Richmond and Washington and Lee law schools, and current president of Furman University, delivers the goods. He has a mastery of the relevant case law, and an interesting perspective stemming from his educational and employment background. This book is well researched, well written, articulate and thought provoking.
The preface briefly describes the purpose and scope of the book. Smolla describes the confluence of life, including being a parent, lawyer and educator, and the impact that his worldview will have on the book.
The first chapter introduces the focus of the book, which include five "constitutional ideas" that have had particular impact on the nation's colleges and universities. These ideas include: the debate over a "living Constitution"; the separation of "public" and "private"; understanding the differences between a right and a privilege; "ordered liberty"; and varying notions of what equality entails.
Smolla's argument, that the Constitution, and judicial interpretation of it, plays a major role in developing the identity of the institutions of higher learning, begins in earnest in chapter two. Noting the importance of academic freedom, and its absence from the Constitution, Smolla suggests that this right may be implied by the First Amendment, especially if in conjunction with the Ninth. Smolla also notes that freedom of association, itself not an enumerated right, has been found by the Supreme Court to be implied by the First. He then takes the reader on a multi-page history and impact of the right to privacy, and concludes that section by noting that there are several reasons why privacy will not lead to explicit recognition of a constitutional right to academic freedom. Smolla also provides a short but detailed look at the precedent of academic freedom by the Supreme Court. The chapter concludes by noting that there is some fear and trepidation in granting elite rights to a small cadre of citizens, college professors in this example, and that Smolla is not convinced that the Court need recognize such an explicit grant of liberty.
Smolla discusses the different constitutional expectations between public and private universities in chapter three. He begins his tour with a fine discussion of the famed Trustees of [*233] Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819). In particular, he notes the perceived need for autonomous institutions of higher learning by both Daniel Webster, who argued the case at the Court for his alma mater, and Chief Justice John Marshall. The remainder of the chapter is dedicated to exploring the necessary distinctions of a public university, whose employees work for the state, and the private college, whose employees are not employed by the state. In what is perhaps the most interesting portion of the chapter, Smolla notes that private institutions possess free speech rights, where as public universities do not, although the individual faculty and students of a public university most assuredly do (p.44). Another particularly well done section, "The Curious Right Not to Associate," discusses the impact of the constitutionally mandated ban on religious establishment and civil rights, and several specific U.S. Supreme Court decisions on the clubs and associations that frequently are part of the co-curricular environment of undergraduate and graduate educational programming.
The fourth chapter focuses on the differences between rights and privileges. Smolla begins the discussion with an extension of then-Judge Holmes's argument, in Mcauliffe v. City of New Bedford (1892). Holmes agreed that McAuliffe, who had been fired as a police officer because he had been discussing politics while walking his beat, had a constitutional right to free speech. However, Holmes went to argue that "he has no constitutional right to be a policeman" (as quoted in Smolla, p.72). Much of the rest of the chapter is dedicated to extending this principle to the college, and arguing that by accepting a position at a university, a professor or student may have some restrictions that would not normally be allowed.
Titled "Ordered Liberty," the fifth chapter is the book's longest, most detailed and best chapter. He details the impact of Socrates's death, and just as importantly, how theorists including Plato and J.S. Mill have used the event to note the needs of individuals and societies. And, though both Mill and Holmes have argued vociferously for the so-called "marketplace of ideas," Smolla contends that this conception of the modern university is false. For example, Smolla notes, correctly, that "[a] university that does not evaluate thought and expression is incoherent" (p.98), whether assigning a grade to a student or deciding to grant tenure to a professor. Moreover, colleges offer more than simply learning space; they are also often places of everyday life, with dorms and the amenities of life. In short, simply arguing that "free speech" should be allowed on college campuses discounts the wide variety of spaces on and services provided by a college. After establishing the dual nature of universities, Smolla tackles issues arising from security, campus protests, hate speech, and the free speech afforded members of the faculty and students. This chapter is pivotal to the book, and is its most important, most detailed and most interesting addition to the understanding of the rights and liberties afforded at and by modern colleges and universities. The strength and quality of the book is best found here.
The sixth, and final substantive chapter, is titled "Competing Conceptions of Equality," and notes the differences between "process equality" and [*234] "outcome equality" (p.162). The chapter has a very nice discussion about the role of Supreme Court cases, such as Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Sweatt v. Painter (1950), Brown v. Board Of Education (1954), and the affirmative action cases of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), and the more recent University of Michigan cases of Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Gratz v. Bollinger (2003). Smolla also discusses at some length several cases related to gender equality. This chapter is interesting, but basic. It is unlikely that the most readers, especially those who teach, or have even taken, a rights-based Constitutional Law course will learn much.
Smolla includes a brief, concluding chapter in which he extends and coordinates the preceding chapters' arguments.
Although I recommend this book highly, there are issues I have with this book. The first issue is small, but telling. Smolla's "hypothesis is that five large themes of the American constitutional experiment …[as described above]… have exerted a profound influence on the identity of American colleges and universities" (p.vii). Later, however, Smolla states that his "thesis is that the American Constitution and the American college campus are in a very deep and fundamental sense connected, and that we may learn a great deal by exploring that connection" (p.3, emphasis in original). This slight shift in argument is important, but more importantly Smolla continues to alter his argument somewhat. By page 33, Smolla identifies several cases that substantiate "a central thesis of this book, which is that constitutional values have operated in an informal, value-laden sense to shape and influence the identity of American colleges and universities" (my emphasis). It seems that there are nuances to Smolla's contention that even he has trouble identifying and directly addressing.
Secondly, because the analysis of impact on the universities and colleges is done almost completely through case law, there is an almost complete lack of discussion about a) what other voices were adding to the discussion and debate and b) how the case law impacted actual policy as adopted and administered on college campuses. Smolla's understanding and analysis of the relevant cases, as noted above, is excellent. However, there are so many additional sources of information that would inform the reader about the impact of the Constitution, judicial interpretation (Smolla's real focus) and the college.
For example, several books written by current and former Supreme Court Justices have relevance in understanding the jurists' views of role of the courts and constitutional law on American institutions of higher learning. Recent examples of relevant texts author by notable justices include Chief Justice William Rehnquist's The Supreme Court and Justice Stephen Breyer's Active Liberty and more recent Making Our Democracy Work. Breyer, in Active Liberty, has chapter length discussion of both the role of speech and affirmative active in his conception of participatory self government. Breyer's 2010 effort discusses the Supreme Court's difficult role in deciding questions of individual liberty, and is the author's continued effort to offer detailed insight on his [*235] beliefs about how the Supreme Court fulfill its "responsibility to help ensure a Constitution that endures" (p.xiv).
Additionally, there are several excellent books detailing the jurisprudence about Supreme Court justices. Recent works by Frank Colluci and Helen J. Knowles detail Justice Anthony Kennedy's legal views. Using these works, in conjunction with Kennedy's own opinions might have allowed Smolla to paint a more detailed and nuanced picture of Kennedy's views on speech and affirmative action.
