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Argument: Recognizing Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's Leader Isn't a Coup. It's an Embrace of Democracy. Recognizing Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's Lea...
Recognizing Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's Leader Isn't a Coup. It's an Embrace of Democracy.
Treating the Maduro regime as illegitimate, sanctioning its top officials, and sending aid despite a blockade will hasten its demise and speed the transition to democratic governance.
By Irwin Cotler, Brandon Silver
| February 6, 2019, 5:43 AM
Venezuela's opposition leader and self-proclaimed acting president Juan Guaidó speaks to the press at the Federal Legislative Palace, in Caracas, on February 4, 2019. (YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images)
The plight of the Venezuelan people has resulted in one of the largest refugee flows in the world today. Millions have fled and are fleeing their homeland—a crisis that is being perpetuated by Nicolás Maduro's corrupt and criminal dictatorship.
While the United Nations sounds the alarm on a critical shortage of basic necessities and the weaponization of food and medicine—resulting in dramatic rises in infant and maternal mortality, starvation, stunted growth, and a staggering resurgence of diseases that were formerly eradicated—Maduro has prevented international relief, blocking humanitarian aid. Rather than allowing the Venezuelan people to express their grievances and exercise their constitutional right to peacefully protest and seek solutions at the ballot box, he instead arrests, imprisons, tortures, and murders them.
Whether from independent Venezuelan organizations such as Foro Penal and the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict, international nongovernmental organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, or intergovernmental organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS) and the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, there is a critical mass of studies on the human rights crisis in Venezuela.
The OAS Panel of Independent International Experts held public hearings and examined all the evidence, publishing a 451-page report that found there are reasonable grounds to conclude that seven major crimes against humanity have been committed against civilians in Venezuela, including mass murder and extrajudicial executions; widespread imprisonment and deprivation of liberty; horrific acts of torture; and the weaponization of rape and sexual violence. A U.N. investigation reached a similar conclusion.
Maduro's brutal and criminal assault on the Venezuelan people is, at its core, an offensive against the liberal democratic order that is meant to protect them. Judges are jailed, the rule of law ruined, and civil society silenced—all while democrats are detained, dispossessed, and disappeared.
In 2017, Maduro arbitrarily convened a "Constituent Assembly," seeking to replace the opposition-controlled and democratically-elected National Assembly. This unconstitutional pseudo-legislature consists entirely of Maduro's supporters and family members, selected in a sham election that even the company running the voting machines for the regime called fraudulent.
In 2018, Maduro had his illegitimate assembly unconstitutionally call a snap presidential election, while unjustly imprisoning or banning any viable opposition candidate. In an unprecedented move, the international community condemned this election as a fraud, with over 50 countries, the OAS, and the European Union refusing to recognize this farcical presidential vote that was neither free nor fair.
Last month, Maduro sought to strike the death knell for Venezuelan democracy, formally inaugurating himself as president, without a mandate. Significantly, the hitherto divided democratic opposition quickly coalesced around Juan Guaidó, the president of the National Assembly—Venezuela's last remaining democratically elected institution—still operating despite Maduro's efforts to replace it.
Guaidó invoked Venezuela's constitutional crisis provisions—Articles 233, 333, and 350—which empower the president of the National Assembly to assume interim presidency of the country to restore the democratic order. He has already begun this process. Guaidó has offered amnesty to any military officers who disobey the dictatorship and has indicated he would do the same for Maduro if he were to allow free and fair elections.
If the leadership of his political party, Voluntad Popular, is any indication, Guaidó's aspirations for the future are likely to bear fruit. First, they found common ground and forged a united front with a famously fractious opposition. Second—and contrary to what the defenders of dictatorship declare—the Voluntad Popular is a progressive and pluralistic political party. Indeed, the charter of this social democratic party calls for an inclusive society, free of discrimination based on "religion, age, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or political opinions." This affirmation found expression in the last election, where the first LGBTQ legislators in Venezuela's history were voted in as part of Voluntad Popular's team, with the internationally renowned transgender human rights lawyer Tamara Adrián among them.
Third, and most importantly for the future of human rights and democracy in Venezuela, the opposition has relied on the courage and commitment of the Venezuelan people. They sustained mass grassroots gatherings throughout Venezuela in the face of violent repression.
Calling Guaidó's nascent government a U.S. coup is as absurd as it is abhorrent. It is to deny the struggle and strength of the Venezuelan people, and the vigor and values of their constitution. It is also to minimize and marginalize the mass mobilization of support and solidarity for the Venezuelan people from the international community of democracies.
It is an understandable point of propaganda that the dictatorship would pursue, given both its anti-Americanism and some of the historically harmful U.S. interventionism in the region. But fostering such a notion in the current circumstances is fantastical, given the peaceful and constitutional character of the Venezuelan people's democratic revolution.
Rather than a regime change emanating from Washington, support for Guaidó has been spearheaded by Venezuela's neighboring democracies and regional figures well-known for their principled human rights leadership, such as Canada's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro. The Lima group of regional states was the first to denounce the dictatorship for Maduro's sham inauguration and renounce their recognition of the regime, well before the U.S. government chose to do so. Likewise, Canada has had a special coordinator for Venezuela for a number of years now, while Washington just appointed such an envoy only last week. Clearly, the United States has not been playing the role Maduro would like the world to believe.
There has indeed been foreign military intervention in Venezuela, just not from the United States. Rather, a community of authoritarian states—Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, Syria—is backing Maduro. Indeed, Putin has been sending Russian mercenaries to support him, on the heels of a visit by nuclear-capable Russian bombers and talk of a joint military base. While diplomatically endorsing and militarily entrenching the Maduro dictatorship, Putin has encouraged pursuing negotiations. But such negotiations without preconditions have already been pursued many times, with many different mediators, always resulting in the Venezuelan people being worse off than before.
There is only one path forward. First, the international community should stand with and strengthen Guaidó's democratic presidency. The critical mass of countries that recognized his rule should rally their allies to do the same. Such recognition could entail the dismissal of the dictatorship's diplomats and the welcoming of Guaidó's envoys for democratic dialogue and strategic support.
Second, countries opposed to Maduro should enact an arms embargo on the dictatorship, including on servicing existing deals and on the sale of dual-use materials.
Third, targeted sanctions against individuals—such as those enabled by Global Magnitsky legislation—should be leveled against Venezuela's architects of repression and their enablers, publicly naming and shaming them, and enforcing travel bans and asset seizures against them. While some states have already undertaken such sanctions, they should coordinate internationally to significantly enlarge and intensify its implementation. This may include listing the family and friends of such officials, who at best live lavish lives abroad fueled by corruption and at worst act as a front to help the main perpetrators evade sanctions.
Fourth, and in this same spirit of justice and accountability, countries should join in the referral of the situation in Venezuela to the International Criminal Court. The ICC has opened a preliminary examination—a major first step toward the prospective prosecution of those responsible—but is woefully understaffed, underfunded, and under pressure from many competing undertakings. Contributions from supportive governments—whether moral or material—can help strengthen the important work of the court.
Finally, while the Maduro dictatorship has blocked humanitarian aid, Guaidó has urgently appealed to the world to supply crucial aid. Friends of Venezuela should heed this call, grounded in the recent U.N. resolution, by organizing a major international convoy of humanitarian aid for the Venezuelan people. It should be launched publicly, prominently, and peacefully, with media encouraged to join and observe. The Venezuelan soldiers guarding the ports of entry and implementing Maduro's cruel blockade—and whose families are also suffering the deprivations wrought by the dictatorship—would be presented with an opportunity to join Guaidó and the U.N. in alleviating the suffering, or the Maduro dictatorship in perpetuating it. Their choice would be broadcast for all to see.
By sending these messages, governments throughout the Americas and the world will make clear that democracy and the people's will will prevail over demagoguery and repression.
Irwin Cotler is the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, the pro bono international legal counsel to imprisoned Venezuelan democratic opposition leader Leopoldo López, a member of the OAS International Panel of Legal Experts on Venezuela, and the chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
Brandon Silver is the director of policy and projects at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and an international advisor to members of the Venezuelan democratic opposition.
Tags: Argument, Canada, Democracy, Latin America, North America, Trump, United States, Venezuela
The Left Keeps Getting Venezuela Wrong
Anti-imperialists prefer a Russian-backed dictator to a public revolt.
James Bloodworth
For Venezuelan Refugees, There's No Safe Haven in Curacao
The former Dutch colony in the Carribean is a member of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. But when it comes to refugees, there's little help from The Hague.
Lizan Nijkrake
Venezuela Unraveled
On the Podcast: A human rights activist describes life under Maduro.


