ERROR to the Circuit Court of the district of Columbia, and county of Alexandria.
'And the said Ezra Lunt, his heirs and assigns, does hereby grant unto General George Washington, his heirs and assigns, the said annual rent of $73, issuing out of the said hereby demised premises; and the said Ezra Lunt, his heirs and assigns, do hereby covenant, promise and grant, to and with the said General George Washington, his heirs and assigns, that he, the said Ezra Lunt, his heirs and assigns, will, yearly and every year for ever, well and truly pay the aforesaid sum of $73, unto the said General George Washington, his heirs and assigns, on the day and at the time appointed for payment as aforesaid; and also, that it shall and may be lawful for the said General George Washington, his heirs and assigns, at any and at all times after the said rent shall become due (if the same be not paid when demanded), to enter upon the said hereby-granted piece of land, and distress and sale make of the goods and chattels which may be thereupon found, to pay and satisfy such rent or rents, or part of a rent, as may remain due and in arrear. And it is further agreed, covenanted, conditioned and provided, by the said Ezra Lunt, his heirs and assigns, to and with the said General George Washington, his heirs and assigns, that if the said yearly rent of $73, or any part thereof, be behind or unpaid for the space of thirty days next after the same became due and payable, and sufficient goods and chattels of the said Ezra Lunt, his heirs and assigns, shall not be found upon the said hereby-granted premises, to pay and satisfy the same, that then it shall and may be lawful for the said General George Washington, his heirs and assigns, in and upon the said hereby-granted piece of land and premises to re-enter, and the same to hold again, repossess and enjoy, as if this present indenture had never been made, anything herein contained to the contrary thereof in any wise notwithstanding.' The deed also contained a covenant of general warranty.
to Ezra Lunt, 'to have and to hold the said annual rent of $73, unto the said Henry Smith Turner, his heirs and assigns,' &c. This deed recited the conveyance to Ezra Lunt at large.


Great inspiration for party food, Christmas cooking, and outdoor entertainment.
Despite the promise of holidays, December can be a busy month. And at no time of year are we so fussed about food as right now.
It's dinner parties, cocktail evenings, neighbourhood braais, picnics in the woods or at the beach, food-for-the-road for long-distance travellers, and then of course, Christmas breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Lucky for you, we've taken all the guess work out of menu planning and deciding what to cook with a wrap-up of all our festive season's best tips, tricks, shortcuts, recipes and need-to-know info.


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"When you want to change things, you won't please everyone."