Smolla spends many pages detailing the University of Michigan affirmative action cases Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Gratz v. Bollinger (2003). Here he misses an opportunity to discuss the impact of, and the public's reaction to, Supreme Court decisions. In the wake of the University of Michigan cases, as he notes on page 177, "Michigan voters approved a state constitutional amendment, adopted by statewide ballot … which banned affirmative action programs." In other words, the Michigan public reacted to the Court's decision that allowed the flagship law school in the state to use affirmative action in its admissions process. I would have liked to see Smolla note that there is a literature in which the public's reaction to Supreme Court decisions is studied. For example, a brief discussion or even nod toward Valerie Hoekstra's Public Reaction to Supreme Court Decisions, or similar literature, would have illustrated a command of literature beyond merely the cases themselves.
The Constitution Goes to College provides background for why speech codes at colleges are (and should be) allowed, but does not prove effective in discussing the background about the contentious debate that surround their existence. Nat Hentoff (1992) took aim at campus speech codes in a tellingly titled chapter called "The Pall of Orthodoxy on the Nation's Campuses" in an even more telling titled book called Free Speech for Me – But Not for Thee. In a more current line of reasoning, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) takes on speech codes from a conservative viewpoint. On its website, FIRE has a section called "Speech Code of the Month" in which "FIRE features a college or university with a particularly egregious speech code as its Speech Code of the Month. The Speech Code of the Month feature serves both to educate the public about the broader problem of speech codes on campus and to use public pressure to encourage particular institutions to abandon repressive policies." But, an uninformed reader would not learn from Smolla that both conservatives and liberals view speech codes as forcing discussion on campus toward pre-approved, non-controversial and conventional speech.
In conclusion, Smolla's book is excellent and highly recommended. As noted, it is thought provoking, detailed and well written. It added to my understanding of the impact on the nation's colleges and universities of the Constitution and the Supreme Court's interpretation of the governing document. My critiques of the book are meant not only to address the limits of the book, but to offer some indication about how the book might be included in a Supreme Court or federal judiciary college course. Moreover, the book led me to contemplate additional [*236] ideas and works that relate to the information presented in Smolla's effort.
Breyer, Stephen. 2005. Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution. New York: Knopf Publishing.
--. 2010. Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge's View. New York: Vintage Books.
Colucci, Frank J. 2009. Justice Kennedy's Jurisprudence: The Full and Necessary Meaning of Jurisprudence. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.
Hentoff, Nat. 1992. Free Speech for Me – But Not for Thee. New York: HarperPerennial.
Hoekstra, Valerie J. 2003. Public Reaction to Supreme Court Decisions. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Knowles, Helen J. 2009. The Tie Goes To Freedom: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy On Liberty. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Rehnquist, William H. 2002. The Supreme Court. New York: Vintage Books.
Brown v. Board Of Education 354 U.S. 483 (1954).
Gratz v. Bollinger 539 U.S. 244 (2003).
Grutter v. Bollinger 539 U.S. 306 (2003)
Mcauliffe v. City of New Bedford 29 N.E. 517 (1892).
Plessy v. Ferguson 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
Sweatt v. Painter 339 U.S. 629 (1950).
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke 438 Us 265 (1978).
Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward 4 Wheaton (US) 518 (1819).
Copyright 2012 by the Author, Tobias T. Gibson.


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The Pet Shop Boys were mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore. Dedicating the record to executed Iranian gay teenagers, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, FUNDAMENTAL is one of the duo's most politically charged albums. Produced by the band alongside the legendary Trevor Horn, the album burst on the UK charts to debut at #5 in the UK. The sardonic first single from the LP, I'M WITH STUPID, peaked at #8, making it the 21st(!) top 10 single for Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant. Considering October 4th is Lowe's birthday, there's no better time than the present to cue up this underrated PSB offering that delves into the dark side of the dance floor.
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Southpaw Grammar
Aretha Arrives


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All 57 entries tagged Politics And Other Things No One Cares About
Because sometimes life is serious
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Collective Punishment And The Riots
Writing about web page http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/councils-set-to-evict-rioters-2335878.html
Is anyone else slightly scared by the threats from several councils to evict people found guilty of rioting this week from their council homes? In a statement picked up by the Independent, Councillor Paul Andrews, Manchester City Council's executive member for neighbourhood services, said:
"If you are a tenant of any of our properties, and you or your children are found to be involved in the looting we will use whatever powers are available to us to make sure you are thrown out."
Does this not strike anyone else as being a bit, you know, collective punishment-y? Specifically the way Andrews goes out of his way to say that even if it's not the adults in the house but their children, it could still lead to eviction.
As we're living in one of the more hysterical periods of public opinion I suppose I am obligated to point out the obvious, namely that I don't condone the riots and think anyone convicted of looting should be punished in accordance to the law (attacks on the local community deserve jail). But I feel distinctly uncomfortable with the idea that we can punish people who might have had no idea that their relatives were out causing trouble, or who might have had no power to prevent their relatives from doing so had they known.
Yes, good parenting will often lead to kids who won't do this sort of thing, but this does not mean that everyone whose kids took part is a bad person, even when in some cases they might not be top notch parents.
A little levity from the wonderful Photoshoplooter blog.
The idea that doing this will lead to people self-examining and deciding to be better people is also something of a gamble. When I first heard about the proposal it put me in mind of the Israeli policy of last decade whereby the houses of suicide bombers from the Palestinian community were bulldozed as collective punishment. It didn't stop the suicide bombers from coming and the Israeli army recommended it end in 2005 as "the policy had little deterrent effect and inflamed Palestinian hatred". Or the Intolerable Acts, passed by the British in America in 1774 as a reaction to the Boston Tea Party and other acts of defiance from the colonists, which provoked mass outrage across the country and lead to the American War of Independence. I find it hard to think similar won't happen in the cases of some of the looters. They already feel detached enough from regular society to not care that they are smashing it up, making them homeless would surely only lead to more resentment and stored up trouble?
The rioters almost certainly knew they risked jail for their actions, but few would probably have anticipated losing their homes. The powers to evict clearly exist, otherwise they would not have been mentioned as an option, but it sounds like they are being called up as an extraordinary option rather than a usual part of the due process of the criminal justice system. This means anyone subject to an eviction has been specially singled out by the authorities, and this is quite likely a recipe for future antagonism and refusal to engage from the evictees.
Maybe it's just me, but I find idea of collective punishment is somewhat gross in itself. It doesn't even follow the judicial convention of innocent until proven guilty as it is essentially inflicting punishment on people who are innocent, alongside the guilty. We need to punish the guilty in these riots, but we need also to avoid making a whole new set of problems, both by fostering further resentment and by escalating the viciousness of our response. If the state can't behave in a civilised way, why should the people?
: 12 Aug 2011 14:36 | Tags: Politics And Other Things No One Cares About | Comments (6) | Close comments | Report a problem
Ideas For New Bank Holidays
Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12640636
The government wants to move the May Day bank to either St George's day a week or so before, or to 'Trafalgar Day' in October. Now there are some who might suggest that targeting the May Day holiday, a strongly socialist and pagan linked date, rather than the other May bank holiday is a bit ideological. Perhaps it isn't. but it ignores one simple and undisputable fact – we don't get enough days off compared to the rest of Western Europe.