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You are here: Home / Homeschool Resources By Subject / Books in Five in a Row / Follow the Drinking Gourd
Follow the Drinking Gourd
Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeanette Winter
From the bookflap: "Winter's story begins with a peg-leg sailor who aids slaves on their escape on the Underground Railroad. While working for plantation owners, Peg Leg Joe teaches the slaves a song about the drinking gourd (the Big Dipper). A couple, their son, and two others make their escape by following the song's directions. Rich paintings interpret the strong story in a clean, primitive style enhanced by bold colors. The rhythmic compositions have an energetic presence that's compelling. A fine rendering of history in picturebook format."
Author: Jeanette Winter
Website for Jeanette Winter
Other books by Jeanette Winter
📂 Units, Activities, and Resources for Follow the Drinking Gourd
Quilt to Freedom
Students will gain understanding of a portion of African-American history. They will explore the concepts of slavery, respect, and giving time or talent to improve the lives of others. Grades K,1,2
Follow the Drinking Gourd Classroom Guide
Created as an on-site for the Northern Stars Planetarium (Grades 1-3)
Underground Railroad--People Get Ready...There's a Train a Comin'
Students will recognize that philanthropy is a vital part of the African American History through the roles individuals played in the Underground Railroad. Grades 3,4,5
Discovering the Underground Railroad
Junior Ranger Activity Book from the National Parks Service
Teachers' Guide to Follow the Drinking Gourd
Follow the Drinking Gourd is a book featured in Five in a Row, a literature-based unit study curriculum. Many families use FIAR for all but the grammar/reading and math, and others use it in conjunction with other resources. Above is information about the author and illustrator, story summaries, and links to lesson plans and websites that are great go-alongs for Follow the Drinking Gourd. Please note that these resources are meant to complement, not replace, the Five in a Row units. The Five in a Row volumes are inexpensive and well worth the investment.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


While the way we conduct business may have changed a lot over the last ten years, the basic principles of business remain the same. For your business to succeed, you need a solid marketing strategy. Whether that marketing is based on traditional methods such as direct mail, or twists on traditional methods such as automated voice broadcasting, you still need to get your message out there. Are you using all of the marketing tools at your disposal to their full effect?
Email marketing is an often misunderstood tool. When most people think of email marketing, they think of spam, but in truth there are ways to run interesting and effective email campaigns. One good example of an effective email campaign is the mailing list run by Innocent Drinks. This UK based company produces interesting, funny, and informative email messages that subscribers actually look forward to. What better way to make people remember (and love) your brand?
SMS marketing is not exactly a new technique, but it's only recently seen mainstream adoption. SMS messages are more likely to be read than emails, and are great for sending time-sensitive marketing messages. If you add value to your messages (for example sending weather updates or sports scores along with your promotional message) then you can see a strong response from this kind of marketing.
Why spend a fortune on a magazine campaign when you can get people to spread the word about your company for free via social media? So called "viral" campaigns are highly sought after in the world of marketing. It takes a skilled designer to put together a message that people will want to share, but when you find that kind of message, you can expect your business to become a household name pretty quickly.
Gone are the days when telephone marketing required armies of call centre workers dialling phones manually. With voice broadcasting, you can automate the dialling of your list of numbers, and play a targeted message to each number, with the system detecting whether the call is answered by a human, an answerphone, or a fax machine. This system is powerful, efficient, and cost effective.
You'll still need some call centre staff to talk to people that decide they're interested in the product or service you're advertising, however the automated dialling will save those people from having to do the dull job of calling a huge list of numbers that may or may not get answered.
Street teams are incredibly popular with brands that target students and young graduates. They're a great way to get your name out there as a young, energetic and exciting brand. Street teams are usually used to advertise events, bands, and low cost products such as drinks or foods – free samples are often given out as part of the process. However, some companies have had success with using street teams for high value products. For example, Microsoft took to the streets to advertise Windows Phone 8 devices, and attracted a lot of attention with their "dare" competition.
This guest post was submitted by Amy Fowler on behalf of Collstream, who offer services including voice broadcasting and SMS marketing.