text:
Remembering Robert Fisk: Relentless Truth Seeker in the Middle East
Charlotte Dennett November 24, 2020 Charlotte Dennett Admin, Archives, Media, West Asia
by Charlotte Dennett
Robert Fisk's death on October 30th came as a profound shock to journalists around the world, especially those who knew him. And, in a deeply personal way, it was devastating to me as well, though I never met him. I will try to explain what his truth-seeking meant to me, as a former reporter in Beirut and as someone who has shared his anguish over the horrific death and destruction that has engulfed the Middle East.
Regrettably, the first time I missed meeting him happened some four decades ago. He arrived in Beirut in 1976, a year after I l left as a refugee of the Lebanese civil war. He carried on, bravely covering that 15 year old war as well as the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. He seemed possessed to tell the world what the mainstream media was not reporting about the Middle East, which (I told my future husband after returning to the States), was the most censored part of the world. I would later explain why this was so while investigating the death of my father, America's first master spy in the Middle East; in telling my own story, I would often seek out Fisk's reportage in The Independent for insights and reliable information.
The second missed meeting happened after I watched, on October 28th, the 2019 documentary on his life by Yung Chang called This is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and the Politics of Truth. It so moved me that I vowed to get ahold of him immediately. Alas, I missed him again. He died two days later. Sometimes, life is unfair. So, obviously, is unexpected death.
Fisk at an Al Jazeera conference. His colleague, Patrick Cockburn, hailed him as "not only a magnifienct journalist but also a historian of the present" who "was suspicious of journalists who cultivated diplomats and 'official sources' that could not be named and whose veracity we are invited to take on trust."
He apparently died of a severe stroke at age 74. His death comes at a time when journalism is under siege as "fake news" and in a world that needs the truth more than ever. But his loss is even greater for anyone who wants to understand what is really happening in the Middle East.
In the film, Fisk explains how as as boy he was greatly influenced by his father, who loved history and shared with his son his experiences in two world wars, with many trips to the battlesights. Fisk would go on to discover that the mysteries of the Middle East conflict could be unlocked by first studying the infamous Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, which secretly carved up the former Ottoman Empire after World War I for French and British plunder . Since then, the journalist/historian avers, no place on earth has suffered more than the Middle East. "The history of the Middle East," he tells us, "is a history of war."
After World War I, France and Britain secretly carved up the Middle East, once part of Turkey's Ottoman Empire. They would later settle boundary disagreements with the 1920 San Remo Agreement, which the US State Dept. once called the San Remo Agreement on Oil. It reaffirmed the 1917 Balfour Declaration favoring the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
In his reporting, he consistently sought out those whose lives had been severely affected by the endless wars in the region, having concluded that the role of the reporter was to "be on the side of those who suffered." This ethos competed sharply with journalism schools that taught that a reporter had to be objective and present both sides of an argument. Fisk's famous retort: "If we were reporting the slave trade in the 18th century, would we give equal time to the slave ship captain?" His honesty earned him many enemies, but also gained him enormous respect among his colleagues. In fact, Fisk received more awards for his journalism than any journalist alive.
The New York Times described him as being a "dauntless journalist" who was "widely praised by colleagues and competitors alike for relentlessly chronicling the Middle East's many agonies." But the obituary, no doubt in the interest of balanced reporting, went on to add he "was also faulted by some critics as insufficiently tough at times on despots."(This could be a reference to his reportage on Syria and its leader, Bashir al-Assad, of which I have more to say below.)
The Washington Post called him a "daring but controversial British war correspondent." Like most obituaries on Fisk, the Post's remembrance made reference to his three interviews with Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, a feat which distinguished him from other reporters but made him controversial, especially after 9/11. The Post noted that "Mr. Fisk condemned the mass killings orchestrated by bin Laden while focusing his journalism on the motives of the attackers and the failures of U.S. intelligence. To some, that smacked of sympathy for the terrorists, leading to a deluge of hate mail."
The motives of the attackers. That's an area where most foreign correspondents in the Middle East dared not tread, at least when I was there. If you watch the film, you come to appreciate how the battles Fisk covered shaped his views and his determination to dig deep into the causes of the wars he witnessed first hand.
What does the documentary tell us?
The film opens with his covering the later stages of the Iraq-Iran war, which began in 1980 and dragged on until 1988. We see him dodging bullets in Iraq near the Shatt al Arab River that separates Iraq from Iran. With his trusty notebook in hand ("notebooks are not obsolete," he reminds us), he heads toward billows of black smoke rising from the burning oil storage tanks in Iran's oil port of Abadan. The scene is perhaps a subtle suggestion that wars in the Middle East have often been fought over oil.
Much of the footage covers his chronicling the war in Syria, which is reportedly the subject of his new book, hopefully to be published posthumously. (He had already written 900 pages according to one of his last interviews). A particularly haunting scene finds him trekking through the ruined streets of Homs, surrounded on all sides by the huge, shelled out carcasses of buildings which once housed people.
The remains of Homs, Syria. Source: The Independent
"The dead can't talk and the living are gone," he laments. "Where did they go?" And where, the viewer wonders, were the other reporters?
In another segment, we find him in the Syrian city of Idlib having heard that massive fighting was about to occur. Idlib, he explains, is "the last stronghold of ISIS and a great humanitarian catastrophe," its residents caught between fierce battles carried out by islamist jihadists and Syrian forces. He tells us that it is impossible to travel into ISIS-held territory, but even if journalists were free to go there, they wouldn't want to go because "if you go too close, you might end up dead." He admits his reporting on Syria was one sided for this reason, but avows the importance of a journalist going "to whatever scene you can get to, because if you don't get to the scene, you can't know the truth." The truth in Idlib was that Fisk found no evidence of large-scale fighting at the time, as other news reports filed by "hotel journalists" were claiming. Again, there were no signs of other reporters in the town.
In keeping with his credo to go to the scene, he traveled to the heavily bombed Syrian town of Douma near Aleppo, site of an alleged chemical attack in 2017, which had NATO countries blaming the Assad regime and clamoring for intervention.Fisk, for his part, was determined to get to the truth by talking to residents and asking them for evidence of chemical weapons. He could find no witnesses to the attacks, but did learn that many fell sick by breathing in the dust created by successive bombings.
Douma, Syria. Creative Commons license
In the course of his rummaging in the rubble of Douma, he found a document that showed that arms used in the region had been supplied by Czechoslovakia. How did they get to Syria? he wondered. He traveled all the way to the arms manufacturer in Bosnia to find out, and learned that the weapons had been legally sent to Saudi Arabia. NATO, he added, hadn't bothered to track the weapons to their final destination. The implication: Saudi Arabia was supporting the fighters against the Assad regime. (And my own research into the matter confirms this.) By the end of the film, we learn that members of the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had been pressured to suppress a dissenting 15 page report that found "no evidence" of the chemical attacks being dropped from the air by Syrian helicopters, as the official report alleged to the contrary.
I was reminded of a passage in my book about Fisk's prescription for good journalism, that is, to "challenge authority, all authority, especially so when governments and politicians take us to war." He had written disdainfully of President Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, his articles drawing such impassioned responses that a new word entered the English lexicon: "fisking." The Cambridge Dictionary describes fisking this way: "the act of making an argument seem wrong or stupid by showing the mistakes in each of its points, or an instance of doing this: It was the best fisking I'd read in a long time." A synonym, the dictionary added, is "suspecting and questioning." In February, 2003 Fisk's "Case Against War" in the Independent took apart all the U.S. and British rationales for the war.
The Tragedies of Lebanon
Lebanon was Fisk's home base, so it would come as no surprise that he personally visited the scene of the horrific 1982 slaughter of 1200 Palestinian men, women and children in Beirut's refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. In the film he describes stepping over bodies, confessing he had never seen so many dead people. "Massacres are difficult to forget if you see corpses," he says. He admitted to being profoundly affected by the scene.
Bodies of Palestinians In Shatila refugee camp. Fisk would never be the same after having to step over corpses. Photo by Robin Moyer, Wikipedia.
He came away feeling that "those people would want me to be here," to tell the truth of what happened, namely that Lebanese right wing militia goaded on by nearby Israeli soldiers had carried out the massacres. From that moment on, he ended up letting go of any fear of being labelled anti-semitic for telling the truth about what he saw. He would go on to become a harsh critic of Israel and its policies toward the Palestinians. For this, he would receive an unending stream of hate mail, "for the internet," he wrote in 2014, "seems to have turned those who do not like to hear the truth about the Middle East into a community of haters, sending venomous letters not only to myself but to any reporter who dares to criticize Israel — or American policy in the Middle East."
The Independent, in tribute to its most famous journalist, carries "the best of Fisk" on its website, and one of the articles it highlights is his January 30, 2010 article, " Why does the US turn a blind eye to Israeli bulldozers?"
Destruction up close. Photo by Jenniferlisa, Creative Commons License
Both the United States and Europe, Fisk writes, "now stand idly by while the Israeli government effectively destroys any hope of a Palestinian state; even as you read these words, Israel's bulldozers and demolition orders are destroying the last chance of peace; not only in the symbolic centre of Jerusalem itself but — strategically, far more important — in 60 per cent of the vast, biblical lands of the occupied West Bank, in that largest sector in which Jews now outnumber Muslims two to one." Some 300,000 Israelis, he points out, "now live in 220 settlements which are all internationally illegal — in the richest and most fertile of the Palestinian occupied lands." He wrote that 22 years ago. The situation of the Palestinians has only become worse under the Trump administration. (See companion articles this week in Toward Freedom, one on US policy toward occupied Palestine, the other on destroyed EU projects in Palestine) The recent visit of U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo to the West Bank — the first by a high American official — signals Trump's plan to declare Israel's illegal settlements as legal. Pompeo also declared that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement would, from hereon in, be declared anti-semitic.
The Independent has also reproduced Fisk's articles on Lebanon's disintegration, both before and after the August 4, 2020 explosion of ammonium nitrate that destroyed Beirut's port and the neighborhoods that surrounded it. His immediate reaction reveals his love of the region and its peoples, and his lament that Lebanon had effectively become a failed state: "So here is one of the most educated nations in the region with the most talented and courageous — and generous and kindliest — of peoples, blessed by snows and mountains and Roman ruins and the finest food and the greatest intellect and a history of millennia. And yet it cannot run its currency, supply its electric power, cure its sick or protect its people."
The cause of the Beirut explosion has yet to be determined. Wikipedia.
Had he lived, he probably would have dug deeper into what caused the explosion, since ammonium nitrate does not self-ignite. He had little faith in the government of Lebanon to get to the bottom of it. "Not one major political murder in Lebanon — of presidents, prime minister or ex-prime minister, of members of parliament or political parties — has ever, in its history, been solved. "
And indeed, as investigations into the explosion continue, there has yet to be an answer as to what caused them. So Fisk, shortly before his death, was left with asking questions: "How on earth could 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate be stored in a flimsy building for so many years after being removed from a Moldovan ship on its way to Mozambique in 2014 with no safety measures taken by those who decided to leave this vile material in the very centre of their own capital city?
"And all we are left with," he concludes, " is the towering inferno and its cancerous white shock wave, and then the second mushroom-shaped cloud (let us mention no other)."
Could his allusion to a mushroom-shaped cloud suggest that he considered some kind of bomb had caused the explosion? After all, wasn't it President Trump who first announced that the explosion was caused by a bomb, only to be corrected by Pentagon officials who insisted that it was an accident?
As I reflect on Fisk's life as a reporter, I think of how his experiences cause me to reflect on mine. His flat-out statement in the film that "the idea that you must not take anybody's side is rubbish" hit home, conjuring up a memory from my days in Beirut.
I was hosting a small gathering of foreign correspondents in my apartment. The year was 1975, at a time right before Lebanon erupted in civil war. I was a reporter for the English language Beirut Daily Star. The subject of the Palestinians came up. I can't recall the exact context, but it may have been related to my watching from the rooftop of my apartment Lebanese French mirage jets flying overhead and then dropping bombs on a nearby Palestinian neighborhood in Beirut. I expressed concern to my colleagues, and I will never forget the Washington Post reporter reprimanding me: "Now now. As a journalist You mustn't take sides. You have to be objective!"
There was no Robert Fisk there to validate my feelings of shock and dismay. (He arrived a year later). As far as I was concerned, there were objective realities on the ground (and in the air) called facts and it was our duty to report the facts as we saw them. Or as Fisk put it, "my job as a journalist is to tell the truth."
The Palestinians never got equal time back then. It got so bad for them that they ended up highjacking airplanes to draw attention to their cause, having faced global indifference for decades to the fact that they had been dispossessed from their lands in 1948 to make room for the state of Israel. Their highjacking tactic surely didn't win them many friends and earned them the moniker of "terrorists," which stuck even harder when they took up arms against the Israelis along the Lebanese border. When the Lebanese civil war erupted in April, 1975 after some Christian right wing militias fired on a busload of Palestinians, I chose to return to the States (having been shot at in a Beirut suburb) and it was then that I learned how incredibly biased the US media was against the Palestinians in particular and the Arabs in general. The slighted expression of sympathy for their plight got one branded as "anti-semitic," which convinced me to turn to investigating the genocide of Amazonian indians in Latin America rather than be branded with that devastating slur and censored. Fortunately, Fisk took over where I left off, arriving in Beirut in 1976 just as the civil war was raging and for the next 44 years bravely reported the truth as he saw it.
Both of us learned that by delving into the history of the region, it became more understandable. In 2007, he published a 1000 page tome on this history: The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East." Had I had the chance to meet him, I would have asked why the subject of oil only showed up on two pages in the book's index "as a motive for the Iraq war." To be fair, on page 932 he struck home when he wrote: "Israeli and U.S. ambitions in the region were now entwined, almost synonymous. This war, about oil and regional control, was being cheer-led by a president who was treacherously telling us that this was part of an eternal war against 'terror.'"
He went on to write that the British people didn't wish "to embark on endless wars with a Texas governor-executioner who dodged the Vietnam draft and who, with his oil buddies, was now sending America's poor to destroy a Muslim nation that had nothing to do with the crimes against humanity of 11 September, 2001."
Like Fisk, I have my father to thank for my determination to tell the truth about the Middle East. Daniel Dennett was also involved in World War II, first as a spy of the Office of Strategic Service and later as American's only master spy in Middle East for the Central Intelligence Group (immediate precursor of the CIA). He died when I was six weeks old in a mysterious plane crash in 1947 following a top secret mission to Saudi Arabia, so I didn't know him and couldn't talk to him about his experiences. But he left behind a treasure trove of letters and reports which ended up in a steamer trunk in the Dennett family attic.
His last report convinced me that his final mission — to Saudi Arabia –was all about oil. In fact, it was all about the planned route of the Trans-Arabian Pipeline and whether this strategically important pipeline would terminate in Haifa, Palestine or in Lebanon.
Map shows the projected Trans Arabian pipeline crossing the Saudi desert to a terminal point in Lebanon. The dotted lines it intersects show the two branches of the Iraq Petroleum Company pipeline, the southern branch terminating in Haifa. It was closed in 1948 but Netanyahu hoped to reopen it after the US invastion of Iraq in 2003. Map by Ann Linton
in Chapter 2 of my book, I describe my quest as "Seeking truth, finding oil. "As part of my investigation, I would "follow the pipelines" both forward and back in time . Going back took me to the Iraq Petroleum pipeline which terminated in Haifa and had much to do with the 1917 Balfour Declaration in which Britain's Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine for European settlers to Lord Walter Rothschild, scion of the Rothschild oil and banking fortune. In short, there is an oil and pipeline connection to the formation of Israel, and this pipeline again became a "motivating force" for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, namely, to reopen that pipeline (built in 1932 and closed in 1948 during Israel's war for independence ) once Saddam Hussein was replaced by a pro-Israel Iraqi named Ahmad Chalabi, the creator of the false weapons of mass destruction pretext for the war on Iraq. Benjamin Netanyahu gleefully announced, "soon the oil will flow to Israel. This is not a pipe dream." But, in it was, once the WMD charade discredited Chalabi as the US's next puppet in the Middle east.
Soon, in my quest to understand the role of oil and pipelines in my father's death and the Middle East's endless wars that followed up to the present, I would seek out articles by Fisk. I learned that he had no illusions about what was causing these wars.
In a prescient article about the folly of invading Afghanistan, he issued a warning to George W. Bush and NATO about starting a new round of geopolitical warfare. "Perhaps," he slyly wrote, "we could all go back to the history books before suggesting — and the idea of such an adventure is clearly being dreamed of in Washington — that the Great Game should be taken up once more."
His warning, alas, went unheeded and by the time the documentary on him was released, Fisk was openly fearing that "what we write doesn't make a difference."
Fisk's lectures always drew large crowds. Creative Commons license.
Yet he could take comfort in giving talks before legions of young students in the Middle East, many attending the American University of Beirut, telling them that he understood their anger over the injustices meted out to the peoples of the region by colonial powers.
In his historical explorations, he probed deeply into the genocide of Armenians, having learned in 2010 that "The US wants to deny that Turkey's slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 was genocide. But the evidence is there, in a hilltop orphanage near Beirut."
This may explain why he acknowledged, in the film, that his reporting had developed a body of evidence on the wars in the Middle East "so no one can say, 'This didn't happen." In an age where powerful leaders still engage in willful blindness and genocide denialism, Fisk has bestowed upon a new generation the best that journalism can offer: the unrelenting pursuit of the truth.
Charlotte Dennett is Guest Editor of Toward Freedom. Her most recent book is The Crash of Flight 3804: A Lost Spy, A Daughter's Quest, and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil.
Biden Appears to Leave Door Open for Russia to Move Into Ukraine
Long-Running Mismanagement Behind Waste Disaster in Tunisia's Sfax Region