The TUC have complained about this for years, saying in 2001 that with a European average of 10.8, Britain still only had 8, a number which would have been part of the European average, thus dragging it down.
So why not let us have another bank holiday without ditching an existing one? Some suggestions:
Pankhurst Day, 14th or 15th July
"Votes for my homegirls or else!"
Emmeline Pankhurst's birthday. Why not pick a suffragette? Was her struggle, and those of the 50% of the population she fought alongside and for, any less significant than that of Nelson at Trafalgar? The uncertainty of her birth date means we can choose, shall we synchronise with France or strike out on our own? Plus mid-July is a good bet for some half decent weather.
Armada Day, 18th August
"Michel Pez said the weather would be lovely, what an idiot!"
Why Trafalgar Day? Why not another battle? Most WWI and WWII events were over longer periods of time, or are rather more international in flavour, so why not pick a military event which really sums Britain up – the Spanish Armada whose defeat was a combination of British blood mindedness and the weather. Mostly the weather. 18th August is the New Calendar date of Elizabeth I's "heart and stomach of a king" speech, which is one of the best in British history. The downside is it would be quite close to the existing August holiday.
Reform Act Day, 7th June
George Cruickshank's depiction of the Peterloo Massacre, a significant event in the history of democracy in Britain (and a possible contender for a bank holiday in its own right).
We don't really do revolution in Britain, do we? The one time we did, overthrowing Charles I and the ructions that lead to Cromwell taking over, it was reversed within a few decades. Britain has long been the country of incremental changes, so why not celebrate one of the most major incremental changes? The Reform Act 1832 wasn't perfect, it left a lot of people still disenfranchised (women and poor people mostly), but it was a significant step away from the still borderline feudal world we lived in, towards a slightly more democratic future. We could celebrate the day by going to Old Sarum and pelting effigies of crooked politicians with eggs.
First Association Football International Day, 30th November
Scotland's 1872 team, great moustaches.
If we want major events that happened in the last three months of the year, currently underserved by bank holidays, forget Guy Fawkes Day (might upset Catholics), Halloween (might upset non-pagans/people who hate costumes and having their houses egged), or my birthday (apparently I am not significant enough, humph). What we need is something which celebrates Britain's biggest cultural contribution to the world. Which celebrates British innovation and ability to apply rules to anything, even something which essentially used to be an excuse for a fight. Which celebrates the way England and Scotland just love to get one over on each other. The first ever official football international match, a 0-0 draw between England and Scotland. Considering the game involved men with amazing names like Cuthbert Ottaway and Reginald de Courtenay Welch, it seems rude not to celebrate it. (Wales and Northern Ireland can have a day off on the day of the first Wales vs Northern Ireland match).
Any other similarly genius/insane suggestions?
: 04 Mar 2011 08:58 | Tags: History Politics And Other Things No One Cares About | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem
A Letter To My MP
I just wrote a letter to my Liberal Democrat MP, John Leech, who today voted against the tuition fee bill. I am glad he did, glad he kept his promises, and heartened that in his speech on the matter – he recognised that education can benefit the country as well as the individual, and that large amounts of debt are a bad thing. I wrote the letter for two reasons, one to communicate my pleasure that my representative in Parliament did as he said he would in order to get my vote, and secondly because I want to know where he goes from here. I want to know what those Lib Dems who kept their promises are thinking. I don't know if I will get a response, but I thought it worth a try.
First of all I wish to congratulate you on sticking your election promise, and recognising that the raising of tuition fees in conjunction with the massive cuts to university funding will harm this country on many levels, leaving the young of today facing obscene amounts of debt, hurting our institutions' abilities to deliver world class teaching and research, and damaging the knowledge economy which remains probably the only thing this country truly excels at now the financial sector has been shown up as a house built on false promises.
It is encouraging also to see that not all politicians will sacrifice their promises, and by extension their electorate, at the first sniff of power.
However I would like to ask a question – how can you continue to be a part of a party some of whose leaders and members have shown themselves to be spineless and treacherous? As things stand, despite my admiration for your stance, I do not feel able to vote for the Liberal Democrats ever again. The trust is gone, and whilst individuals such as yourself have shown that there are those who will keep their promises, I feel distinctly uncomfortable that my vote in a way helped contribute to the passing of a policy which I think is wrong by giving the Liberal Democratsthe clout in Parliament to form this coalition with the Conservatives which has clearly turned the heads of a large number of your colleagues.
How do you intend to proceed knowing your leader is new widely, and in my view correctly, viewed as a two-faced liar? What reassurances, if any, can you offer your constituents about your future stances and that of the Liberal Democrats? If this party is asking you to vote against what you think is right, and you are willing to defy your leadership on a matter they deem to be crucial, can you see yourself continuing as a Liberal Democrat MP?
I do respect what you have done on this matter, which why I feel able to write this letter to you as I think your vote shows you are one of the Liberal Democrats still willing to listen to the people who elected them in the first place.
: 09 Dec 2010 19:57 | Tags: Politics And Other Things No One Cares About | Comments (1) | Close comments | Report a problem
How Many Millionaires Does It Take To Run The Country?
So benefits are being cut, and public sector pensions are being cut, and jobs are being cut, and students are to be charged more… One recurring theme to be found in much of the invective unleashed by those who oppose the government as it merrily slashes its way around the place is that this financial pain is being inflicted by a bunch of millionaires. Until today I hadn't quite realised the extent of this. Yes David Cameron and George Osbourne have the sort of histories (and faces) which scream "excessive money in the family" but I didn't realise how deep it ran.
Depending on who you ask either 18 of the 23 full time senior cabinet members (The Times) or 23 of the 29 members entitled to attend cabinet meetings (The Daily Fail) are worth more than a million pounds. Indeed, according to the Mail article only Vince Cable, Andrew Lansley, Eric Pickles, Baroness Warsi, Patrick McLoughlin, and Danny Alexander don't have a million pounds stashed away somewhere from property, shares, inheritance, publishing or wallpaper.
Lend us a fiver!
Apart from the curious situation where two of the three men tasked with tackling the economic state of the nation (Cable and Alexander) aren't in this rich club, does it not strike people as a bit… exclusive?
I've nothing against millionaires in theory. I only know two millionaires and both earned their money through hard work and graft. Yes, I grit my teeth at the unfairness of those born with silver spoons and rich parents, but if there's one thing history has taught us, it's that money can be lost as well as gained – just track down Rupert Everett's apperance on 'Who Do You Think You Are?' to see someone encountering the evidence of an ancestor who frittered it all away. The rich should pay more tax and take more personal responsibility and that, but there's nothing inherently wrong with having more than a million pounds.
However, if virtually the entirety of a country's leadership is comprised of millionaires doesn't that suggest that the national leadership is lacking a perspective or two? Like those of people who have less than a million pounds, aka the vast majority of the people of Britain? After all, the median wage in Britain is smidge over £25,000pa, a rate which would require nearly 40 years in order to accumulate a million pounds, if the recipient didn't spend a penny and wasn't taxed.