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Are you hesitant to let yourself get hooked on energy-based aesthetic treatments? Perhaps you are worried about pain, the time involved, lack of results, or the cost. Whatever the reason, sounds like you suffer from "Skinhibitions," a phrase coined by aesthetic device company Syneron to describe a fear of cosmetic procedures that could enhance your skin's appearance.
Sublative Rejuvenation with ematrix, a new treatment protocol from Syneron, is just the thing to calm your fears. A radiofrequency (RF) energy treatment, Sublative targets a gamut of concerns including signs of aging skin such as skin laxity, lines and wrinkles, and changing skin texture. In addition, it's fabulous for reducing moderate to severe acne scars, even those that get worse with age. And the good news is that Sublative requires minimal downtown, causes little pain, is clinically proven to be safe and effective, and is actually affordable for most patients.
Sublative uses elos technology, a mechanism for delivering radiofrequency energy to the skin in a fractional manner, which was co-developed by Eckhouse. Sublative works by directing RF energy to the dermis, bypassing the outer layers of the skin, and causing no visible damage. When RF heats the dermis it triggers a healing response that results in strengthened collagen and elastin. The RF is delivered in a fractional manner, which means the energy is administered with a multi-electrode pin in a grid pattern, heating some skin, and leaving other areas untouched, a process that speeds healing.
Light-based devices have been evolving ever since the first lasers were used by dermatologists in the 1990s. "We are now at the point where we can make significant changes in the skin without downtime," said Thomas Rohrer, MD, a leading laser dermatologist from Massachusetts. As we age, collagen and elastin break down and the skin doesn't bounce back in a youthful way, resulting in laxity and wrinkles. The injury caused by the RF causes the skin to heal more smoothly and stronger. Acne scars too are reduced during the healing process.
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Generally three to four Sublative treatments spaced one month apart are required for maximum results. Prices per individual session range between $500 and $750, based upon your location and the area treated. Depending upon the state, a physician or a medical professional supervised by a physician can administer the Sublative treatment. For aging conditions, maintenance sessions will be required, as the skin will continue to change because of age. However, the treatment of acne has a long term effect.
For more information about Sublative, visit: Sublativeskin.com.
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Facebook, Faebook IPO, News
Facebook IPO: A Gold-Mine?
Posted by Eta Uso Jr ⋅ May 4, 2012 ⋅ Leave a comment
Filed Under Facebook Initial Public Offering, Facebook IPO
Facebook Inc. (FB)'s $11.8 billion initial public offering (IPO), will cement the status of 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg as one of the world's richest men and put his social network among the highest-valued companies in the U.S.
Facebook is offering about 337.4 million shares for $28 to $35 each, according to a regulatory filing yesterday. At the upper end of that range, the co-founder's stake would be $17.6 billion, making him richer than Microsoft Corp.'s Steve Ballmer and Russian steel billionaire Vladimir Lisin, who are both twice his age, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Zuckerberg, who began the service for Harvard classmates as a 19-year-old in his dorm room, built Facebook into the most popular social-networking site in the world, topping 900 million users last quarter.
The Facebook CEO plans to sell 30.2 million shares of his stake in the social network when it publicly offers its stock later this month. If the company's IPO prices at the top of its $28 to $35 per-share range, Zuckerberg would pocket a "cool" $1.1 billion.
However, most of that cash will go straight to Uncle Sam and California. Zuckerberg plans to partially exercise a major stock options grant, and will use almost all of the cash he raises from his IPO sale to pay off the taxes on that maneuver.
Facebook, while preparing for the IPO, has remained active on other fronts. After being sued by Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) in March for patent infringement, the company has been looking to buy intellectual property from other owners of it. Facebook plans to spend $550 million on some of the patents Microsoft had earlier said it would purchase from AOL Inc.
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charters, commercial schools, Democracy, Education, Privatization, Public Education, school choice
Graham Keegan is "Very Pleased" With DeVos…What a Shock!
I started reading Thomas Friedman's latest book this morning, "Thank You for Being Late, An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations." I'm only in the second chapter, but in it he credits Craig Mundy, former Chief of Strategy and Research at Microsoft, with using the terms "disruption" and "dislocation" when speaking about the effect of acceleration. Mundy defines "disruption" as, "what happens when someone does something clever that makes you or your company look obsolete. "Dislocation" is the next step — "when the rate of change exceeds the ability to adapt.
I argue the education reform movement has been working hard for some time now to disrupt truly public education; to find "something clever" that makes district education look obsolete. Unfortunately for them, the results haven't quite matched up to the rhetoric. While school choice advocates like to promote the "magic of the marketplace thinking," they just don't have a good track record of improving overall student achievement. And yet, Lisa Graham Keegan, Executive Director of A for Arizona & Glenn Hamer, President & CEO of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry fall all over themselves in an exuberant support piece for Trump's Secretary of Education (SecED) nominee, Betsy DeVos. They are "very pleased with her nomination" writing that it, "signals a shift in the conversation around education policy in exactly the right way." Let's be real. What they are really hoping is that if confirmed, Betsy DeVos will propel the commercialization of district community schools at a "rate of change" that "exceeds the ability to adapt", i.e., that it will cause "dislocation."
Tulane University's Douglas Harris argues though that, "The DeVos nomination is a triumph of ideology over evidence that should worry anyone who wants to improve results for children." That's because the evidence from DeVos' backyard is far from pro-commercialization. Michigan has become a Mecca for school choice over the past 23 years and its charters are among the most-plentiful and least-regulated in the nation. Approximately 80% of Michigan's 300 publicly funded charters are operated by for-profit companies, more than any other state. Yet, a 2015 federal review of Michigan's charters found an 'unreasonably high' percentage that were underperforming. In response, DeVos and friends successfully defeated state legislation "that would have prevented failing charter schools from expanding or replicating." By doing so, they enabled the doubling of charter schools on the list of lowest performing and the competition she's driven has district and charter schools fighting over students, ensuring no one thrives. Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, writes that DeVos has long been, "working in Michigan to undermine public schools and to divide communities. And now—she's poised to swing her Michigan wrecking ball all across America."
DeVos' "wrecking ball" isn't just about using charters to do the "disrupting and dislocating", but virtual schools and vouchers as well. In fact, Rachel Tabachnick, a researcher, writer and speaker on the impact of the Religious Right on policy and politics, calls her "the four star general of the voucher movement." Tabachnick, no doubt like many others, is concerned that DeVos will gleefully work to make good on Trump's promise of $20 billion for school choice, by siphoning off Title I funds designed to help the most vulnerable kids to the benefit of wealthy families for private and religious schools. There are real doubts among many though, that even if the money were available, Trump's voucher idea (had typed "plan", but I don't think Trump is big on those) just won't work. Current SecED John King said, "Vouchers, I don't think, are a scalable solution to the challenges that we face in public education, and I think (they) have the potential to distract us from focusing on how we strengthen public education." Teacher and writer Retired Professor and writer, Joseph Natoli writes, "Unless we deconstruct the narrative that privatized schools somehow have uncovered the secret to how humans learn and have a monopoly on the most effective ways to implement that knowledge, we are allowing false assertions to stand." Natoli also writes, "Weakening public education to the point that privatization looks like rescue is accomplished by funding that is decreased when tax funds are siphoned off to for-profit charter [or private] schools."
Most of us also understand, as Steven M Singer, blogger at gadflyonthewallblog writes, that school choice "privileges the choice of some and limits the choices of others." This is bad he posits, because district schools "pool all the funding for a given community in one place. By doing so, they can reduce the cost and maximize the services provided." Adding parallel systems increases the costs thereby providing less for the same money. "Public [district] schools are designed to educate. Corporate schools are designed to profit" Singer notes, and eloquently writes, "Instead of fixing the leak in our public school system, advocates prescribe running for the lifeboats. We could all be sailing on a strong central cruise-liner able to meet the demands of a sometimes harsh and uncaring ocean together. Instead we're told to get into often leaky escape craft that even under the best of circumstances aren't as strong as the system we're abandoning."
Mitchell Robinson at ecletablog.com, believes DeVos' "ultimate goal, appears to be a two-tiered educational system." One, a system of well-funded elite private and religious schools with highly qualified teachers and a rich curriculum for wealthy whites and another of "fly by night" virtual and for-profit charters with little to no regulation or oversight, and a bare bones, "back to basics" curriculum delivered by unqualified and uncertified "teachers".
Back in Arizona though, Graham Keegan and Hamer write that DeVos is not a "gradual improvement" kind of leader, but a "true reformer who believes in immediate transformation of lives through quality education because she sees it happening. (One might ask where, since it ain't in her home state of Michigan.) Of course, they follow that up with "we're optimistic that under Mrs. DeVos' leadership we can take a national break from seeking to impose improvement from on high…" Her soon to be boss though, doesn't seem to want to give up the bully pulpit to affect change saying, "There's no failed policy more in need of urgent change than our government-run education monopoly. "It is time to break up that monopoly." His words are of course, hyperbolic and untrue, as government is not the sole provider of K-12 education, nor is competition prohibited by law.
What is not hyperbole, is that DeVos and other elites understand that truly public education helps make the American Dream possible. That's why they are fighting so hard to dismantle it. "Educator Stan Karp argued that what is ultimately at stake in school reform debates is "whether the right to a free public education for all children is going to survive as a fundamental democratic promise in our society, and whether the schools and districts needed to provide it are going to survive as public institutions, collectively owned and democratically managed – however imperfectly by all of us as citizens. Or will they be privatized and commercialized by the corporate interests that increasingly dominate all aspects of our society?"
This fight is not just about what kind of schools America's children attend and who pays for it. It is also about weakening the power of our Democracy and its people. Will we continue to be a nation "of the people, by the people, for the people" or will the oligarchy turn us into a caste or feudal system where only a few have a say and the rest of us serve? If you want to continue to have a say in our Democracy, exercise it today by clicking here to contact your U.S. Senators today and tell them to vote "NO" on the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as America's next SecEd. Then stand at the ready, because the cause is just and the fight is far from over.
NOTE: For those of you who may know me as a member of the Oracle School District Governing Board, I want to make it clear that these views are my own and do not represent the views of the Governing Board of the Oracle School District.
Graham Keegan
← Trump stars in contemporary version of "Gaslight"
Money matters, maybe it's just public education that doesn't? →
2 thoughts on "Graham Keegan is "Very Pleased" With DeVos…What a Shock!"
I want, I want. Please cross-post.
I don't recall seeing you at the media event on Saturday. We really should get together sometime.
Thanks Bill! Holly's Mom had taken a little tumble and needed watching so she didn't want to go. (Did you know she is the AZ Dems Senior Vice Chair? Then with the weather as it was, I didn't feel like coming on my own. And yes, we do need to meet.


Sleep: it's essential for our health, mental well-being, work productivity, quality of life…the list continues. Identifying sleep issues, however, can be a long and difficult process. Why? Sleep is difficult to measure, which means it's hard to generate the data that's necessary in order to better understand and address sleep problems. Why is it difficult to measure? According to Roy Raymann, Ph.D., true measurements of sleep—those that are more objective than simple questionnaires—are obtrusive, requiring multiple sensors on the brain, face, wrists, etc., which neglects the fact that comfort is a crucial element of good sleep.
On today's podcast, you'll learn about a new form of technology 13 years in the making that could very well change the way sleep is studied from here on out. Among other accomplishments, Dr. Raymann has conducted research in sleep science for more than 25 years, his work has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals, and he currently serves as Vice President of Sleep Science and Scientific Affairs at SleepScore Labs. He discusses the ins and outs of SleepScore's technology, which utilizes sounds waves, algorithms, and a whole lot of data processing to detect and translate micro-movements during sleep into useful data about sleep quality. All that's required is a small bedside device, which means no annoying sensors tacked to your head and no wires in your bed.


We are currently looking to grow our already established and dedicated team of care assistants at Potton House in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, part of Priory Adult Care.
Potton House is designed for older people with dementia. The home provides a specialist nursing service for individuals with a diagnosis of mid-late stage dementia, working in conjunction with Central Bedfordshire PCT and Local Authorities.
Please call Potton House on 01767 317289 if you'd like an informal discussion. We're also recruiting for Bank Care Assistants, so please still get in touch if this may be more suitable for you.


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"Песен за Хайауата" () е епична поема на американския поет Хенри Уадсуорт Лонгфелоу, публикувана през 1855 година.