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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How do changes in Russian legislation impact doing business in Russia?
Jan 7, 2016Luke Johnson Opinion
Introduction of new legislation – such as a new law on foreign media ownership that goes into effect in 2016 – can play an important role in changing how Western investors perceive the risk-reward trade-offs in Russia.
New laws that will come into effect in 2016 might change the way foreign investors perceive Russian business climate. Photo: AP
As Russia heads into 2016, a lack of access to Western financial markets and the general overhang of economic sanctions have forced the Russian government to take a closer look at the current investment climate. What can be done to convince Western investors that now is a good time to invest in Russia?
When it comes to Russia, fear of the unknown can have an outsized effect on incoming businesses. It does not help matters that the Russian legislator can work quite quickly. It is not only what is passed in the Russian Duma, but what could be passed, and, almost more importantly, how it would be enforced. These are extremely difficult questions for prospective market entrants to answer.
Admittedly, this is a subjective, but still highly influential, component. Some new laws have raised questions about the importance placed by the Russian legislator on the current investment climate. One example is the media law which will be put into effect in February 2016: the law will force foreign media companies to sell their assets to local Russian players until a maximum of only 20 percent remains under foreign control (this is down from the previous maximum of 50 percent). This law, which acts almost like a retrospective quasi-expropriation of assets, has been a source of concern for many new potential Russian investors. Fortunately, organizations and associations are currently working on certain amendments to the bill.
Besides uncertainty in the future, there is also uncertainty with regard to interpretation of the laws. The new personal data policy law concerns the processing of personal data using databases in Russia. Of course, while the concept is not unique to Russia (the EU also has their version), the question of enforcement and interpretation is still open (for instance, to interpret the law conservatively, one could say it prohibits storing the personal data of Russian citizens outside Russia in many cases).
Also, because it is a new law, there are few, if any, cases from which to draw examples, so lawyers are forced to be conservative in their consultations. It does not help that wording and definitions are vague in the legal text as well. The result is an overhanging fear that their company is infringing on a law which they do not (nor many others) really understand.
Because these events are not regular (nor frequent), it is extremely challenging to quantify them, meaning evaluating the risk objectively is almost impossible. The consequences for these "black swan" events are always grossly exaggerated. This indirectly may result in a company deciding not to enter the market for fear of a perceived sense of excessive instability and unfairness, even though the chances of something like that happening are almost zero.
Moving to something more concrete (and positive), taxes have been decreasing in general over the last decade or so. This trend began in 2001 with the introduction of a flat personal income tax rate of 13 percent, then to the abolition of sales tax of 5 percent in 2004, to the reduction of VAT and social insurance contributions in 2005, to a decrease of profit tax in 2009, among others.
On another note, the heavy hand of bureaucracy weighs heavily on Russian businesses. But, the authorities are aware of this and are taking steps to ease the burden. Discussions are in the pipeline for a standardized Business-to-Business (B2B) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems, which would make the transition of necessary accounting documents electronic and thereby much simpler. Currently, there are several different solutions on the market, which is not practical for manufacturers with more than one supplier. By standardizing this, they will be able to greatly streamline their accounting and administration departments.
Beyond taxes and efficiencies in business, a third way that legislation positively affects companies doing business here is by providing them with preferential conditions in the form of subsidies, support for export, preference for public procurement, special utility rates, etc. Federal Law No. 488-FZ, in combination with other resolutions, has come into effect at the beginning of this year and is designed to attract foreign manufacturers into Russia.
This legislation is relatively new, and the details and definitions are still currently being worked out. The whole project may take longer than expected since the authorities are trying to walk a very fine line: they want to attract foreign investors, but still protect local ones.
One solution for this is to require foreign investors to demonstrate that they are making products that are not "analogous" to Russian-made ones (or the noun form, "analog," which is seen more in the legal text). Naturally, the details here can be technical, with layers of reviews and complications. However, once demonstrating that they have a unique product (and some others), foreign companies would be eligible for a "special investment contract," which would be fairly customized for each applicant, offering a range of preferential conditions.
Recommended: "Cautious hopes for a Russian economic rebound in 2016"
Another way to affect businesses is via changes to business conditions or corporate law. The "Amendments to the Russian Civil Code" 42-FZ, which came into force on June 1, 2015, has introduced concepts that are prevalent in the West. A notable one includes article 381.1, which allows (and better regulates) security payments (financial collateral). This will make some types of agreements (e.g. lease agreements) less risky. For example, in a lease agreement, this collateral can secure the obligation of the lessee to pay the rent or pay the damages. Before this, a pledge of money was a more opaque and controversial issue under Russian law.
Perhaps more importantly, article 431.2 introduces representations and warranties for the first time in Russian law. The representing party now bears full liability for misrepresentations given to the other party under a contract. Essentially, this means that if Party A gives a representation in a contract (e.g. about its own good standing, or the quality of the premises in an agreement for sale of real estate; or absence of debts or claims from third parties to a target company that is selling its shares, etc.), then this statement can be regarded as true by Party B. If it is later evident that it is not true, then Party A has to compensate all the damages to Party B.
This subtle addition of inherent faith or trust into the document could improve the amount of integrity throughout the system. Integrity is regarded as an extremely important factor for businesses to operate efficiently and effectively. This is an important step towards making the business environment more credible, and thereby addressing a negative perception of Russian business held in the West.
Overall, legislation is a very important consideration for businesses at every stage – from perception to interpretation to enforcement. This also refers to the laws that could be passed in the future. Russia, like the vast majority of countries, is a country that wants to be attractive for investors, and recent legislative changes are in place – or being put in place – to advance this cause.
What helped Russia's economy survive in 2015?
How Russia fits into the changing structure of world trade
Russia Direct Report: 'Insider's guide to Russian high-tech hubs'
Luke Johnson is a project manager at Schneider Group which supports companies on matters concerning doing business in Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland and Germany, irrespective of their size or industry sector.


text:
Q: How to attach static IP to a virtual machine using gcloud? Trying to attach existing reserved IP address to a new virtual machine using gcloud
it's easy to do in the console, can't find a way how to do it using gcloud

A: See:
link
gcloud compute instances create [INSTANCE_NAME] --address [IP_ADDRESS]