From the BBC, 2006/07 figures give an idea of the shape of British earnings.
So here's my completely unworkable and insane idea for the week.
You might have heard of Labour's women-only candidate lists. It's not new news, here's an article about it from 2002, and whatever its problems it does come from a well intentioned position – the desire to bring about equal representation of women and men in parliament. The idea, amongst those who advocate it, is that this equality is a good thing as it brings a proper representation of the British people. I am sympathetic to this, even if I am not 100% certain that single gender candidate lists are the best way to achieve it. Harriet Harman has also made it one of her aims to get half the shadow cabinet roles to go to women.
But if we're trying to move towards equality in one area, why not another, just as pressing – financial status? I'm sure the massed ranks of millionaires in the cabinet can do a most excellent job of understanding how things affect millionaires, but I don't believe they have enough insight into my position, or that of the family struggling at the poverty line, or even the upper middle class family with the doctor on £80,000 and the head teacher on £70,000. If we take it as read that a cabinet full of men cannot act in the best interests of women (and I believe they couldn't, and vice versa), how can a cabinet of millionaires act in the best way for the massed ranks of non-millionaires?
So the madcap idea of the week is this – force the cabinet to represent the population in general. With 29 positions there might be space for as many as two millionaires (not because this is proportionate, but because it'll be hard to wean ourselves off our addiction to excessively rich people right away) and then 27 people from a variety of financial positions, although the majority would earn between £18,000 and £30,000. Why not? A list of people for the 29 slots from which the cabinet will be decided, and then when elected they will all have to work together to decide who gets which role and how to run the country. Of course it would be almost totally unworkable in reality (because if there's one thing people cannot do, it's work together), but it would bring voices to the table which are flat out ignored by all major parties.
Otherwise we'll just go on being run by an unrepresentative group of people who won't feel the pain we'll feel in the next few years. And that cannot be healthy, surely?
: 13 Oct 2010 21:37 | Tags: Politics And Other Things No One Cares About | Comments (1) | Close comments | Report a problem
E–Mil, Illegitimate Sprogs And The Mail's F Grade In History
Writing about web page http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1316129/Ed-Miliband-I-dont-believe-God-I-WILL-married.html
The Mail, today:
[Ed Miliband's] personal set-up has caused consternation since he became the first major political leader in British history not to be married to the mother of his children.
First major political figure in British history not to be married to the mother of his children?
Poor Charles II. Forgotten again, and by a very Royalist newspaper. :(
Still he probably had a good time having kids (well, having the attendant sexual intercourse) with Lucy Walter, Elizabeth Killigrew, Catherine Pegge, Barbara Palmer, the Duchess of Portsmouth, Moll Davis, and of course, Nell Gwyn. What a randy monarch (but apparently not a major political leader despite being, y'know, a pretty major political leader and figure).
Of course there was also Henry I, William IV, numerous other male monarchs.
And Ken Livingstone, who clearly much be a major leader based on the amount of bile the Mail and its London mini-me The Evening Standard throw at him.
And what about David Lloyd George? Prime Minister from 1916-22, of whom a newspaper wrote in 2008 "there are no politicians today who could ever think of getting away with the uber-sexed personal life, peppered with illicit lovers and illegitimate offspring, that Lloyd George led over 14 years in Downing Street, first as Chancellor, then as Prime Minister, from 1908 to 1922."
The newspaper in question? The Mail.
Still, they might be historically ignorant and internally inconsistent, but check out their page three totty:
Phwaor! David Lloyd George!
: 29 Sep 2010 17:45 | Tags: History Politics And Other Things No One Cares About | Comments (2) | Close comments | Report a problem
Secular Schools – Logical
Writing about web page http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/sep/18/secularist-manifesto-secularism
I read something I liked today – Evan Harris's secularist manifesto in the Guardian was reasonable and reasoned, boiling down to the logical argument that the more secular a state, the more religious freedom there is as no religion has a more favoured position than any other.
A interesting graphic from brin.ac.uk, a Manchester University affiliated site about religion in the UK.
Not everyone liked the manifesto, and a quick trip into the loony bin, aka the comments section, showed this to be the case. Some of the theists (and a tiny number of atheists) demonstrated an inability to read and assumed this to be an atheist manifesto, ignoring the fact that atheism and secularism are not the same thing, no matter how loudly one shrieks that they are.
One of the dissenting comments took exception with points 2 and 3 which combined could be taken to argue that there should be no state run religious schools. When another commenter piped up that they felt this was reasonable as no state school would advocate communism or Tory-ism in the way that religion can be espoused in state schools the original dissenter on this issue insisted that it was their right to have their children taught in a school which taught exclusively or mostly about a single religion, or which strongly presented one religion as more "right" than others.
Choice is education is a big issue, one which Labour got very obsessive over and which the coalition seem even more concerned about if their proposed free school idea is anything to go by. But in the case of religious schools it's an impractical red herring. The commenter's mistake was to assume that all religious schools are equal. This is most definitely not the case.
I went to a Catholic state school. In fact, I went to a very very good Catholic state school, the sort which pumps out great results and which attracts middle class parents from miles around, resulting in them herding the family into church on a Sunday in order to convince the local priest to back their case for their child to go there, despite the fact they don't know their stations of the cross or who the Immaculate Conception was (the latter is almost uniformly identified incorrectly by people I've met). But my Catholic state school was not like others.
I've heard the stories. The ones from other people who went to other Catholic state schools. The one about the class who were shown a video of an abortion in order to scare them off. The one about the people who were told homosexuals would burn in hell. The ones with the scary nuns as teachers and the intimidating priests who would come in to visit. The ones where sex before marriage was a massive crime, and teachers were sacked for affairs.
Karate nun was not in evidence at any of the above schools. Sadly.
Yet in my school the extent of the Catholicism was that we didn't learn about contraception in biology and general studies classes, and the time our beloved biology teacher prefaced the (National Curriculum mandated) lessons on evolution with a weary "Right, I've been told to tell you all that this is just a theory and there are other possible explanations for how the world came into being… (pause) Right, now that's over with, this is what happened."
Which version is Catholic? Which version would please our irate Guardian commenter? My Catholic school was the only one for miles and miles, the catchment radius stretching from Frodsham to Crewe, north to Knutsford and south almost as far as Tarporley. That's a large area, I lived ten miles away and wasn't anywhere near the furthest commuter. If you were a hardcore, no abortion, no homosexuality, fire and brimstone Catholic and the only school in the area is one like mine – Catholic sure, but liberal in the extreme for one – would you be happy with an institution you'd probably see as wishy-washy?
Surely, faced with dilemmas like this, it makes more sense even for religious people to have secular schools run by a secular state as at least they will then know exactly what form of their religion their kids are being taught? I'm no fan of religious extremism, quite the opposite, but religious state schools don't really offer religious people much choice at all, and could in theory lead to their children developing a totally different view of their religion to their parents.