Сюжетът е повлиян от индианския фолклор и описва историята на Хайауата, воин от народа оджибве, и трагичната му любов към жена от друго племе. Издадена в Бостън на 10 ноември 1855 година, поемата придобива широка известност и е сочена за едно от емблематичните произведения на американската литература от епохата, наред с "Алената буква" на Натаниел Хоторн.

"Песен за Хайауата" е издавана на български през 1979 година в превод на Сидер Флорин и през 2005 година в превод на Любен Прангов.

Бележки

Епоси
Американска литература
Книги от 1855 година

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Amisoli Patasoni (February 27, 1901 – January 4, 1962) was an American long-distance runner. He competed in the men's 10,000 metres at the 1920 Summer Olympics. Patasoni was a member of the Zuni Nation and attended Haskell Institute.

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External links

1901 births
1962 deaths
Athletes (track and field) at the 1920 Summer Olympics
American male long-distance runners
Olympic track and field athletes of the United States
Track and field athletes from New Mexico
People from McKinley County, New Mexico
Native American sportspeople
Pueblo people
Haskell Indian Nations University alumni
Olympic cross country runners
20th-century Native Americans


Choosing your new apartment is important. It's where you'll host your first holiday party with your friends. It's where you'll study for the first class that inspires you to achieve your dreams. Your new apartment is responsible for the memories you'll look back on fondly for years to come. Hale Mahana wants to be there for you.
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This 4 Bedroom 2 Bathroom Unit Features Bedrooms with Twin-Size, Extra-Long Beds.
This 4 Bedroom 2 Bathroom Unit Features Bedrooms with Full-Size or Full-Size, Extra-Long Beds.
This is the Double Occupancy room within the 3x2 4 Person Unit. This Room Has Two Twin-Size XL Beds.
This is the Double Occupancy room within the 3x2 4 Person Unit. This Room HAS Two Full or Full XL Beds.
THIS IS THE DOUBLE OCCUPANCY ROOM WITHIN THE 3X2 4 PERSON MOKU UNIT. THIS ROOM HAS TWO TWIN XL BEDS.
THIS IS THE SINGLE OCCUPANCY ROOM WITHIN THE 3X2 4 PERSON MOKU UNIT. THIS ROOM HAS ONE TWIN XL BED.
The Single Occupancy Bedrooms Within this Unit Feature Twin, Extra-Long Beds.
This is the Single Occupancy Bedroom within the 3x2 4 Person Unit.
ALL BEDROOMS IN THIS FLOOR PLAN ARE SINGLE, PRIVATE BEDROOMS. BECAUSE OF THE BEDROOM SIZES, A PREMIUM APPLIES TO THE LARGER BEDROOM.
Both bedrooms in this floor plan are single Occupancy, private bedrooms.
Both bedrooms in this floor plan are single, private bedrooms. Because of the bedroom sizes, a premium applies to the larger bedroom.
This bedroom is a double occupancy, shared bedroom. The other bedroom in this unit is a single occupancy, private bedroom.
This bedroom is a single occupancy, private bedroom. The other bedroom in this unit is a double occupancy, shared bedroom.
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This is a Single Occupancy Unit.


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text:
"You Got Nothing I Want" is a 1981 single from Australian rock band Cold Chisel, the first released from the album Circus Animals. One of the band's heaviest and most aggressive songs, it was written by singer Jimmy Barnes in response to the treatment they received at the hands of a record company executive during a U.S. tour earlier in the year. Don Walker said, "After we came back, Jim wrote 'You Got Nothing I Want' more or less as a personal tribute to Marty Schwartz." "You Got Nothing I Want" was also the first song on the album and representative of the different sound Cold Chisel was attempting on Circus Animals in a conscious effort to move away from the slick commercial pop rock of East. It spent 19 weeks in the national charts, peaking at number 12.

Producer Opitz said, "Musically, 'You Got Nothing I Want' was inspired by the Rolling Stones' 'Start Me Up'. The Stones Tattoo You was Australia's number one album when we entered the studio and Mossy would tune up by playing the riff. I'm sure if you put the start of 'Start Me Up' at the start of 'You Got Nothing I Want' it would work perfectly."

A video clip was made for the song. Directed by Peter Cox, who had previously directed the "Cheap Wine" video, it featured the band miming in the wooden-floored Paddington Town Hall.

On the 2007 tribute album Standing on the Outside: The Songs of Cold Chisel, "You Got Nothing I Want" was covered by Alex Lloyd.

Reception
Allmusic describes Barnes' vocals as sounding like, "a buzz saw blade that's flown loose and ripped through a bunch of parked cars. The boys come crashing in through the window like a bunch of rowdies with hell-raising on their minds, cranking out the guitar rock rottweiler."

Rip It up describes the song as, "a crunching rocker, and one wonders why he's contributed so few songs to their repertoire".

Andrew McMillan wrote in RAM, the song was, "complete with single camera clip and appropriately brutal delivery. Without compromising their own concept of a rock'n'roll band, they spat at the acknowledged life-support system with defiance."

Charts

Weeklt charts

Year-end charts

References

Cold Chisel songs
1981 songs
Warner Music Group singles
Songs written by Jimmy Barnes
Song recordings produced by Mark Opitz