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Why LIC chief is more worried about the agents than policyholders
Seth Godin, one of the leading marketing gurus of the world, talks about the rock n roll band The Rolling Stones in one of his blogs.
"Keith Richards (guitarist and vocalist of The Rolling Stones) tells a great story about Charlie Watts, legendary drummer for the Stones. After a night of drinking, Mick (Jagger, the lead vocalist of The Rolling Stones) saw Charlie asleep and yelled, "Is that my drummer? Why don't you get your arse down here?" Richards continues, "Charlie got dressed in a Savile Row suit, tie, shoes, shaved, came down, grabbed him and went boom! Don't ever call me "your drummer" again. You're my … singer. No drums, no Stones," writes Godin.
As The Rolling Stones wouldn't have survived without Charlie Watts and his drums, no insurance company can survive without the policyholders who go out there and buy there products. Then they pay premiums which keep these insurance companies going.
But the Life Insurance Corporation(LIC) of India clearly doesn't seem to believe in this. In an interview to the Daily News and Analysis (DNA), D K Mehrotra, the Chairman of LIC, said that the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda), the insurance regulator, should rethink its plan to reform the traditional products offered by insurance companies.
For the uninitiated insurance companies in India largely sell two kinds of insurance plans. These are the unit linked insurance plans(Ulips) and the other are the endowment plans. The endowment plans sold by insurance companies are typically referred to as traditional plans.
In an endowment policy the policy holder is insured for a certain amount. This amount is referred to as the sum assured. A portion of the premium paid by the policy holder goes towards this insurance cover. Another portion helps meet the administrative expenses of the insurer. And a third portion is invested by the insurance company on behalf of the policy holder. The investment is largely made in debt securities which are deemed to be safe. (For a more detailed discussion on endowment plans click here).
The interesting thing is that The Insurance Act 1938 allows insurance companies allows insurance companies to pay as high as 35% of the first year's premium as commission to insurance agents. This means for every Rs 100 that is paid as premium in the first year as high as Rs 35 could go to the agent as a commission.
The insurance regulator, Irda, over the last few years has cracked the whip on the commissions that insurance companies can pay to their agents for selling Ulips. Ulips are essentially investment plans masquerading as insurance.
The fall in commission on Ulips has led to insurance companies and agents suddenly discovering 'good' attributes in endowment plans given that they continue to pay high commissions. In the days when commissions on Ulips were high LIC and its agents had taken to pushing Ulips in a big way.
As Mehrotra told The Economic Times in September 2011 "Earlier, we had Ulips and traditional products at a 60:40 ratio, which has now reversed." This ratio has further fallen and the ratio of sales for LIC between traditional plans and Ulips is now 80:20.
Irda in its proposed reforms for traditional products plans to cut down on commissions on offer to insurance agents, as it had done in case of Ulips earlier. And if that happens sales of traditional plans which now get in the bulk of the premium for LIC will be impacted. ".If the existing ones(the products i.e.) have to be withdrawn, we will be at loss," Mehrotra told DNA. As has been clearly seen in the case of Ulips, lower commissions have impacted sales big time. And that will happen with traditional plans as well once the monstrous commissions are cut.
This is something that Rajeev Kumar, chief and appointed actuary at Bharti Axa Life Insurance told www.moneycontrol.com sometime back. "if you cap charges and you apply the same logic as unit linked then these plans will have same fate as unit linked plans which means commissions will go down, if commissions will go down, distributors will not be interested and distributors are not interested, the market share of these products will go down," he said.
The Committee for Investor Awareness and Protection had envisaged an era of totally commission free financial products in its reports a few years back. As the report of the committee had pointed out "All retail financial products should go no-load by April 2011. The pension product in the NPS is already no-load. Mutual funds have become no-load with effect from 1 August 2009. Insurance policies need to remove the bias towards selling the policy with the highest commission. Because there are almost three million small agents who will have to adjust to a new way of earning money, it is suggested that immediately the upfront commissions embedded in the premium paid be cut to no more than 15 per cent of the premium. This should fall to 7 per cent in 2010 and become nil by April 2011."
While the commissions on almost every other financial product have fallen to 0%, the insurance companies continue to offer high commissions to their agents, at the cost of the policyholder who in the process gets lower returns.
But low commissions are not in the interest of the insurance companies neither is it in the interest of the government which needs LIC to buy the shares of public sector companies that it is trying to sell to bring down the burgeoning fiscal deficit. Other investors are not interested in buying shares being sold by the government.
When Mehrotra was asked by DNA in another interview if there was pressure from the government to buy shares "No, at least I have not experienced it. There is no pressure on me to buy any particular share," he said. Being a government employee we couldn't have expected him to say anything but this. A recent report in The Economic Timessays that the LIC lost over Rs 5,000 croreby buying public sector shares of ONGC, NMDC and NTPC.
Given this the last thing on the minds of Mehrotra and LIC is the policyholder who has bought the LIC policy. As Godin wrote in his blog "Who's playing the drums in your shop?" In case of The Rolling Stones it was Charlie Watts. For LIC its clearly not the policyholder.
The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on December 13, 2012
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected])
Categories Analysis, Business, Firstpost Post navigation
'The average lifespan of good govts is just 7-8 years'
Why television is more important than food


text:
NIOSH
NIOSH All CDC
NIOSHTIC-2 Publications Search
Search NIOSHTIC-2
Advanced Search Search Help About NIOSHTIC-2 Feedback
Sensitivity analysis of important parameters affecting contact pressure between a respirator and a headform.
Dai-J; Yang-J; Zhuang-Z
Int J Ind Ergon 2011 May; 41(3):268-279
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ergon.2011.01.007
NIOSHTIC No.
Respirator comfort and fit are two important parameters for respirator design, usage, and standard development. The contact pressure (as measured between a respirator and the wearer) plays an important role in comfort and fit. This work attempts to investigate the contact mechanism and factors that affect the contact pressure. This paper focuses on mechanical factors such as strap tension, strap orientation, strap location, friction, and seal material. A finite element (FE) model-based method was developed to assess the contact pressure. The FE models for both the headform and the respirator have multiple layers. The headform is a medium size headform developed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the respirator is an MSA Affinity Ultra respirator. The results show that the positive Z directional force of strap tension that forces the respirator to move towards the headform is the most important parameter for measuring pressure distribution. Other factors such as strap orientation, friction, strap location, and softness of the seal material were found to affect the contact pressure distribution in this study. Strap orientation and friction coefficient have no significant effect on maximum pressure and maximum shear stress. The dispersive strap location increased the contact pressure on the nose-bridge area of the wearer, while concentrated location had no considerable effect on contact pressure. A softer seal material causes larger deformations and transfers the location of the maximum pressure from the nose-bridge to the tip of the nose. Relevance to industry: This study investigates the effect of important parameters on contact pressure between a respirator and a headform. The sensitivity analysis can provide insights of the interaction between a respirator and a headform. The findings are critical to respirator designers, users, and standard developers to ensure maximal respirator fit and comfort.
Respirators; Respiratory-protective-equipment; Ergonomics; Equipment-design; Models; Personal-protective-equipment; Author Keywords: Respirator; Headform; Comfort and fit; Contact pressure; Finite element model; Friction
Jingzhou (James) Yang, Human-Centric Design Research Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA
james.yang@ttu.edu
Issue of Publication
NIOSH Division
NPPTL
Priority Area
Healthcare and Social Assistance
International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics
Page last reviewed: September 2, 2020
Content source: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Education and Information Division


text:
best outcomes
Cline v. Homuth
04/07/15 by n3ts0l ·
Court: California Court of Appeal, Third Appellate District
Opinion Date: March 30, 2015
Areas of Law: Contracts, Insurance Law, Injury Law
Plaintiff Ronald Lee Cline was severely injured when his motorcycle collided with a turning car driven by a teenager with a provisional license. He settled with the driver and the driver's parents for their $100,000 insurance policy limit. Cline executed a release that released the driver and his parents "and any other person, corporation, association, or partnership responsible in any manner or degree" for the accident. Cline subsequently sued defendant Berniece Delores Homuth, the driver's grandmother and the sole adult in the car with him at the time of the collision, for negligent supervision. Homuth raised the release as an affirmative defense. She moved for summary judgment; the trial court denied the motion. A court trial followed, centering on the validity of the release and whether Homuth was an intended third party beneficiary of the release. Relying on Rodriguez v. Oto (2013) 212 Cal.App.4th 1020, the trial court found the release "unambiguously expresses a mutual intent to benefit a class of persons of which [Homuth] is a member" and that Homuth was entitled to enforce it. Cline appealed the judgment in favor of Homuth, arguing the extrinsic evidence demonstrated that Homuth was not an intended beneficiary of the release. The Court of Appeal affirmed, finding that Cline failed to provide sufficient evidence to counter Homuth's showing that she was an intended beneficiary of the release.
"A third party may enforce a contract that is expressly made for his benefit. (Civ. Code, § 1559.) The third party need not be named in the contract, but he has the burden to show the contracting parties intended to benefit him. (Garcia v. Truck Ins. Exchange (1984) 36 Cal.3d 426, 436.) Determining this intent is a question of contract interpretation. (Ibid.) "In determining the meaning of a written contract allegedly made, in part, for the benefit of a third party, evidence of the circumstances and negotiations of the parties in making the contract is both relevant and admissible. And, '[i]n the absence of grounds for estoppel, the contracting parties should be allowed to testify as to their actual intention . . . .' [Citations.]" (Id. at p. 437.)"
A reading of the opinion wherein numerous "release the world" cases were analyzed by the court, lead the court to affirm the judgment by the trial court that Cline presented insufficient evidence in the subject release's negotiated circumstances to demonstrate that the "parties" did not intend that Homuth would be excluded from the release's broad "and any other person, corporation, association, or partnership responsible in any manner or degree" for the accident language.
Anyone interested in this area of the law should read the entirety of the opinion for a comprehensive primer on when and when not a broadly worded general release will indeed release a later sued "person" or "corporation."
Filed Under: News & Events ·
Copyright © 2014 Veatch Carlson Attorneys At Law | Another site by Conroy Consults