Of course one can argue that all subjects are, by necessity, restricted in their scope, my awesome biology teacher didn't teach me the entirety of biological studies in my time there. But that's not a valid comparison in this case – the argument for religious state schools is akin to arguing for a school which only teaches plant biology, and not animal biology. Just boring experiments involving sprouting cress rather than dissecting something red and wobbly which apparently used to belong to a cow (or sheep if you're in a post-BSE Cheshire).
Cress.
In a secularist society religion is a personal thing, and the state and schools have no place advocating any particular brand over any others. To do so will only create dissatisfaction anyway.
However I'm quite glad we didn't get the abortion video. The squeamish reaction of my class to dissecting a heart was bad enough, I fear that video might have sent several 15 year olds over the edge completely.
: 20 Sep 2010 23:55 | Tags: Politics And Other Things No One Cares About | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem
A Guide To Being 'Unelected'
One of the most commonly repeated phrases from the election, and some time before, is that Gordon Brown should not be prime minister because he was "unelected". It's a curious thing hat this mantra has been repeated so much that hardly anyone seems to question it, when even a cursory glance at the substance of the argument causes it to fall down, at least in our current system.
First and foremost, the most obvious rebuff is that most people in the UK did not vote for Tony Blair. If you lived in Sedgefield in 1997, 2001 and 2005, and voted Labour, then yes, you voted for Tony Blair. But this covers only a relatively small number of people. Reports, possibly apocryphal but undeniably believable, suggest that voters this time around were confused as to why their ballots did not have Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg's names on them. The leadership debates may have contributed to this cult of personality, they have certainly done nothing to show people the reality of their vote – that it is not for the men on the podium unless you live in Kirkcaldy, Witney or Sheffield.
As this is the most obvious and common counter argument, it has frequently been addressed, mostly by people saying "Well yes, I know I was voting for a candidate called James Plaskitt/Fiona Bruce/John Leech, but I knew by voting for them I would be registering support for Brown/Cameron/Clegg". This is only sort of true because it assumes that Brown, Cameron and Clegg will win their own seats. Whilst it is normal for the party leader to be found in a safe seat, one where you would assume they would get in, this is not guaranteed.
Peter Robinson anyone?
IRIS!
Those who voted for the Democratic Unionist Party may well use the above argument that they knew who they were voting for, but it makes no difference – the DUP will either be lead by a genuinely unelected leader, or it will have to find a leader from the MPs it does have, someone who will be 'unelected' by the logic applied to Brown. It is unlikely this will ever happen to the Big Three of politics in Westminster, but this represents a shot across the bows of those who stick to the 'unelected' theory.
Moving on from Robinson, a common feature of the British electorate is that it remains remarkably impervious to its own history. The way the rants about Brown being 'unelected' come across, you would think he is a terrible precedent, a man dangerously breaking rules which have existed for years, an exception.
He is not.
Here follows a brief history lesson, of the sort that does not get taught in schools because it represents the sort of hot potato that governments are not too keen on having taught, rather like proportional representation or the number of Brits who live abroad (i.e. as immigrants).
There have been 20 prime ministers to begin their terms since 1900. There have also been 29 elections. As a quick quiz question, how many of these 20 prime ministers were like Brown, first becoming prime minister due to a change of party leadership between elections, rather than coming to power by winning an election?
Here is a picture of a campaign poster from the 1923 election whilst you come up with your answers. I wish campaign posters were more like this these days:
And the answer is… 13 out of 20.
Yes, 13. 65%.
Now there are caveats. Two of these were Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George who took over war coalitions in WWI and WWII. Popular choices, both would have been elected anyway, and at a time when an election was unthinkable they represented the flexibility of politics and ability of the parties to work together to protect and help the people.
Three of the remain eleven called elections immediately after taking power. These were Henry Campbell-Bannerman (Liberal), Stanley Baldwin (Conservative) and Anthony Eden (Conservative).
"I'm Anthony Eden, and I ain't afraid of elections (although I am afraid of Egyptians)".
The remaining eight ruled on regardless. That is one PM more than the number who won elections from opposition to become PM. The eight were:
Arthur Balfour (Conservative, succeeded his uncle Robert Cecil, hence the phrase "Bob's your uncle")
Herbert Asquith (Liberal)
Neville Chamberlain (Conservative, almost called an election but bottled it, rather like Brown)
Harold MacMillan (Conservative)
Alec Douglas-Home (Conservative)
Jim Callaghan (Labour)
John Major (Conservative)
Gordon Brown (Labour)
The seven to take power from opposition were:
Andrew Bonar-Law (Conservative)
Ramsey MacDonald (Labour, and with election posters like the above, can you blame people?)
Clement Atlee (Labour)
Edward Heath (Conservative)
Harold Wilson (Labour)
Margaret Thatcher (Conservative)
Tony Blair (Labour)
Now obviously some of these were elected, re-elected, or took over as leader between elections after their first term as PM (Wilson). This survey looks solely at those on their first terms.
Bob's your uncle. Literally.
The most surreal thing about Brown is that it is not like this covers only older PMs, John Major arrived 'unelected' in 1990, just twenty years ago. Even I vaguely recall this happening and I was only just starting primary school at the time.
If people want to complain about 'unelected' PMs, they need to understand that it is a part of the electoral system in this country, and that the alternative, a directly elected PM, is a rare thing. Funnily enough, a lot of those complaining Brown is 'unelected' have no such problem with the actual head of state, Elizabeth II, being unelected.
I am not saying I agree with the system as it is. However I do think that throwing the 'unelected' label around without awareness of the history of 'unelected' PMs, without thinking through the implications of a Peter Robinson situation, and without understanding how the electoral system in this country works, is lazy.
: 11 May 2010 22:36 | Tags: History Politics And Other Things No One Cares About | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem
David Cameron's Ambitions
Writing about web page http://www.andybarefoot.com/politics/cameron.php
(This website is superb, make you own airbrushed Cameron confection! Hours of fun.)
Please tell me I am not the only person who cannot look at those scary Tory posters without humming a catchy Elvis tune?
He doesn't want to stop at Prime Minister! He wants to be king!!!
: 21 Jan 2010 18:00 | Tags: Politics And Other Things No One Cares About | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem
The Irrelevant Mr Choudary
Wouldn't it be nice if we were allowed to choose who we are to be angry at?
It seems like a strange thing to say, but the recent shebang about Anjem Choudray and his Islam4UK organisation proposing a march in Wootton Bassett, has got me wondering if the people of Britain can even be bothered to decide who they want to get angry at any more.
Some context. I don't really like what Choudary stands for, he's anti-freedom (explicitly) and seems to belong to a twattishly sexist, homophobic and intolerant branch of his faith (as exists in all). However in all the media storm I have yet to find any estimate of the size of his organisation beyond claims in the Telegraph that he said there would be "500" people taking part in his march. The general rule with marches which do go ahead is to take the number of people the organisers say are present, add it to the number the police say are present, and divide it by two. In other words, no one is capable of guessing the attendances of such things. If Choudary really did have 500 members at his disposal I would have been surprised.