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After Two Decades, a Chinese Kidnapping Victim Is Reunited with His Family
By Austin Ramzy Oct. 23, 2012
Michael Christopher Brown for TIME
The tale of Zhou Chengliang, photographed for the Nov. 22, 2010, issue of TIME Asia, reflects a dark side of China's development
Four or five years after their youngest son was kidnapped, the Zhou family gave up hope of ever seeing him again. They would still regularly visit the police in their hometown of Zunyi in southwest China and ask if there was any news on the case. But with little money or influence, there was slim hope that the missing boy, Zhou Chengliang, would someday be found amid the thousands of children kidnapped each year in China.
Last year the family decided to try again. More than two decades had passed since that October 1988 day when their son was taken by two strangers. In that time memories had faded and clues disappeared, but other lines of inquiry had emerged. "We felt that technology had become so developed that we should see what happened if we put something online," says Zhou's older brother, Zhou Yong. "We had always gone to the Public Security Bureau and asked. Every year we went to see if there was news, but there never was. So we decided to do it on our own."
The results were stunning. Within three hours of posting the information online, the Zhous were contacted by a volunteer from Baby Come Home, a website that helps reunite families with missing loved ones. "We were very excited, but it wasn't confirmed," says Zhou Yong. "So much time had already passed, more than 20 years. Some friends and family felt so much time had passed, there was no way he was still alive."
(MORE: In Their Hands: The 250 Million Chinese Born Since 1980 Have Seen the Future)
He was alive, though. His last name was now Huang, and he was no longer the terrified 6-year-old Zhou Yong had last seen being led away by a stranger, but a grown man with a job, a wife and a daughter who was seeking the family he had lost so long ago. I met Zhou Chengliang in 2010, not long after he had begun his own quest to uncover his past, and wrote about his search for TIME Asia. At that time, his childhood recollections were hazy:
He remembers playing in the countryside — a place where farmers grew wheat and snow fell in the winter. There was a house filled with many families who would wash clothes together outside or sit and gossip in their shared courtyard. Someone may have even had a television, though that bit is hazy. His parents ran a noodle stall, and his father would give him dried beef to eat on the walk to school. He wasn't a great student, and the teacher would criticize his classwork. He remembers an older brother who looked out for him until, in the end, he couldn't. And he even recalls his former name, Zhou Chengliang, though he still can't figure out who he is, or where in the vast nation of China he is from.
Speaking with Zhou's elder brother recently, it was chilling to hear his disappearance story once again, only told from the perspective of an older child with a precise image of what happened, even though it occurred more than 20 years ago.
"Do you remember that day?" I asked him.
"Do I remember that day?" Zhou Yong replied. "How could I not remember? It's the deepest memory of my entire life. I'll tell you about it. Our family was very poor. We lived in the countryside and came to the city to do business. My mother had gone home for the harvest, while my dad and my brother and I were living in Zunyi, in the city. We went to school in the city. Every day we had a little pocket money, not a lot, just a couple of cents. After we had spent our money we decided to return home. We were walking along a river. We came to Dingzikou and thought we'd look around and then go home. Then someone came up and said they knew our family."
"They said, 'What are you two doing here?'"
"I said, 'We just got out of school and we're going home.'"
"They replied, 'Do you want something to eat?'"
"We were really hesitant because our parents told us not to talk to strangers. But we were really hungry. My little brother had come to Zunyi a year before me, so there were a lot of people who knew him that I didn't know. I thought if he recognized them then it was fine."
(MORE: Big Brotherhood: Xi Jingping, China's Next President)
The couple separated Zhou Yong from his brother, then took the younger boy on a multiday bus, train and boat trip to coastal China, where he was sold to a family in Fujian province. His life there was difficult at first. He was treated poorly and given less food than the family's own children. The family told him that his life would have been even worse had they not bought him.
In Zunyi, Zhou Chengliang's family anguished over his disappearance. "At that point, we had pretty much fallen apart," says Zhou Yong. "Especially my mother, she took it the worst. My father, his attitude was that there was nothing to be done. He tried to comfort her. We were so poor, what could we do? We organized everyone we knew to search, but we couldn't find him." At times Zhou Yong, who is two years older than his brother, would venture out on his own, taking train trips in hopes of tracking down Zhou Chengliang. In Fujian, Zhou Chengliang would try to escape, taking off for days in hopes of finding the home he couldn't clearly remember. But the two boys — separated by 1,100 miles (1,770 km) and a vast gulf of mystery — never found each other. Not until two decades later, when blood ties began to exert their powers once again. The birth of Zhou Chengliang's daughter inspired him to renew his search. "Seeing my own daughter's infant gurgling slowly turn into speech has made me think of how my own parents must have once raised me," he wrote in an online plea. "I can't help but long for them."
He posted what he remembered of his childhood and kidnapping on several local government websites, then on larger nonprofit sites dedicated to reuniting families. Volunteers for Baby Come Home tracked down dozens of leads — 59 possible matches by one count — but they all came up empty until Zhou's family posted their own plea online in April 2011. After years of waiting, it took just a few short hours for a volunteer to match the names. A DNA test sponsored by Shandong Satellite TV confirmed that he was the Zhous' missing son. "I was really moved," says Zhou Chengliang of finally finding his family. "I was filled with such emotion."
(MORE: Can China Successfully Educate Its Future Workforce?)
Zhou says that while he is deeply angered at being kidnapped as a child, he is thankful to the family who raised him. Despite his difficult early years in Fujian, he learned to get along with his new family, and they helped pay for his education. He still visits them regularly, and his birth family has spoken with his family in Fujian as well. "They gave my father in Fujian a phone call. They were really grateful because they raised me," Zhou says. "They thanked them for taking such good care of me."
China has tried to stem the kidnapping of children, which is driven in part by efforts to get around the country's one-child policy. The government has announced multiple crackdowns, and reported that 8,660 children had been rescued last year. In Zunyi, police busted a child-kidnapping ring last year that saw 18 suspects arrested and 17 children freed. But no figure for the total number of kidnapping victims has been published in recent years, and most of those rescued had only been recently abducted. As time passes, reuniting children with their families becomes more difficult. The indifference of local police and a sometimes tolerant attitude toward kidnapping perpetuates the problem. Charlie Custer, an American who co-directed Living with Dead Hearts, an upcoming documentary on child kidnapping in China, said one of his film's subjects knew he was abducted as a child, but no one in his new home raised the alarm. "Everybody in that place was accepting of the fact that a family had purchased a kid, or at least they weren't going to do anything," Custer says.
While his successful quest to find his family has satisfied so many of his own questions about the past, Zhou Chengliang says he has little hope that the scourge of child kidnapping will soon diminish. "In the Chinese system, there's nothing you can do about it," he says. "For so many years this has been happening, and people still aren't willing to face up to it."
PHOTOS: TIME's Pictures of the Week


70%48°31°Mostly sunny with a high of 49 °F (9.4 °C). Winds from WNW to NW.Night - Mostly clear. Winds variable at 2 to 7 mph (3.2 to 11.3 kph). The overnight low will be 34 °F (1.1 °C).
65%47°28°Snow today with a high of 47 °F (8.3 °C) and a low of 28 °F (-2.2 °C). There is a 65% chance of precipitation.
25%44°35°Partly cloudy today with a high of 44 °F (6.7 °C) and a low of 35 °F (1.7 °C). There is a 25% chance of precipitation.
60%42°29°Rain and snow today with a high of 42 °F (5.6 °C) and a low of 29 °F (-1.7 °C). There is a 60% chance of precipitation.
55%37°31°Rain and snow today with a high of 37 °F (2.8 °C) and a low of 31 °F (-0.6 °C). There is a 55% chance of precipitation.
Today - Mostly sunny with a high of 49 °F (9.4 °C). Winds from WNW to NW.
Tonight - Mostly clear. Winds variable at 2 to 7 mph (3.2 to 11.3 kph). The overnight low will be 34 °F (1.1 °C).


We've been doing this for 31 days already. 31 days went by pretty quickly. What have you done in the last 31 days? You've had victories, you've had setbacks. You've talked to people and showed appreciation for people.
Sometimes we get so overwhelmed by the future and say, "A year is such a long time." or "I can't wait that long." Yet that time comes and you've arrived. This journey is similar. You have a life to live and you need to focus on what is going on as you move forward because when you look back you'll be able to see how far you come. It may not seem like much while you're in it, but a week, a month, a year down the road, you'll see how far you've come.
Find encouragement in the amount of time has passed since this program began. Let it strengthen you to continue to grow, to fight, to work together with others, and to continue to feed the good wolf every day.
B. In the Fortify Program, Update the battle tracker. Go to Week 5. Check out, "S.T.A.R. Part 2" and "Have You Ever Urge Surfed?"
D. Journal the following: 1. When you started 31 days ago, what did you imagine life would be like 31 days later? 2. Is anything different? Have you changed at all? 3. What will 31 days from now look like?
Today's Tips: When the urges come get up. Stop. Breathe. Pray. Take a walk. Think about a friendship that means a lot to you, or a friendship you would like to rekindle.


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Q: Updating woocommerce Shipping Method via ajax I am building a food ordering website using Wordpress and Woocommerce. So far I have been doing good but got stuck at one point where the Shipping method should be chosen automatically.
What is the flow like? The user visits my websites and enters the zip code of delivery address and then my website shows the restaurants which deliver in that zip code. Some restaurants deliver in that zip code in less time and less shipping charges but some take more time and take more shipping charges.
What I have done so far is that I fetch the shipping codes from the database any restaurant delivers to. If the user's zip code doesn't exist in the list we alert else we move forward.
Next step is to fetch all the restaurants that deliver in that zip code in less delivery time and then restaurants that deliver in that zip code in more delivery time. Based on less or more delivery time I mark the user in Zone A or Zone B respectively.
I have flat rate shipping methods created for Zone A and Zone B which can be selected from the drop down in the Cart/Checkout Page. Now here it what the trouble is.
The user shouldn't select what the shipping rate would be. It should be automatically selected and applied based on what Zone the user has been marked into.
This automatic updating is not what I am able to achieve.
What I have tried?
The right process should be to put this Zone into Woocommerce session and it should be picked automatically and applied when the user reaches the cart or checkout page.
I am not able to find the right method to call which could trigger the ajax call to update shipping. Any ideas would be helpful.
Regards
Similar Thread on Stackoverflow

A: Use $(body).trigger('update_checkout'); in your JS. This will fire off a request to WC_AJAX->update_order_review, which will then pick up all the form data in the checkout area. If you need to pass any custom data, add a hidden input to the checkout and it should allow you to pass a value along through the $_POST data.
From there, if you need to mess with available methods and the session settings, you can do what I did and overwrite the shipping_html function in cart-shipping.php, like so.
function woo_new_cart_shipping_html()
{
  global $woocommerce;

  $data_stream = extract_data_from_str( $_POST['post_data'] );

  $packages      = $woocommerce->shipping->get_packages();
  $chosen_method = isset( $woocommerce->session->chosen_shipping_methods[0] ) ? $woocommerce->session->chosen_shipping_methods[0] : '';

  foreach ( $packages as $i => $package )
  {
     $methods = apply_filters( 'woo_filter_available_methods_by_date',     $package['rates'], $data_stream );

     wc_get_template( 'cart/cart-shipping.php', array('package' => $package,
                                                 'available_methods' =>      apply_filters( 'woo_sort_shipping_methods_by_cost', $methods ),
                                                 'show_package_details' => ( sizeof( $packages ) > 1 ),
                                                 'index' => $i,
                                                 'chosen_method' =>  apply_filters( 'woo_set_lowest_shipping_method', $chosen_method, $methods, $data_stream ) ) );

  }
}

This is update proof, and it will let you customize that template by adding filters.
As for resetting the session to correspond with the selected method, I don't have an answer for you, unfortunately, as I'm still wrestling with that exact problem myself.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


The SCOVIS (Self-Configurable Cognitive Video Supervision) project investigated improved versatility and performance of monitoring systems.
The results enable the easy installation of intelligent supervision systems, which was not previously possible due to the prohibitively high manual effort and the inability to model complex visual processes. The results have been evaluated through realistic scenarios related to industry and public infrastructure.
The SCOVIS project was a 35 month project funded by the EC FP7 framework programme.
SCOVIS received EC research funding.