1. The marriage must have lasted 10 or more years.
2. Angela must be unmarried.
3. Mark and Angela must both be 62 years of age or older.
4. Mark must be entitled to Social Security retirement or disability benefits.
5. The benefit Angela is entitled to receive based on her own earnings history must be less than the benefit she would receive based on Mark's earnings history.
In this hypothetical, the marriage lasted 30 years, Angela remains unmarried, both parties are older than 62 years of age, Mark is entitled to Social Security retirement benefits, and Angela is not entitled to any Social Security benefits of her own. Therefore, Angela would be entitled to receive an amount equal to 50% of Mark's PIA. Her decision to collect these benefits would not affect the size of Mark's benefits. He would still receive the full amount of his social security benefits, regardless of the benefit Angela receives.
Generally, Mark will have no way of knowing if Angela is collecting benefits based upon his record. On the other hand, if Angela decides to remarry, she will no longer be entitled to collect benefits on Mark's record unless her later marriage ends by death, divorce, or annulment.
If Mark had remarried, Angela could still receive benefits on his record. Even in that case, Angela's decision to collect these benefits would not impact the size of his current wife's benefits.
For Angela to collect spousal benefits, Mark must have filed for Social Security but he does not need to be actively collecting his benefits. This is commonly referred to as "filing and suspending." He only needs to reach full retirement age and then file for Social Security in order to activate the spousal benefits. Upon divorce, if Mark has not applied for retirement benefits, but can qualify for them, Angela can receive benefits on her record once the couple has been divorced for at least two years.
Angela can collect spousal benefits in two different ways: as her only benefit, or as an incremental increase to her individual benefits. Under the facts of this hypothetical, she would not be entitled to her own individual benefits. However, she can choose to collect spousal benefits in an amount less than 50% of her ex-husband's PIA before reaching full retirement age. If she waits and starts collecting at full retirement age or later, her benefits would be 50% of Mark's PIA. If she had her own Social Security benefits, and if Mark's PIA were more than two times her own PIA, Angela might be eligible for spousal benefits as an incremental increase to her own individual benefits.
If Angela were eligible for retirement benefits on her own record, the Social Security Administration would pay that amount first. However, if the benefit on Mark's record was a higher amount, Angela would get a combination of her own benefits, plus spousal benefits, to equal that higher amount. If she had reached full retirement age and would be eligible for a spouse's benefit as well as her own retirement benefit, she would have a choice between receiving only the amount of her ex-husband's benefits now and delaying receipt of retirement benefits until a later date.
If Mark were to pass away, Angela would also become eligible for survivor benefits. She could receive the same benefits as a widow, without affecting the benefits of other survivors (for example, if Mark had remarried, his second wife's benefits would not be affected). The criteria to collect survivor benefits from an ex-spouse are similar to those to collect Social Security spousal benefits. The couple must have been married for at least 10 years, the ex-wife must be unmarried currently or remarried after age 60, and she must be at least 60 years of age.
Social Security can be a complex topic, especially for divorced individuals, and Social Security benefits often constitute a significant source of income for people after retirement. It is in your best interest to find out whether you are eligible for, and how to claim, spousal benefits on your ex-spouse's Social Security. If you have questions about your Social Security spousal benefits, regardless of the status of your marriage, contact a family law attorney for help.


text:
Bidding for Beginners
AIM students team up with Big Shoulders Fund to teach advanced investing skills to high schoolers.
By Jennifer Walter, Comm '19
How old were you when you first learned about the stock market? For many teens, investment education is nonexistent. Students from Marquette's Applied Investment Management program wanted to change that fate for a group of early high schoolers who were eager for an opportunity to dive into the world of investing.
Through a partnership with the nonprofit Big Shoulders Fund, six AIM seniors shaped a new curriculum and taught weekly lessons to students during the fall 2021 semester. Called the Accelerated Stock Market Program, it ran for six weeks with an initial cohort of 16 high schoolers from 11 Chicago-area schools.
"One of the things that we've learned along the way in launching and piloting programs is to start small," explains Tim Liston, Comm '08, director of donor engagement and partnerships at Big Shoulders Fund, which supports Chicago schools that demonstrate need and provide a values-based education. Liston hopes to see the program, initially limited to just over a dozen participants, expand in the coming semesters.
The accelerated program builds on a yearlong Big Shoulders curriculum on the stock market that has been taught to eighth graders in all 61 elementary schools in its network for almost 15 years. It caters to high schoolers who crave a continued learning experience — and that's where the AIM students step in.
Rishi Kumar, Bus Ad '22, was one of the students to pilot the first Accelerated Stock Market Program. Over Zoom, he walked students through the stock screening process and explained his thought process for choosing which companies to invest in.
Learning how to frame the lessons for enthusiastic high schoolers wasn't always easy, Kumar says. "These kids aren't Warren Buffett, right? They're high schoolers." So the challenge was to find a balance of keeping it simple while still engaging the students in meaningful conversations.
They even touched on contemporary topics like ESG investing, which explores the environmental and social impacts of adding certain stocks to your portfolio. Throughout the program, Kumar was often impressed by how bright and engaged students were with the lessons. "It was kind of eye-opening, because I definitely wasn't at this point when I was their age," he says.
In addition to the wealth of investment knowledge that students gain, the program itself is an investment of sorts, too. With the program continuing in 2022 and beyond, Chicago-area students from under-resourced communities have a chance to spark a future career in investing, learning from peers less than a decade older than them.
"The hope is that we can continue to funnel and build that pipeline of future finance leaders," Liston says.


text:
Republican interest in spending on law enforcement surged 34 percent from 2014 to 2016
April 3, 2017 admin Analysis and Opinions, Immigration 0
by Philip Bump
Central to Donald Trump's presidential candidacy was the idea that the United States was beset by all manner of threats: terrorists pouring over the border, immigrants undercutting the economy and crime spiking. "The first task for our new administration will be to liberate our citizens from the crime and terrorism and lawlessness that threatens their communities," Trump said during his convention speech and, despite deaths from terrorism being rare in the United States and the violent crime rate being lower now than it was when Barack Obama took office, the message clearly stuck.
Every two years, a national survey of political and social attitudes is conducted, called the General Social Survey. When it was conducted in 2014, 46 percent of respondents felt as thought the country was spending too little nationally on law enforcement. That figure had been trending downward since 2006. But in 2016, a spike back up, over the 50 percent mark.
Why? To some extent because of independents who indicated that they felt America should spend more on national law enforcement efforts. (Among independents, the figure topped 50 percent for the first time since the 1990s.) But mostly it was Republicans. The percent of Republicans saying that they felt as though too little was being spent on law enforcement surged 18 percentage points — up 34 percent — since the 2014 survey.
The figure in 2016 among Republicans was above the previous high-water mark, set in 1994.
In 1994, the national violent crime rate was 713.6 incidents per 100,000 residents. In 2015, the most recent year for which data is available, it was 372.6 — just over half the 1994 rate.
How much of this is attributable to Trump's rhetoric isn't clear. Trump deftly seized upon issues that were already of concern to conservative Republicans over the course of his campaign, so he may have been trailing the trend, not leading it. What's more, the issue of law enforcement became heavily politicized over the past two years, as high-profile incidents of police shooting criminal suspects and innocent people polarized the issue.
Interestingly, the number of people who want to spend more on law enforcement consistently trails the number interested in spending to fight crime. (The latter question has been asked for longer.)
There's no real difference on that question when it comes to politics; Republicans and Democrats both are about as likely to say we're spending too little in that regard. (Notice the change to the vertical axis on this graph.) There's been an upward trend among each political group for the past several surveys.
Where there's a split is on race. Black Americans are far more likely to say that we should spend more on fighting crime than are whites.
Yet they are no more likely to say that we should spend more on law enforcement.
Republicans are the only group to think we're spending too little on law enforcement and on crime to the same extent. Among no group is the gulf of opinions on that spending wider than among black Americans, who are 26 percentage points more likely to say we're spending too little on crime than on law enforcement.
That black Americans should be more skeptical of law enforcement two years after the advent of the Black Lives Matter movement isn't surprising. That said, the percentage of black Americans who think too little is spent on national law enforcement didn't decrease since 2014, but instead stayed flat.
Trump has apparently made his priority here clear. His recent budget proposal focuses on adding new national law enforcement in the form of Border Patrol agents. Funding for efforts to reduce crime through preventive measures were, like many other line items, slashed.
The General Social Survey was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and conducted through in-person interviews with a random national sample of roughly 1,900 adults in the spring of 2016. Overall results carry a margin of sampling error of roughly 2.5 percentage points; the error margin for subgroups is larger.
Philip Bump is a political writer for The Washington Post.
Follow @pbump
Why a Trump School Choice Initiative is Unlikely to Succeed
Who Could Benefit From School Choice? Mapping Access to Public and Private Schools
The Handcuffing of Sheriff Joe
By Terry Greene
The Perry Legacy on Immigration: Compassion, Tempered by a Broken System
By Julian
Democrats learn the hard way: Latino voters don't just care about immigration
by Karen Tumulty