Choudary indicates how many friends he has.
Or rather I would have been had this not been blown out of all proportion by the media. This isn't a lesson in how to combat extremists, it's a lesson in how the media is now explicitly telling us what to get hysterical about.
Islam4UK are a tiny bunch of nobodies.
This very pertinent fact appears to have been lost in the media's willful creation of a storm out of nothing. Under legislation in place for twenty four years, all marches must be applied for a pre-approved before they can go ahead. This takes into account safety concerns, of which a march such as the one proposed would involve. Controversial marches do take place, the English Defence League have held several recently, but a smaller town like Wootton Bassett might be less likely to approve one than a larger, better equipped place like Birmingham. The march was very unlikely to have ever taken place. Choudary for one knew this and has practically admitted he did it for the attention, not hoping to actually hold the march.
And the result? Hysteria.
There are Facebook groups with thousands and thousands of members protesting this. There's a selection of officials, from parliament down to Wootton Bassett's council expressing their outrage. There's a group who were ambitiously claiming to be able to round up 500 people, who have achieved immense publicity. And there's the media who are responsible for all this.
A newspaper, being hysterical.
Unpopular marches happen all the time in the UK. In fact if you were a Northern Irish Catholic watching this you might wonder what all the fuss was about – the annual routine of Orange Order (and other) parades around NI has long enraged the Catholic population, but in recent years the furore has died down, partially through the efforts of the Parades Commission to prevent the marches going through contentious areas, like Drumcree, and partially because the situation has improved in NI. Improved, but not resolved. In the last week a PSNI officer was seriously hurt in a car bomb attack. Whilst this isn't explicitly linked to the parades, it's a symptom of the same underlying problem. In the worst times in Northern Ireland the funerals of those involved weren't just subject to marches on the same streets, they were physically attacked with bombs and guns.
There are a lot of people in this country who hold views I find repellent. Some might even march for them. In the last decade I've turned my nose up at the pro-fox hunting banners of the Countryside Alliance, the borderline racism of the English Defence League, the antagonistic flashes of Orange in NI. But they went ahead. They went ahead because freedom of speech, as long as it doesn't target people, is valued here. Choudary has done some nasty things which amount to violating this privilege (if the stories of sending letters to soldiers' families are true), but at the same time he has a right to say stupid things. And so I don't blame him for doing so. I blame the media for making a mountain out of a molehill. Choudary is a nasty little goblin, but that's all he is. Getting worked up about him is playing into his hands.
We'd do a lot more damage to him if we simply ignored him.
Also, have a look at this widely unreported protest by the British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD). Surely the reason it wasn't widely reported was the cold weather and not the fact that Muslims walking around saying "Free speech will dominate the world" and "Secular democracy for the United Kingdom" isn't scary?
: 11 Jan 2010 19:00 | Tags: Clear Thinking Politics And Other Things No One Cares About | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem
When Agendas Destroy All Logic
Writing about web page http://lornakismet.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/how-house-bill-runs-over-grandma-%E2%80%9Cits-time-for-you-to-die-granny-%E2%80%9D/
I've just read a right wing American blog in which the author says:
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
Pesky Emotional Repubican
I really hate the stereotype of Americans as being stupid or moronic because the ones I've met, both in Europe and in a month long jaunt in Chicago seemed intelligent, if occasionally a little ill-informed about things from outside their area (which could be anything from their home state to the boundaries of the USA, or even North America and Mexico). All the ones I met were open minded and able to grasp the basic concept of fact checking.
But that quote above, that one single sentence has made me despair. It's one person's opinion, but it's so staggeringly, breathtakingly, mindblowingly stupid on every single imaginable level that it has crippled my ability to be objective. I mean, the rest of the blog piece is pretty stupid too (failure to understand what NICE does, general lies about the NHS) but really if you're going to claim the NHS causes the deaths of disabled people because it doesn't care about them then try not to talk about a man who has lived his entire life (decades beyond his original life expectancy) within the NHS system is the worst rhetorical device of all time.
Stephen Hawking = well clever.
Pesky Emotional Republican = monumentally stupid.
We need to get Dr Hawking an English accented talking voice box.


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
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Minimal Map Carry All Pouches
minimal-map
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usamap
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mapposter
mapdesign
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57 resultsFilter
DepartmentDept
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Biker Tanks
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Minimal City Maps - Map Of Los Angeles, California, United States
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I'm making a Spring RESTFUL service and i wonder. Can I make a Spring RESTFUL service combine with a web app in a project. If it is possible, how to configure it?
for example your controller package into your restful controller also work that is possible to crud operation via restful web service.


text:
Darren K. Sharp
Home > ORGANIZATION > CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS > Darren K. Sharp
Armstrong Teasdale
www.armstrongteasdale.com
Organization Profile Full Profile
Professional Biography:
Darren Sharp co-chairs the firm's Franchise, Distribution and Antitrust practice group. He has successfully tried jury trials to verdict in state and federal courts and arbitrations involving business and employment disputes. His experience extends to land use law, especially involving eminent domain, constitutional issues, zoning, and obtaining land use approvals. Because of his achievements, Darren is recognized as a Missouri/Kansas Super Lawyer® and received an "AV-Preeminent" peer review rating from Martindale-Hubbell.
For medium-sized to large corporations, Darren litigates national and international disputes that challenge a company's ongoing operations and financial security. He handles issues regarding distributorship agreements; general breach of contract; and business torts such as fraud, misrepresentation, conversion, and interference with contract; unfair and deceptive trade practices; and intellectual property claims, including trademark infringement and dilution claims. In state and federal courts and before panels and single arbitrators, Darren advocates for clients in commercial disputes and business-related torts.
Articles in the National Law Review database by Darren K. Sharp
Avoiding Erroneous Outcomes: Lessons Learned from John Doe v. Miami University (Posted On Friday, March 2, 2018)
Department of Education Issues Final Rules on State Authorization (Posted On Saturday, December 24, 2016)
U.S. Government Reminds Colleges and Universities to be Prepared to Defend Advertised Statistics (Posted On Monday, February 15, 2016)
Ten Considerations when Terminating a Distributorship Relationship (Posted On Saturday, September 5, 2015)
NLRB Creates New Joint Employer Standard Impacting all Employers (Posted On Friday, August 28, 2015)
Failure to Interview All Witnesses or Review Product Design Documents Does not Warrant Exclusion - Products Liability (Posted On Wednesday, February 25, 2015)
Products Liability: Failure to Test Theory Renders Opinion Unreliable (Posted On Wednesday, February 25, 2015)
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Met de CCBOX-R kan u een Monitor Audio inbouwluidspreker inbouwen in beton.
The CCBOX-R (regular) allows you to install in-ceiling speakers into concrete ceilings.
The CCBOX-R is lightweight and at the same time offers a robust stability with excellent shock absorption features.


BISMARCK, N.D. - Studies show North Dakota is ranked number one in the country when it comes to decreasing the mortality rate from heart disease.