QUESTION: My association refuses to accept cash for payment of assessments. I thought U.S. currency was legal tender for all debts.
I thought that United States currency was legal tender for all debts. Some businesses or governmental agencies say that they will only accept checks, money orders or credit cards as payment, and others will only accept currency notes in denominations of $20 or smaller. Isn't this illegal?
The pertinent portion of law that applies to your question is the Coinage Act of 1965, specifically Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled "Legal tender," which states: "United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues."


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Q: Does the order of the pixels drawn depend on the indices in glDrawElements? I'm drawing several alpha-blended triangles that overlap with a single glDrawElements call.
The indices list the triangles back to front and this order is important for the correct visualization.
Can I rely on the result of this operation being exactly the same as when drawing the triangles in the same order with distinct draw calls?
I'm asking this because I'm not sure whether some hardware would make some kind of an optimization and use the indices only for the information about the primitives that are drawn and disregard the actual primitive order.

A: Yes, you can rely on the order being the same as specified in the index array, and that fragments will be correctly blended with the results of triangles specified earlier in the array.
I cannot find a reference for this, but my UI rendering code relies on this behaviour (and I think it is a common technique).

A: To second GuyRT's answer, I looked through the GL4.4 core spec:
glDrawElements is described as follows (emphasis mine):

This command constructs a sequence of geometric primitives by
  successively transferring elements for count vertices to the GL.

In section  2.1, on can find the following statement (emphasis mine):

Commands are always processed in the order in which they are received,
  [...] This means, for example, that one primitive must be drawn
  completely before any subsequent one can affect the framebuffer.

One might read this as only valid for primitves rendered through different draw calls (commands), however, in 7.12.1, there is some further confirmation for the more general interpretation  reading for that statement (again, my emphasis):

The relative order of invocations of the same shader type are
  undefined. A store issued by a shader when working on primitive B
  might complete prior to a store for primitive A, even if primitive A
  is specified prior to primitive B. This applies even to fragment
  shaders; while fragment shader outputs are written to the framebuffer
  in primitive order, stores executed by fragment shader invocations are
  not.

A: To my knowledge OpenGL makes no statement about the order of triangles rendered within a single draw call of any kind.  It would be counterproductive of it to do so, because it would place undesirable constraints on implementations.
Consider that modern rendering hardware is almost always multi-processor, so the individual triangles from a draw call are almost certainly being rendered in parallel.  If you need to render in a particular order for alpha blending purposes, you need to break up your geometry.  Alternatively you could investigate the variety of order independent transparency algorithms out there.