text:
Global Change Fellow Alumna | Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources | North Carolina State University
Spring 2018 Global Change Fellow
Forest diseases fundamentally diminish the health and functioning of our valuable forest resources. Among other consequences, the widespread mortality of trees has been shown to adversely affect wildlife habitat, alter soil chemistry, increase wildfire potential, and contribute to economic hardships via quarantine and trade restrictions. Managing these pathogens is important for maintaining healthy ecosystems, but management efforts are often hindered by uncertainty about how treatment location and type affect disease spread. Spatiotemporal projections of disease spread hold tremendous power for analyzing trade-offs of different management scenarios and can serve as a sounding board to stimulate discussions between diverse landowners. My work combines these spatiotemporal projections with participatory modeling methods to analyze management strategies and engage key stakeholders currently managing a destructive forest disease along the Pacific coast.
For my doctoral research, I have been studying the ecology and management of sudden oak death disease, an invasive forest disease which has killed millions of trees along the Pacific coast. Land managers in southwest Oregon are currently facing a new challenge in the form of a newly introduced, and more aggressive, strain of this pathogen. Management to contain the disease is imperative as further disease spread could have sweeping environmental and economic consequences. My work leverages spatiotemporal projections of disease spread to examine tradeoffs of disease management scenarios. One aspect of my work focuses on refining these models to reflect local conditions and using them to evaluate the strategies outlined in the Oregon Department of Forestry's strategic action plan. The other component of my research focuses on how we can engage stakeholders by linking these disease spread models to Tangible Landscape, a decision support tool that allows stakeholders to intuitively interact with complex geospatial models. With a team of interdisciplinary researchers, we plan to hold a series of participatory modeling workshops with a diverse group of regional stakeholders to generate and test disease management scenarios. This research falls under the fourth theme of the Southeast Climate Center: Ecological Research and Modeling.
Email: dagaydos@ncsu.edu
Website: https://devo2191.wixsite.com/devongaydos


The Community Health Education major, offered through the Department of Health Science, is for students interested in pursuing a career in health promotion and disease prevention. Potential employment settings include community or public health agencies, worksites, healthcare facilities, and non-profit organizations.
The Community Health Education major program is designed to prepare students to be competent in the following skill area: need assessment; program planning, implementation, and evaluation; administering health education programs; providing health information and resources; effectively communicating health information; and serving as a health advocate. These skills represent the criteria necessary to become a Certified Health Education Specialist through The National Commission for Health Education Credentialing, Inc. Upon graduation, all Community Health Education students are strongly encouraged to earn this distinguished certification.
Students interested in majoring in Community Health Education should contact the Community Health Education Program Coordinator. Upon meeting with the Coordinator, students complete the application process, receive preliminary advising, and are assigned an academic advisor.
All major courses must be taken for grade.


Posted by Ryan Jerz on Monday November 6, 2006.
A few weeks ago, Steven Johnson launched a new site called outside.in which aggregates content based on zip codes (where I found it). Readers of news stories, blogs, and events can submit individual entries or entire sites that fit within a zip code or community. Bloggers can simply tag entries with the relevant zip codes and theoretically outside.in will pick them up and display them.
I submitted several individual posts while the site submission tool was not yet operational, but it now is. In the past few days I got a few hits from outside.in so I checked back. Reno is now on the map, so to speak. Check it out. Now all of you need to get on and add your sites.
The point of outside.in is to reach visitors to a new place and I can see it being used as a starting point for other bloggers looking to write about something in another area. If I wanted to write about something in North Dakota, I could look at outside.in to find what people in North dakota are talking about, doing, and believeing. It's pretty cool, and we should all be using it.


text:
Danny Orendorff- "Doing It Together: Queerness, Craft, Collectivity"- Department of Art Visiting Artist Lecture Series
Surveying the past ten years of his curatorial work, Orendorff will explore the intersecting threads of DIY and/or craft-oriented cultural production, myriad histories of grassroots social-justice activism, and related theories of gender and sexuality that have together driven his research, exhibition and writing projects. From collectively-made queer videos and massive textile collaborations, to kink-inspired tableaux vivants and plein air paintings of banks on fire, Orendorff will detail past and present curatorial efforts that all pursue an aesthetic of non-normativity, cooperation, resistance and liberation.
Danny Orendorff is a curator and writer working as Executive Director of Vox Populi, a non-profit gallery, performance space and art collective in Philadelphia, PA. Founded in 1988, Vox Populi serves as an enduring model for how a radically independent and experimental arts organization can sustain itself through collective effort and constant evolution. Formerly, Orendorff was Curator of Public Programs for the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City and Program Director for non-profit Chicago gallery Threewalls. As an independent curator, Orendorff has organized large group exhibitions for such venues as DePaul Art Museum (Chicago, IL), The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design (Asheville, NC), SFCamerawork (San Franicsco, CA), and The Charlotte Street Foundation (Kansas City, MO), amongst others. He has taught in the Fiber & Material Studies Departments of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Tyler School of Art at Temple University.
Website- http://www.dandannydaniel.com
Headshot caption- Image c/o BFA
Image caption- One day this kid will get larger, Curated by Danny Orendorff, Install View, Image c/o Lizbeth Applewhite


text:
using Azure;
using Azure.Search.Documents.Indexes;
using Azure.Search.Documents.Indexes.Models;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using System;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace AzureSearch.SDKHowTo
{
    class Program
    {
        // This sample shows how ETags work by performing conditional updates and deletes
        // on an Azure Search index.
        static async Task Main(string[] args)
        {
            IConfigurationBuilder builder = new ConfigurationBuilder().AddJsonFile("appsettings.json");
            IConfigurationRoot configuration = builder.Build();

            SearchIndexClient indexClient = CreateSearchIndexClient(configuration);

            Console.WriteLine("Deleting index...\n");
            DeleteTestIndexIfExists(indexClient);

            // Every top-level resource in Azure Search has an associated ETag that keeps track of which version
            // of the resource you're working on. When you first create a resource such as an index, its ETag is
            // empty.
            SearchIndex index = DefineTestIndex();

            Console.WriteLine(
                $"Test searchIndex hasn't been created yet, so its ETag should be blank. ETag: '{index.ETag}'");

            // Once the resource exists in Azure Search, its ETag will be populated. Make sure to use the object
            // returned by the SearchIndexClient! Otherwise, you will still have the old object with the
            // blank ETag.
            //Console.WriteLine("Creating index...\n");
            index = indexClient.CreateIndex(index);
            Console.WriteLine($"Test index created; Its ETag should be populated. ETag: '{index.ETag}'");

            // ETags let you do some useful things you couldn't do otherwise. For example, by using an If-Match
            // condition, we can update an index using CreateOrUpdateIndexAsync() and be guaranteed that the update will only
            // succeed if the index already exists.
            index.Fields.Add(new SearchField("name", SearchFieldDataType.String) { AnalyzerName = LexicalAnalyzerName.EnMicrosoft });
            index = indexClient.CreateOrUpdateIndex(index);

            index = await indexClient.CreateOrUpdateIndexAsync(index);
            Console.WriteLine(
                $"Test searchIndex updated; Its ETag should have changed since it was created. ETag: '{index.ETag}'");

            // More importantly, ETags protect you from concurrent updates to the same resource. If another
            // client tries to update the resource, it will fail as long as all clients are using the right
            // access conditions.
            SearchIndex indexForClientUpdate = index;
            SearchIndex indexForClientUpdateFailed = indexClient.GetIndex("test");

            Console.WriteLine("Simulating concurrent update. To start, both clients see the same ETag.");
            Console.WriteLine($"ClientUpdate ETag: '{indexForClientUpdate.ETag}' ClientUpdateFailed ETag: '{indexForClientUpdateFailed.ETag}'");

            // indexForClientUpdate successfully updates the index.
            indexForClientUpdate.Fields.Add(new SearchField("a", SearchFieldDataType.Int32));
            indexForClientUpdate = indexClient.CreateOrUpdateIndex(indexForClientUpdate);

            Console.WriteLine($"Test index updated by ClientUpdate; ETag: '{indexForClientUpdate.ETag}'");

            // indexForClientUpdateFailed tries to update the index, but fails, thanks to the ETag check.
            try
            {
                indexForClientUpdateFailed.Fields.Add(new SearchField("b", SearchFieldDataType.Boolean));
                indexClient.CreateOrUpdateIndex(indexForClientUpdateFailed);

                Console.WriteLine("Whoops; This shouldn't happen");
                Environment.Exit(1);
            }
            catch (RequestFailedException e) when (e.Status == 400)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("ClientUpdateFailed failed to update the index, as expected.");
            }

            // You can also use access conditions with Delete operations. For example, you can implement an
            // atomic version of the DeleteTestIndexIfExists method from this sample like this:
            Console.WriteLine("Deleting index...\n");
            indexClient.DeleteIndex("test");

            // This is slightly better than using the Exists method since it makes only one round trip to
            // Azure Search instead of potentially two. It also avoids an extra Delete request in cases where
            // the resource is deleted concurrently, but this doesn't matter much since resource deletion in
            // Azure Search is idempotent.