Dave Ukestad is an exercise physiologist and cardiac rehab professional. He believes the reason things are improving is because healthcare has moved in a direction where exercise is a form of medicine and more people are participating in it.
"Exercise is going to help people with all issues, with cardiac disease, to diabetes, to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and physicians are definitely encouraging it and it's just been an overall good thing in general, for people to do," said Ukestad.
Dietician Samantha Risan says she believes more parents are passing down better health habits to their children.
"I think one of the reasons why heart disease has declined in North Dakota is because a lot of people are taking the preventative approach, taking that more serious, as well as making lifestyle changes," said Risan.
Risan says more parents are encouraging their children to get 60 minutes of physical activity a day and snacking on healthier options like fruits and vegetables, which could also lead to this decrease of heart disease.


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Your Worst Fear Realized
My friend Keith Hansen sent me a link to Conan O'Brien's recent graduation speech at Dartmouth. The speech is a refreshing change from the "Follow your dreams" and "Whatever you can conceive, you can do" pablum that we hear and read in so many places.
Here is an excerpt:
Nietzsche famously said "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." But what he failed to stress is that it almost kills you. Disappointment stings and, for driven, successful people like yourselves it is disorienting. What Nietzsche should have said is "Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you watch a lot of Cartoon Network and drink mid-price Chardonnay at 11 in the morning."
Now, by definition, Commencement speakers at an Ivy League college are considered successful. But a little over a year ago, I experienced a profound and very public disappointment. I did not get what I wanted, and I left a system that had nurtured and helped define me for the better part of 17 years. I went from being in the center of the grid to not only off the grid, but underneath the coffee table that the grid sits on, lost in the shag carpeting that is underneath the coffee table supporting the grid. It was the making of a career disaster, and a terrible analogy.
But then something spectacular happened. Fogbound, with no compass, and adrift, I started trying things. I grew a strange, cinnamon beard. I dove into the world of social media. I started tweeting my comedy. I threw together a national tour. I played the guitar. I did stand-up, wore a skin-tight blue leather suit, recorded an album, made a documentary, and frightened my friends and family. Ultimately, I abandoned all preconceived perceptions of my career path and stature and took a job on basic cable with a network most famous for showing reruns, along with sitcoms created by a tall, black man who dresses like an old, black woman. I did a lot of silly, unconventional, spontaneous and seemingly irrational things and guess what: with the exception of the blue leather suit, it was the most satisfying and fascinating year of my professional life. To this day I still don't understand exactly what happened, but I have never had more fun, been more challenged—and this is important—had more conviction about what I was doing.
How could this be true? Well, it's simple: There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized. I went to college with many people who prided themselves on knowing exactly who they were and exactly where they were going. At Harvard, five different guys in my class told me that they would one day be President of the United States. Four of them were later killed in motel shoot-outs. The other one briefly hosted Blues Clues, before dying senselessly in yet another motel shoot-out. Your path at 22 will not necessarily be your path at 32 or 42. One's dream is constantly evolving, rising and falling, changing course. This happens in every job, but because I have worked in comedy for twenty-five years, I can probably speak best about my own profession.
Way back in the 1940s there was a very, very funny man named Jack Benny. He was a giant star, easily one of the greatest comedians of his generation. And a much younger man named Johnny Carson wanted very much to be Jack Benny. In some ways he was, but in many ways he wasn't. He emulated Jack Benny, but his own quirks and mannerisms, along with a changing medium, pulled him in a different direction. And yet his failure to completely become his hero made him the funniest person of his generation. David Letterman wanted to be Johnny Carson, and was not, and as a result my generation of comedians wanted to be David Letterman. And none of us are. My peers and I have all missed that mark in a thousand different ways. But the point is this : It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It's not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound re-invention.
So, at the age of 47, after 25 years of obsessively pursuing my dream, that dream changed. For decades, in show business, the ultimate goal of every comedian was to host The Tonight Show. It was the Holy Grail, and like many people I thought that achieving that goal would define me as successful. But that is not true. No specific job or career goal defines me, and it should not define you. In 2000—in 2000—I told graduates to not be afraid to fail, and I still believe that. But today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality.
Posted by Dennis Whittle at 8:22 PM | Permalink
If Not Randomized Trials, Then What?
The above chart shows the returns to various approaches to keeping kids in school, according to research conducted by the Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT. The results are striking. Spending $100 on public awareness in Madagascar yields a whopping 40 extra years of student attendance. $100 spent on deworming in Kenya generates an additional 28+ years of student attendance. Public awareness and deworming campaigns are 10 to 40 times more cost effective than providing school meals, scholarships, or uniforms.
J-PAL has popularized the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in development aid, a movement that has recently been highlighted by Nick Kristof in the NY Times. Kristof describes RCTs as the "hottest thing in the fight against poverty." And when you see striking results like those in the chart above, it is hard not to get excited.
Michael Kremer, a professor at Harvard, pioneered some of the earliest randomized trials, including those on de-worming in Kenya. He has gone on to help design and oversee USAID's new Development Innovation Ventures, which promises to seed a lot of new approaches on the condition that they be rigorously evaluated. Michael's common sense approach to finding out what works (who would have thought that de-worming would be such a high-return investment in education!) makes this USAID initiative potentially promising.
The good news about RCTs is that they can guide the design of development projects in some circumstances. For example, in the regions of Kenya where Michael did his work, the most rational allocation of education expenditures might be first to de-worm all the children. Only after that is done would it make sense to spend money on things like subsidizing uniforms. I also have argued that the expensive Millennium Village Project should be subject to an RCT "competition" with other approaches.
But promising new tools often get promoted as silver bullets, and RCTs are no exception. This inevitably causes a backlash, which in turn means that, after 15 minutes of fame, many good tools fail to be adopted to an optimal degree. Rachel Glennerster, the director of J-PAL, told Owen Barder last year that there was a risk of too much hype, and that RCTs were not feasible or desirable in all circumstances. For those interested in this topic, I recommend the full interview.
What are the limitations or even downsides of RCTs? Angus Deaton is one of the strongest critics of RCTs, for a number of conceptual and methodological reasons. He argues that any statistically valid RCT must be very narrow in terms of applicability. For example, the findings on de-worming in Kenya cannot be generalized even beyond the villages in which the experiments were run. To his point, J-PAL's chart above shows that the returns to de-worming in India are only about 10-12% of the returns to de-worming in Kenya. To the extent RCTs are so context specific, their usefulness is severely limited.
Deaton also argues that RCTs may capture the mean but not the variance of the effects that a project has on beneficiaries in the studied population. Though an initiative may on average have positive effects, it may have a negative impact on a substantial proportion (or even majority) of the beneficiary population. And vice versa: an initiative which shows a negative average impact might benefit many beneficiaries. Drawing any sweeping conclusions under these conditions, Deaton argues, is not warranted, and could even be dangerous.
Others, such as Arvind Subramanian at the Center for Global Development, argue that even if RCTs can shed light on the effect of a development project in limited circumstances, they cannot tell us anything about whether aid itself works or not.