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John Ioannidis has dedicated his life to quantifying how science is broken
By Julia Belluz@juliaoftoronto Feb 16, 2015, 9:10am EST
Share All sharing options for: John Ioannidis has dedicated his life to quantifying how science is broken
Medical research is in bad shape. Fraud, bias, sloppiness, and inefficiency are everywhere, and we now have studies that quantify the size of the problem.
We know that about $200 billion — or the equivalent of 85 percent of global spending on research — is routinely wasted on poorly designed and redundant studies. We know that as much as 30 percent of the most influential original medical research papers later turn out to be wrong or exaggerated. We also know that a lot of medical evidence is contradictory and unreliable, such as those studies that purport to show that just about every food we eat either causes or prevents cancer.
(Courtesy of John Ioannidis)
What all this means, says Stanford University professor Dr. John Ioannidis, is that most published research findings are false.
If medical research is hopelessly flawed, Ioannidis is the superhero poised to save it. For the past two decades, the physician-academic has used meta-research — or research on research — to document the ways science veers away from the truth by way of bias, error, and outright fraud. (He was involved in most all the research cited above.)
He says he lives by the motto, "Advancing excellence in science." If he had a villain, it would be the broken information architecture of medicine.
He even has a mythical origin story. He was raised in Greece, the home of Pythagoras and Euclid, by physician-researchers who instilled in him a love of mathematics. By seven, he quantified his affection for family members with a "love numbers" system. ("My mother was getting 1,024.42," he said. "My grandmother, 173.73.") By 19, he won the Greek Mathematical Society's national award. He graduated at the top of his University of Athens School of Medicine class at 25, and it wasn't before long that The Atlantic called him "one of the most influential scientists alive."
If we align our rewards to give credibility to good methods, maybe this is the way to make progress
Ioannidis, who now co-directs the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford, has received much of this acclaim for applying his mathematical powers to measure how and where science goes wrong. In his seminal paper, "Why Most Published Research Findings are False," he developed a mathematical model to show how flawed the research process is. Researchers run badly designed and biased experiments, too often focusing on sensational and unlikely theories instead of ones that are likely to be plausible, and ultimately distorting the evidence base — and what we think we know to be true in fields like health care and medicine.
When that paper was first published, in 2005, it stirred controversy. Scientists didn't want to accept the dismal state of affairs Ioannidis was describing. Now, ten years have passed and Vox caught up with Ioannidis to talk about what has happened since: the problems in research today, how you guard against bad science, and the implications of his work for the "evidence-based medicine" movement, which is the push for doctors to start applying the best-available science to medical practice instead of just going by what they learned in medical schools or the opinions of authority figures. He also shared his foray into writing experimental literature, and how it sustains his creativity as a researcher.
The legacy of "Why Most Published Research Findings are False"
Julia Belluz: Ten years ago, you published the paper, "Why Most Published Research Findings are False." It caused a controversy then, and has since become the single most-cited and downloaded research paper in the history of the journal PLoS Medicine, where it was published. Why do you think the paper took on such a life of its own?
John Ioannidis: The title might have contributed to its popularity, I am not sure. However, I think that paper gained in popularity relatively slowly over time. It wasn't a major hit when it first appeared. Some people noticed it and thought it was very interesting. But in a way it gained momentum over time as more colleagues were realizing there's potentially more to that. It was a paper I enjoyed a lot working on. When I was writing it, I was really excited about it – hopefully I am not just affected by serious recall bias here. I had been thinking about that paper for quite a long time and some of the ideas that feed into it had occupied me for a decade. When I wrote the first complete version, putting these thoughts together, I was on a little island in Greece called Sikinos. I remember writing, and feeling that things were falling into place somehow.
Julia Belluz: The paper was a theoretical model. How does it now match with the empirical evidence we have on how science is broken?
John Ioannidis: There are now tons of empirical studies on this. One field that probably attracted a lot of attention is preclinical research on drug targets, for example, research done in academic labs on cell cultures, trying to propose a mechanism of action for drugs that can be developed. There are papers showing that, if you look at a large number of these studies, only about 10 to 25 percent of them could be reproduced by other investigators. Animal research has also attracted a lot of attention and has had a number of empirical evaluations, many of them showing that almost everything that gets published is claimed to be "significant". Nevertheless, there are big problems in the designs of these studies, and there's very little reproducibility of results. Most of these studies don't pan out when you try to move forward to human experimentation.
Even for randomized controlled trials [considered the gold standard of evidence in medicine and beyond] we have empirical evidence about their modest replication. We have data suggesting only about half of the trials registered [on public databases so people know they were done] are published in journals. Among those published, only about half of the outcomes the researchers set out to study are actually reported. Then half — or more — of the results that are published are interpreted inappropriately, with spin favoring preconceptions of sponsors' agendas. If you multiply these levels of loss or distortion, even for randomized trials, it's only a modest fraction of the evidence that is going to be credible.
How to fix the problems in scientific research
Julia Belluz: How do you guard against bad science?
John Ioannidis: We need scientists to very specifically be able to filter [bad] studies. We need better peer review at multiple levels. Currently we have peer review done by a couple of people who get the paper and maybe they spend a couple of hours on it. Usually they cannot analyze the data because the data are not available – well, even if they were, they would not have time to do that. We need to find ways to improve the peer review process and think about new ways of peer review.
Recently there's increasing emphasis on trying to have post-publication review. Once a paper is published, you can comment on it, raise questions or concerns. But most of these efforts don't have an incentive structure in place that would help them take off. There's also no incentive for scientists or other stakeholders to make a very thorough and critical review of a study, to try to reproduce it, or to probe systematically and spend real effort on re-analysis. We need to find ways people would be rewarded for this type of reproducibility or bias checks.
Julia Belluz: Doesn't this require basically restructuring the whole system of science?
John Ioannidis: These are open questions, I don't have the answers. Currently we have a couple of time points where studies get reviewed. Some studies get reviewed at a funding level, and the review may not be very scientific. Many focus on the promises of significance here, and scientists have to overpromise. There's review at the stage of the manuscript, which seems to be pretty suboptimal. So if you think about where should we intervene, maybe it should be in designing and choosing study questions and designs, and the ways that these research questions should be addressed, maybe even guiding research — promoting team science, large collaborative studies rather than single investigators with independent studies — all the way to the post-publication peer review.
Julia Belluz: If you were made science czar, what would you fix first?
John Ioannidis: I wouldn't have a punitive approach to research. Research is really wonderful. It's the best thing that has happened to human beings. We need research. We need science. We need better methods of doing things. A lot of the time we know what these methods are but we don't implement them.
I am very happy to learn from colleagues, to hear what they have to say, to brainstorm with them
Maybe what we need is to change is the incentive and reward system in a way that would reward the best methods and practices. Currently we reward the wrong things: people who submit grant proposals and publish papers that make extravagant claims. That's not what science is about. If we align our incentive and rewards in a way that gives credibility to good methods and science, maybe this is the way to make progress.
Julia Belluz: Who is supposed to be the final arbiter in science — to stop scientists from going in the wrong direction?
John Ioannidis: It's not an issue of finding a dictator. We need empirical data. We need research on research. Such empirical data has started accruing. We have a large number of scientists who want to perform research on research, and they are generating very important insights on how research is applied or misapplied. Then we need more meta-research on interventions, how to change things. If something is not working very well, it doesn't mean that if we adopt something different that will certainly make things better. These are questions that our new center at Stanford, METRICS, is trying to address.
Julia Belluz: In light of all these issues with science, how would you reform how scientists are educated?
John Ioannidis: I think that one major gap is exactly education. Most scientists in biomedicine and other fields are mostly studying subject matter topics; they learn about subject matter rather than methods. I think that several institutions are slowly recognizing the need to shift back to methods and how to make a scientist better equipped in study design, understanding biases, in realizing the machinery of research rather than the technical machinery.
Julia Belluz: Has anything gotten better in the last ten years in terms of improving the quality of science?
John Ioannidis: There's been a shift to more solutions-oriented approaches to these problems. I can't say one field has done better than all the others, but some fields have adopted practices that can make a difference. Genomics, for example, uses replication for replicating discoveries. In medicine, randomized trials have improved their registration patterns over time so that they don't go missing. Psychology or behavioral science researchers started wondering about the need to perform replication in the last several years. So we've started seeing replication, which was almost unheard of in the past. Empirical economics started moving toward adoption of experimental randomized controlled trials much like the social sciences. Ten years ago, there was very little in terms of randomized controlled trials in these fields.
Julia Belluz: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the direction science is going in?
John Ioannidis: I am optimistic. I think that science is making progress. There's no doubt about that. It's just an issue of how much and how quickly.
The source of Ioannidis's creativity
Julia Belluz: You're known for being extremely creative in your research. One of my favorite studies of yours involved randomly choosing 50 ingredients from recipes in the Boston Cooking-School Cookbook and then looking at whether the ingredients were associated with an increased or decreased risk of cancer. What's your process like?
John Ioannidis: It's chaotic. I try to be systematic in whatever I do, but I think that it's very difficult to describe a single process. I am very happy to learn from colleagues, to hear what they have to say, to brainstorm with them. The work I have done has benefited tremendously from interacting with lots of scientists. I think, if I'm ignorant in biomedicine, then I'm even more ignorant in other fields, I need to learn from others. The major challenge and even biggest opportunity is to get scientists working in different fields to communicate and share their experiences. Some fields are far ahead of others in some aspects. An important step forward is to take these advances and transplant them efficiently in other fields.
Julia Belluz: What do you read in your spare time?
John Ioannidis: I'm literally buried under hundreds and thousands of books at home. I love having books around me. In my reading, I am also pretty chaotic. Right now, I'm reading Beautiful Evidence by Edward Tufte, The Forgotten Man: A new history of the Great Depression, Tuscan Art in the Middle Ages, Memoirs of the Crusades.
One of my main biases is that I also write literature myself. I write in Greek. My writing can probably best be described as experimental. It can use mixed techniques of contemporary literature, beyond traditional poetry or poetic prose, including short stories, travelogue, stream of consciousness, scientific data, Google searches, biography, tabulations, essay, text reconstruction, computerized cloud construction, and more – along with references from history, music, visual arts, and past literature. My latest book was published a few months ago in Athens. The previous one had been a finalist for the best book award of the year in Greece. I'm really very excited about literature. I'm working on an English version of my latest book at the moment.
Julia Belluz: What themes do you address in your fiction?
John Ioannidis: The title of the latest book is Variations on the Art of the Fugue and a Desperate Ricercar. "The Art of the Fugue" was the last work of J.S. Bach and the one before last was the "Musical Offering", a work that ends in a ricercar, a composition that is complementary to a fugue. Ricercar also has the same root as ricerca which means research. The heroes of the book are "researchers" at multiple levels, ranging from people who search their memory to researchers of the natural world and discoverers who cannot satisfy their appetites for discovery and its validation. They are also fugitives, people in exile or self-exile in a crumbling world, where homes, cities and civilizations are disrupted and abandoned. So, you can think of desperate "research" by desperate but determined "researchers".
Julia Belluz: How long have you been writing fiction? When do you find time to do it?
John Ioannidis: Since I was eight, but hopefully my writing has improved since then! I was always very much interested in literature. It is a balancing act. Obviously I do get lots of stimulation from my scientific work, and some of that unavoidably will spill over to the literature work, some of the themes may have some overlap between the two. It's something that is quite different and complementary to science.
Literature allows me to express myself in ways that would not be possible to do with scientific papers
I write anytime. It's interesting that it can alternate [between the science and literature]. I could be on a plane, and work on writing a scientific paper and switch gear and start writing some text, and then go back to another scientific paper.
Julia Belluz: How does your literature feed your science, and vice versa?
John Ioannidis: Even the title of the book has research embedded into it. Some of the ideas in my literature pertain to science and its reliability but seen from a different perspective: the search for evidence and the realization of its limitations, our inability to predict the future and our even greater inability to predict the past which constantly gets re-interpreted and re-constructed. Literature allows me to express myself in ways that would not be possible to do with scientific papers. Scientific papers have a very rigorous way of defining questions, introduction, methods, results, discussion. There's little leeway to deviate from that. In literature, one can take different paths and develop structures that go beyond that.
Julia Belluz: How did literature inspire you as you wrote "Why Most Published Research Findings are False"?
John Ioannidis: This paper is not to be seen in isolation. Some of my literature writing pertains to the feelings, perspectives, and even frustrations I had at about the same time. If someone wanted to see what was going on in my mind, the experimental literature that I was writing during that time are probably more informative than any of the scientific papers, which seem more fixed and objective. I was seeing lots of these biases in my everyday academic life. I could see those in real life rather than just in abstract terms where you just see what is published and polished. You see how the scientific community is working, how it's performing its job for good or bad, and that leads you to some questioning. Also the rather atypical structure of the [that] paper may have benefited from my quest of new types of structure in literature.
Nerdstream: A collection of interviews with science crusaders
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Atlantic Fisherman
Home Environment Necropsies conducted on three North Atlantic Right whales
Necropsies conducted on three North Atlantic Right whales
The Atlantic Fisherman
It will likely be several more weeks before a determination can be made on the cause of death for six North Atlantic Right whales found dead in the waters just off western Prince Edward Island.
Over the Canada Day weekend, three of the whales were towed to a secluded beach in Norway, near the Island's western tip, so necropsies could be performed on the animals. A statement from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) notes the advanced state of decomposition for the other three whales made necropsies impossible to perform.
Approximately 30 people assisted with the necropsies, including DFO experts, the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative-Atlantic Veterinary College, the Université de Montréal, the Marine Animal Response Society, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, the Marine Mammal Commission, the N.B. Museum, Dalhousie University and the provincial governments of Nova Scotia, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island.
"DFO is waiting for complete results, which can take six to eight weeks as scientists await results from testing on the tissue samples obtained during the necropsies," the DFO notes. "The department will finalize its comprehensive review of the situation before publicly discussing any factors that may have contributed to the mortalities. Once this information is available, the department will share it with the public."
The department statement goes on to say, "DFO takes the protection and conservation of endangered species very seriously, and is concerned by the deaths of such an important species. The department is committed to doing everything possible to understand what happened to these whales so that preventable whale deaths can be avoided in the future."
However, the department cautions it's too early to discuss possible management measure changes. Until recent years, North Atlantic Right whales were not normally seen in the Gulf and the department needs to consider changes to their seasonal behaviour before determining what conservation measures may be needed.
Meanwhile, the department is also trying to determine the cause of death for a fin whale that was in the same general area as the six North Atlantic Right whales.
Gulf of St. Lawrence
necropsies
North Atlantic Right Whales
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Progress Being Made on New Licensing System
Kathy Johnson - January 10, 2020