            // And we're done! Bye!
            Console.WriteLine("Complete.  Press any key to end application...\n");
            Console.ReadKey();
        }

        private static SearchIndexClient CreateSearchIndexClient(IConfigurationRoot configuration)
        {
            string searchServicEndpoint = configuration["SearchServicEndpoint"];
            string adminApiKey = configuration["SearchServiceAdminApiKey"];

            SearchIndexClient indexClient =
                new SearchIndexClient(new Uri(searchServicEndpoint), new AzureKeyCredential(adminApiKey));
            return indexClient;
        }

        private static void DeleteTestIndexIfExists(SearchIndexClient indexClient)
        {
            try
            {
                if (indexClient.GetIndex("test") != null)
                {
                    indexClient.DeleteIndex("test");
                }
            }
            catch (RequestFailedException e) when (e.Status == 404)
            {
                //if exception occurred and status is "Not Found", this is work as expect
                Console.WriteLine("Failed to find index and this is because it's not there.");
            }
        }

        private static SearchIndex DefineTestIndex() =>
            new SearchIndex("test", new[] { new SearchField("id", SearchFieldDataType.String) { IsKey = true } });
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


M. W. Miller was Assistant Professor of Food Science and Technology and Assistant Food Technologist in the Experiment Station, Davis; Hirosato Tanaka was Research Assistant in Food Science and Technology, Davis.
Hilgardia 34(6):183-190. DOI:10.3733/hilg.v34n06p183. April 1963.
The soluble-solids content of fresh prunes was studied in fruits picked by hand at three stages of maturity. Although fruits were carefully sorted for uniformity of size and color, the soluble-solids content of individual fruits varied greatly at each stage of maturity.
Changes in the moisture content of dried prunes placed in atmospheres of various relative humidities at 20° and 30° C were followed for 25 weeks. Prunes attained equilibrium in 25 weeks in atmospheres of 76 per cent relative humidity or lower.
Dried prunes equilibrated in atmospheres of various relative humidities were inoculated with selected strains of Aspergillus glaucus, A. niger, Penicillium sp., and Saccharomyces rouxii. At 20° C the strains of A. glaucus and S. rouxii grew on prunes equilibrated at relative humidities as low as 76 per cent, but not at 69 per cent, in a four-month period. The strains of A. niger and of Penicillium sp. grew well on prunes equilibrated at 93 per cent relative humidity but failed to grow on those equilibrated at 87 per cent. At 30° C, only the strain of S. rouxii grew on prunes equilibrated at 85 per cent relative humidity. All strains tested, however, grew at 97 per cent.
Christian J. H. B., Scott W. J. The influence of nutrition on water relation of Salmonella Oranienburg. Jour. Biol. Sci. 1953. 8:75-82.
Heintzeler I. Das Wachstum der Schimmelpilze in Abhängigkeit von den Hydraturverhältnissen unter verschiedenen Aussenbedingungen. Arch. Mikrobiol. 1939. 10:92-132.
Heintzeler I. International Critical Tables. 1926. 1: New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. 67p.
Schachinger L., Heiss R. Osmotischer Wert und Mikroorganismenwachstum in Zuckerlösungen. Arch. Mikrobiol. 1951. 16:347-57.
Scott W. J. Water relation of Staphylococcus aureus at 30°C. Australian Jour. Biol. Sci. 1953. 6:549-64.
Walter H. Plasmaquellung und Wachstum. Z. Botan. 1924. 16:353-417.


The GTX 680 also benefits from several improvements to cooling design. The fan is composed of acoustic dampening materials for a significant noise reduction and more enjoyable gaming experience. The custom fin stack is both shaped for better airflow and embedded with a high efficiency heat pipe to effectively cool the card without circulating heat back into the system. The thermal output of the GTX 680 has also been greatly reduced with a TDP of 195W for cooler and more energy efficient operation.
The new SMX architecture present in the Galaxy GTX 680 allows for a staggering 1536 CUDA cores- 3 times the number found in the flagship GTX 580 of the previous generation. Improved architecture coupled with almost 50% higher core and memory clocks results in an astounding level of pure gaming power. This extra performance is crucial for gamers who want to take advantage of the GTX 680's ability to simultaneously power up to 4 displays. Users will be able to game in NVIDIA 3D Vision Surround on up to 3 displays, and can add a 4th accessory display for email, chat, web browsing, and more without leaving the game. The card features a flexible assortment of outputs, including DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI, and DisplayPort, as well as an adapter for a VGA display.
The Galaxy GTX 680 sets the new standard in high performance graphics and is available now at leading retailers and etailers: Newegg, TigerDirect, Best Buy, Amazon, and NCIX.


Given that for a lot of people 2016 has been a pretty tough and demoralising year, I thought I'd just post some of the good stuff that happened to me.
Way back in April, which feels like a decade ago right now, Bloodmage was published. In some ways it's a more accomplished novel than my debut, because the story is more complex, more personal, smaller in scale and yet it builds on the previous book. I'll always love Battlemage, because it was my debut and because it was the book that got me an awesome author and great publisher. Bloodmage couldn't exist without Battlemage either, because I could go places in the second book that I would have struggled to reach if I'd done it first. It's also so different to the first, as was always the plan, as it's more of a crime thriller story, set in a fantasy world. I never wanted to do a predictable three part trilogy as my debut series and I believe I accomplished something a bit different.
By contract October feels like a couple of weeks ago and this novel wrapped up my first trilogy, the Age of Darkness. I've seen it called the Battlemage trilogy in some places, but that's just what some people called it, for some reason. I'm not sure why. So Chaosmage closed out the trilogy which turned out to be a lot more ambitious than a lot of people were expecting. I went in all different sorts of directions, but all under the guise of epic fantasy. This book started out as a love letter to Matheson's I Am Legend, although so far no-one has mentioned that when they've talked about it despite the clear parallels at the start. This book was a lot of fun to write, and was both challenging (as I had to wrap things up and pull certain threads through from the previous two books) and satisfying, as I got to close the door on the series. It's not the end though.
I've been picked up by Orbit to write another trilogy, the Age of Dread, set in the same world! This second book deal was a wonderful boost as it shows I'm not a one-hit wonder and that I'm not going anywhere for a while. Orbit have been fantastic and despite book 3 not being out very long, it shows the faith they have in me and my work. I'm very grateful for all of their hard work on my behalf and that of my agent over the last few years. It's odd to think I've only been published for about 14 months as it feels like a lot longer at times.
I was nominated and then shortlisted for the David Gemmell Morningstar award for debut fantasy novel. This was very important to me and even though I didn't win (that honour went to my agent-bro, the very deserving Peter Newman for The Vagrant) it was a great night. As I've said many times before Gemmell is the biggest influence on my work and it was a very special night for me to be there, with some of his family in attendance, at the ceremony.
The Sheffield Fantasy and Science Fiction Social Club had their inaugural awards and the Age of Darkness was awarded the Mycroft Award for Best Completed Series alongside another agent bro, Jen Williams, for her Copper Cat trilogy that also wrapped up this year.
There is still time to take part in a charity thing I'm involved with. The deadline is getting close but there is still time. 100 authors have donated 100 signed books. For a small donation of £1, your names into the hat and there are several prizes to win batches of signed books. All info is on the page and the money raised is going to Doctors Without Borders.
Next year will see the debut of the first book in the Age of Dread in October, but in the meantime I'll be busy with events (January in Birmingham at Waterstones), attending Eastercon in April and no doubt other events after that.
In March this year Battlemage comes out in France from my French publisher, Bragelonne. It joins the ranks alongside versions from Orbit and Piper in Germany.
Battlemage is currently available in the UK, USA and lots of other countries around the world in English, but very soon it will also be appearing on French shores. I am delighted to reveal the French cover below and showcase it alongside the Orbit and German covers for comparison.
It is always fascinating for me to see how someone else has interpreted the characters and story. Below are the three covers so far. So, which one do you prefer?


9:00 AM Bus service shifts to operate approximately every twelve minutes.
4:00 PM Bus service shifts back to operate approximately every fifteen minutes.
5:15 PM The last departure from the Shuttle Station heading into the park.
6:00 PM The last departure from the Park Visitor Center heading out of the park.
will be Sunday, October 23rd.


text:
The Top Most Admired Global Mobility Professional in The World!
Dec 21, 2020 @ 06:15 AM / by Rob Zeitz
Global Mobility tax update
AIRINC Global Tax Director Pat Jurgens joined Benivo's 'The View From The Top' hosted by Brian Friedman on December 16th, providing a global mobility tax update during the most exciting episode of the year, as The Most Admired Global Mobility Professional in the World was announced (more on that below).
What's the latest news in global tax?
"Expat Pat" provided a global mobility tax update on possible tax incentives for taking the Covid-19 vaccine, and tax impacts of a potential U.S. stimulus spending.
The show was the final episode of the year and focused on revealing the identity of the Most Admired Global Mobility Professional in the World.
We won't spoil the identity of this person in this post, but we can tell you they have left and continue to leave a tremendous mark on Global Mobility, and joined the show to discuss the journey to reach this point, and what the next steps will be in 2021 and beyond.
Will countries use taxes to incentivize vaccination?
As Covid-19 vaccines are being distributed, what regulations might appear around the world? Will companies regulate their employees being vaccinated? Will airlines not allow passengers to board without their being vaccinated? What if governments used tax incentives to encourage vaccination? These topics sparked a lively conversation among the show's panelists, along with many comments from the audience.
Participate in AIRINC's 30-second pulse survey on how companies will manage vaccines for their assignees by clicking here.
U.S. Stimulus legislation
At the time of airing, the U.S. government was still working on what would be included in an upcoming round of stimulus, as well as funding to avoid a government shutdown. Pat also reminded the audience that stimulus checks sent to them personally are considered tax credits in advance, so the amounts need to be included when filing taxes for 2020.
Upcoming shows and how to access them
The next show will be January 13, 2021. Join Benivo's LinkedIn Live Broadcast every Wednesday at 8am PST, 11am EDT, 4pm BST, 8:30pm IST.
You can join the Livestream each week at www.benivo.com/livestream and you can access all 'The View From The Top' sessions now by clicking below:


Prior to A Rival Battle for Club Champ!
Prior to Jostling for the Junior Cup!
This Pokémon spent between 1 and 4 episodes as Snivy and between 26 and 85 episodes as Servine.
Trip's Serperior (Japanese: シューティーのジャローダ Shooty's Jalorda) is Trip's starter Pokémon.
Serperior was first introduced as a Snivy in Professor Juniper's lab, where he was chosen by Trip as his starter Pokémon in In The Shadow of Zekrom!. Shortly after obtaining him, Trip challenged Ash to a Pokémon battle and used Snivy against Ash's Pikachu. However, Pikachu was unable to use Electric attacks due to an encounter with Zekrom. After enduring Pikachu's Quick Attack and Iron Tail, Snivy was able to defeat his worn-out opponent with Leaf Tornado. Snivy and Trip then left Nuvema Town on a journey through Unova.
In a flashback in A Rival Battle for Club Champ, Cilan recalls that Snivy had evolved into Servine prior to Triple Leaders, Team Threats!, and reveals that he defeated Chili's Pansear in Trip's battle for the Trio Badge. Ash challenged Trip to another Pokémon battle in a Battle Club in A Rival Battle for Club Champ!. He first faced Pikachu again, meeting Pikachu's Iron Tail with Cut and landing a powerful hit with Leaf Tornado. He then managed to stop Pikachu's Volt Tackle and win the match with another Cut. Servine then battled Ash's Snivy, where he dominated the match by dodging her Vine Whip and Leaf Blade attacks before hitting Snivy with another Leaf Tornado. However, he was eventually hit by Snivy's Attract, becoming immobilized by infatuation. It was in this state that Servine was defeated by a frenzy of Snivy's attacks.
Servine appeared again in Ash and Trip's Third Battle! in Trip's three-on-three battle with Ash. He once again battled against Ash's Snivy, starting the match with Leaf Tornado, which proved even to Snivy's Leaf Storm. He then went in for a Cut attack, but Snivy dodged and used Attract. However, Servine was able to defend against the move, this time, with Leaf Tornado. He then stopped Snivy's Leaf Blade and defeated her with Cut.
In Jostling for the Junior Cup!, Servine was shown to have evolved into a Serperior and was used by Trip in the Pokémon World Tournament Junior Cup. In the first round, he went up against Burgundy's Darmanitan and managed to freeze it in place with a Leer. Then, he easily knocked it out with a powerful Solar Beam, giving Trip the win. Then in the next episode, Serperior battled Manning's Heatmor in the second round and won with the same combination. Serperior soon battled Cilan's Crustle in the semifinals, and though Leer proved useless, he hit his opponent with another powerful Solar Beam. After avoiding Crustle's X-Scissor and Rock Slide attacks, Serperior finished the battle with a brutal Frenzy Plant. During the final match in Ash, Iris and Trip: Then There Were Three!, Serperior battled Ash's Pignite, revealing his Dragon Tail attack while avoiding every one of his opponents attacks. He beat Pignite, as he beat Crustle, with a Solar Beam and a Frenzy Plant. As a prize for winning the tournament, Trip and Serperior were granted a battle with Unova champion Alder. Serperior's opponent was Bouffalant and he started the match by launching a Solar Beam attack. Serperior's opponent was revealed to have the Ability Sap Sipper in the episode after, thus taking no damage from the attack. Regardless, Serperior hit his opponent with a Dragon Tail and a Leer attack while Bouffalant just stood there. Serperior's second Dragon Tail sent Bouffalant flying across the field but it quickly recovered and hit Serperior with Head Charge, knocking him out.
In Curtain Up, Unova League!, Trip sent Serperior out during his Vertress Conference preliminary round battle against Ash and his Pikachu. Being very fast and agile, Serperior was easily able to dodge all of Pikachu's attack attempts and strike back with a powerful Dragon Tail. The battle continued in Mission: Defeat Your Rival!. After attacking with an Energy Ball and a barrage of Dragon Tail attacks, Serperior used Wrap, tying Pikachu into an extremely tight grip. Even Pikachu's Thunderbolt proved useless, as Serperior used his tail to conduct the electricity to the ground. Pikachu was struggling to breathe, and Trip told Serperior to slam Pikachu down in order to finish him. Ash, however, was able to come up with a trick, and had Pikachu free himself by using Iron Tail on the field. As Pikachu tried to use another Iron Tail on Serperior, Serperior countered it with a Dragon Tail, and was preparing for another strike, when Ash invented another attack plan, and had Pikachu use a combination of Electro Ball and Iron Tail, which collided with Serperior's Dragon Tail, resulting in a big explosion. After the smoke cleared, Pikachu was still standing, and Serperior quickly fell down, defeated, giving Ash his first victory over Trip and eliminating the latter from the tournament.
As a Snivy, he was quite confident and self-righteous, as seen in In The Shadow of Zekrom! when Trip chose him over the other starter Pokémon, and during the battle with Ash. He has retained this trait after evolving. Serperior's most notable trait as it further evolved is his overwhelming speed, having swept through the entire Junior Cup without being touched once. Also, Serperior has very little trouble dealing with opponents who have a type-advantage, a further testament to his strength.
True to his species norm, Serperior holds his head high pretentiously while fighting and tends to stay elegant at all times. He does not take most opponents seriously, unless said opponent is particularly powerful, as seen in Goodbye, Junior Cup - Hello Adventure! when he was up against Alder's Bouffalant, showing signs of shock when his Dragon Tail didn't phaze his opponent. More signs of his species norm were seen after Serperior was defeated when it was bowing his head to Alder when the Champion talked to him and stroked his chin.
Trip's Serperior made an appearance in the Pokémon World Tournament download that was available for players of the Japanese Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 games from December 3, 2012 to January 31, 2013. The tournament was based on the Vertress Conference in the anime, which was conducted under Single Battle rules.
Servine's evolution into Serperior was first revealed in the Japanese opening Be an Arrow!.
For more information on this Pokémon's species, see Snivy, Servine, and Serperior.
↑ Confirmed in A Rival Battle for Club Champ!.
This page was last edited on 28 January 2019, at 17:14.


MicroOffice helps businesses start small from Jesse D. Leon on Vimeo.
Some small businesses are content to stay based in home-offices or garages, but many are ready to take the next step into professionalism.
"There's a certain level of financial dedication that it takes, and a certain level of mental dedication, of 'I'm doing this,' and when you're at that point, you're ready for office space," said David Rotbard, founder of MicroOffice.
MicroOffice gives its clients a range of options from virtual offices to corner suites with windows, helping many small business grow and put on a more professional appearance. MicroOffice has nine floors in four buildings around Manhattan, including a building blocks away from Pennsylvania Station in Midtown and one overlooking Union Square Park.
With a fancy Manhattan address, a receptionist, kitchen, lobby and conference rooms included in their rent, MicroOffice's tenants find that their vendors, customers and contractors all take them more seriously.
"It gives us the impression of being a much larger company than we are, which is very, very helpful in today's market, while allowing a reasonable rent for a small business to survive and compete," said Jeremy Green, of Futura Power Inc., an energy consulting company, who has a cubicle by the window.
Rotbard said that when he started MicroOffices, he expected it to be a launchpad for small businesses to get their start. He said he was pleasantly surprised to find that some customers stuck with him, like Sokol Brahn, an immigration lawyer who has been renting a cubicle with MicroOffice for six years.
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Jesse, the video was very informative as far what MicroOffice is and how it helps small start up businesses. I liked the interviews you had with David Rotbard. The audio was very clear and I also liked that you were able to get some nat sound from the office like the printing of documents at a cubicle.
The story was clear and you showed how MicroOffice brings professionalism into the lives of some people looking to start a business by having nice shots of the office space. The detail shots of what was in the office like the printers, individual cubicles, kitchen, etc also helped me visualize the space these people were using.
Your audio levels were a little low around 1:53 when Jeremy Green comes in and starts talking about what the space means to him. It didn't match the levels you had when Rotbard and Eva Potter were speaking.
Also, I would have liked to seen some interaction among these people that were in the office. Maybe some of them talking in the kitchen while taking a break or talking by their cubicles. Most of the shots were a bit repetitive like those of the office furniture.
I thought the length could have been a bit shorter, especially towards the end when you shots of Rotbard talking. They were nice shots but I thought they held for too long and needed some broll in between.
I liked your ending, especially since it answers the questions of where he sees MicroOffice to be in the future and how it is currently doing. Maybe if you had some audio of him talking about what kind of small businesses were renting out the space, it would give the viewer an idea of the types of businesses people had. And I was also wondering when MicroOffice opened, I don't think you have that in your video or also in the blog post. Is this something new or have they been around for awhile?
Overall, I thought the piece was clean and very organized. I liked the concept behind MircoOffice and the interviews sharpened the piece and gave a feel of what kind of professionalism MicroOffice can give to its tenants.