A young researcher from within the RCT movement noted to me recently that randomized trials can only predict marginal impacts and cannot be extrapolated. For example, the effect of public information may have the effect of keeping individual kids in school one month more; providing 12 times more information will not keep the kids in school an extra 12 months, which may be the goal.
At some point, a clever economist will try to carry out a randomized controlled trial of RCTs. She will attempt to answer the question: Does the use of RCTs lead to changes in the design of aid projects that translate into improved well being for people in developing countries?
My guess is that such a meta-RCT would not show a strong positive impact, for several reasons. First is the cost of RCTs. Even if they are a gold standard (which Deaton disputes), the costs are such that they will only be able to be done on a minuscule proportion of development initiatives.
Second, the current incentive structure in the aid industry results in an attenuated link between evidence on impact and changes in project design. Aid providers face little competitive or other pressure to seek out the initiatives that have the greatest impact. In fact, Lant Pritchett argues that, under the current structure, it "pays to be ignorant" because confessing failure hurts you more than success benefits you (in terms of political and financial support).
The bottom line is that RCTs will become like Consumer Reports trials in the consumer marketplace. Consumer Reports is a useful adjunct to decision making for some things (although often I can't find the exact models they tested!) But innovation in service of improved quality and lower cost comes from market pressures arising from consumer feedback through purchasing decisions.
In the same way, the best hope for improving the impact of aid initiatives is to create much richer and more real-time feedback loops between beneficiaries and aid providers.
Instead of determining needs ex-ante through expert studies, we need to start with asking beneficiaries "What do YOU want?" New technologies and approaches enable us to do this on a far wider scale, at dramatically lower cost, than ever before. And then once a project is underway, we need to ask beneficiaries "How do YOU think it's going and what changes need to be made?" And once that project is finished, we need to ask "Given what we learned from the previous project, what is the next thing you want?" The faster we can iterate through these questions, the faster we will get to greater impact.
Naturally, experts should provide technical analysis such as RCT results to beneficiaries to help inform their responses. But in the end, we need to make the beneficiary king.
Posted by Dennis Whittle at 12:05 PM | Permalink
Dennis Whittle
Dennis Whittle is Co-Founder and former CEO of Feedback Labs. He is also co-founder of GlobalGiving, where he was CEO from 2000-2010. He has served recently as Visiting Scholar at the NYU Development Research Institute, Robin Richards Donohoe Professor of the Practice and Social Entrepreneur in Residence at UNC-Chapel Hill, Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, and Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Development. He is founder and President of The Whittle Group.
Previously, Dennis was an economist at the World Bank (1986-2000), where he lived and/or worked for many years in Indonesia and Russia. His team there also created the Innovation Marketplace in 1998 and the Development Marketplace in early 2000. In 1984-85, Dennis worked for the Asian Development Bank and USAID in the Philippines, where he was an extra in one of Chuck Norris's best movies, "Missing in Action" (1984).
In his formative years, Dennis was a short-order cook and busboy at several restaurants, including the late Oasis Restaurant in Leitchfield, KY and the late Porthole Restaurant in Chapel Hill, NC.
Email: dennis (at) denniswhittle.com
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In Defense of Aid
Someone asked me the other day if I believed in aid. "You have been so critical of the aid system," he said. "Why don't ...
Tyranny of Experts - Consumer Reports Edition
How often have I needed to replace an appliance and just gone to Consumer Reports, picked one of the top couple of models (usually the top o...
Do You Know the Next GlobalGiving CEO?
Mari Kuraishi announced recently that she will be stepping down as chief executive of GlobalGiving, where she has spent the last 18 year...
100 Days of Gratitude, Day 46 - Uncle James
James Skaggs, 1922-2016 The last time I saw my great Uncle James, I asked him how he was doing. He said fine, though he was annoyed tha...
100 Days of Gratitude, Day 48: Laura Callanan
We will shortly announce the next CEO of GlobalGiving. It's an emotional time for Mari and me, since GlobalGiving has been our "b...
100 Days of Gratitude, Day 44 - Bob Whittle
William Robert Whittle, 1953-2016 My uncle Bob taught me important things about how to live and how to die. In the 1960s, at his paren...
(c) Dennis Whittle. Design by Robert DuBois. Simple theme. Powered by Blogger.


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Today you are one step closer to a new you where you can become empowered, obtain personal growth, improve your well-being and find your perfect PEACE.
As a therapist, Our goal is to help you uncover your true potential and lead a life that is worth celebrating. While we can't change difficult situations of the past, we can work together to better understand and resolve challenges in your life. By applying complementary therapy approaches and techniques, we will unearth long-standing behavior patterns or negative perceptions that may be holding you back from experiencing a more fulfilling and meaningful life.
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Progressive jackpot slots online are among the most popular games of all. There is good reason for that, since these games are great to play, with lots of features and of course the jackpot itself. Let's see where you can start playing for progressive jackpots now.
Wink delivers a great selection of slot games alongside their more-familiar bingo offerings. If you want to be in with a chance to win a progressive pot, look for the games available here.
Tasty Bingo has a section reserved for progressive jackpots, so they are easy to find. From there, you merely need to decide which game to start with!
Head into the casino section of Bingo Hollywood and you can select the jackpot games so you know which ones have this built in. You've got more than a dozen to choose from!
Progressive slot jackpots are jackpots offered in addition to the biggest prize given in the paytable for a slot game. A portion of each bet made goes into the progressive pot, and when the requirements for the jackpot are met, the lucky person meeting those requirements will win the lot. More about these requirements in a moment.
Each one has good points and bad points.
How does RTP affect the winnings?
RTP stands for return-to-player. This is the amount a player could reasonably expect to get back, on average, over a long period playing the game. Of course, it could be a lot lower or higher depending on luck and playing time.
We've looked at one popular slot, Fluffy Favourites, which has a regular and a jackpot version. Information online reveals the standard version has an RTP of around 95%, while the jackpot version has an RTP of about 89.9%. This is because a portion of the bets placed will go into the jackpot fund, and very few players will ever win this.
So, the jackpot is there and you could win it, but in exchange for that possibility, the return-to-player percentage is likely to be lower for these games than it would be for regular slot games. Bear this in mind (although we doubt it will put anyone off playing them in the hope of winning!).
Some sites will only allow you to win progressive jackpots using real funds. Others will allow a win with bonus money or free spins… but you may find you need to play through your winnings several times before you can claim them.
Our advice? Always play for progressive jackpots with your own money, just to be safe! The worst thing would be to win and to discover you cannot withdraw any of that lovely cash.
There are things you should watch for that won't always be in effect, but if they are, it pays to know about it ahead of time.
Are winnings given in installments? If so, how many installments and how much is given each time?
Are you required to agree to publicity? This may only mean your first name and your surname's initial are used to promote the win, but it could mean photos are required. Always check first.
Different sites will enact different rules in their T&Cs, and that applies to the conditions placed on jackpot slots as well.
Will you play progressive jackpot slots?
Progressive slots are good fun for good reason – the jackpots can be huge! With some approaching a million pounds or more, they can be life-changing if they come your way.