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All we can do is watch and wait
Tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are threatening to scuttle an extension of the current OPEC+ oil production cut target
By ATB Economics 2 December 2020 1 min read
Like everywhere else in the world, Alberta's economic recovery depends on the path of the coronavirus and when vaccines will finally put the pandemic in the rearview mirror.
As a major oil producer, our recovery also depends on the fate of global oil prices.
And, as with the development of COVID-19 vaccines, all we can do is watch and wait as the members of the OPEC+ cartel decide whether or not they will maintain the production cuts that are keeping a floor under global oil prices.
It might seem like a no-brainer for OPEC+ to continue to shore up the price of the product they produce, but not all members are happy with the agreement and there are signals that it could break apart like it did in March when a falling out between Saudi Arabia and Russia led to a month-long price war.
This time around, tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are threatening to scuttle an extension of the current production cut target of 7.7 million barrels per day. Without an extension, the target drops to 5.7 million barrels per day.
Although oil demand has improved since the early days of the pandemic, more supply is the last thing that is needed as the second wave of the virus crashes into economies around the world.
You simply never know with oil prices, but they are likely to fall significantly if the current OPEC+ production cuts are not extended into 2021. With the West Texas Intermediate benchmark languishing in the $40-$50 range, many Alberta companies are struggling just to stay afloat and sustained drop in prices could push them under.
OPEC+ is scheduled to meet on Thursday, December 3. Now we wait.
ANSWER to yesterday's trivia question: Comparing the first 10 months of 2019 to the first 10 months of 2020, which province was the farthest behind where it was last year with regard to the value of building permits? Saskatchewan. Our neighbour to the east was 20.7 per cent behind where it was last year compared to 9.9 per cent in Alberta and 6.0 per cent nationally
Today's question: When was the last time West Texas Intermediate closed above $50?
Oil prices have been below $50 since late February
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what constitutes a right under the FMLA.
during an altercation outside of work.
injury, and appropriately was provided with FMLA leave.
James agreed to return to work in early February 2008.
his claims on summary judgment, the 7th Circuit took up the case.
Hyatt's obligation to provide reasonable accommodations.
transparent and honest regarding his medical situation.


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Characters, Marvel, Superhero, TV Shows
'WandaVision': An Analysis of 'Previously On'
February 27, 2021 Annlyel James	1 Comment
This latest episode of WandaVision was next level sad. I'm talking punch after punch of emotion all the way to that chill-inducing conclusion that left me utterly floored. I have a lot of thoughts but I'm going to whittle it down to struck me the most.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
So…Wanda Was a Witch All Along!
One of the things that I didn't realize was that Wanda Maximoff had powers before she volunteered for Strucker's experiments. The Mind Stone only made her more powerful, developing a being of extraordinary power who would one day become the Scarlet Witch… EPIC!
But one question I'm left with is how did her brother, Pietro, also survive his contact with the stone? Did he also have some sort of buried potential that the Mind Stone unleashed? It's all rather fascinating.
Plus, finally getting to see how Wanda's parents were killed was something I didn't exactly need but it just made Age of Ultron a whole heck of a lot more impactful.
Is Hayward Actually Mephisto?
I've honestly been a Hayward defender since Episode 4. I understood that he was super annoying and that he was reeking primary Marvel villain vibes ever since that episode, particularly Episode 5, but I just figured he was a mean guy who's been through some things in the last five years. And yet the latest episode seems to have changed the game completely.
There's a moment when Hayward suggests to Wanda that she is so powerful she can bring Vision back to life. Now that doesn't make sense why he would say this because previously at no point in the MCU has anyone affected by the Mind Stone alluded to the possibility of resurrecting people. So…how would he know that she could do this?
Maybe because he is actually Mephisto disguised as Hayward. Wouldn't that be something?!
And if he is Mephisto…wow!
Wanda's Powers Are Legendary
The shocking revelation that the whole of Westview really WAS under Wanda's influence and that she actually created Vision is absolutely stunning. Her power is awe-inspiring and I just can't wait to see her after this show when she plays a major role in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. Her, a Chaos Magic being, and him, the exact opposite, a man who uses Order Magic. It sounds fantastic and fascinating and I'm just so excited!
The Best Scene in the Show
However, the best moment in the entire series came in that flashback sequence when she confronts the Mind Stone and sees a vision of her destiny.
This imagery, the golden-yellow light a heavenly backdrop against the silhouetted depiction of her future self is one of the most epic shots I've seen in anything involving superheroes.
This version of Wanda alongside Doctor Strange is almost too good to be true. It's going to be epic!!!!
And then of course…White Vision
Last week's post-credits scene was fascinating but this week's post-credits scene left me floored. Since 2018 I have been theorizing ways for Vision to return but I figured we'd never get that to happen. So imagine my surprise and elation when THIS happened! I already knew there had to be some way to bring him back but to bring him back all white and evil is the coolest thing ever!
Next week is going to be a doozy and I'm here for all of it.
This Episode Felt Like a Bucket of Sadness
I don't really have much else to say other than this episode was super sad you all. I was not ready for this gut punch in all of the feels and if the next episode is sadder than this…it's going to be pretty freaking depressing.
But I especially loved this ultra-sad scene because it gave a bit more detail to why they're so close in Captain America: Civil War. Why she always chooses to sit beside him, why they seemed so comfortable together as he made her something to eat, why he was even willing to go as far as to tell her that he had feelings for her. And also why they didn't want to fight.
They're so sweet and they are quickly evolving into my favorite MCU couple over even Peter and MJ, Cap and Peggy, and Tony and Pepper. Too bad their romance is filled with tragedy.
All in all, it's my favorite episode of the series so far and I simply cannot wait for next week's finale.
I thank you for reading and I hope you have a fantastic day.
Marvel Cinematic UniverseScarlet WitchVisionWandaVisionWandaVision Spoilers
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One thought on "'WandaVision': An Analysis of 'Previously On'"
Like i said on Twitter… this episode was a masterpiece!


The growing concern over the energy consumption of blockchain tech is one of the things about it that are being criticized. However, it seems that blockchain itself is trying to alleviate the problem by creating designs that can lower energy cost and usage.
Recently, retail juggernaut Walmart was granted a patent for the development of an electrical grid that will accurately distribute energy among appliances. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded Walmart the intellectual property on June 14, Cointelegraph reported.
A household contains several appliances that consume varying amounts of electricity. But sometimes, these appliances eat up more power than they should, even if they are classified as "smart" appliances.
Here's where the patent design comes in. A household can build a network of these appliances and allocate a certain amount of cryptocurrency to each of them. This digital money will be used to purchase electricity from a utility provider over a set bill period, like one month.
If a particular device runs out of cryptocurrency, other appliances can lend it their extra cryptocurrency to power it until the next billing cycle. Alternatively, if an appliance has excess crypto coin, the network can either choose to sell the cryptocurrency or carry it over to the next month. The devices essentially support each other until such time that their cryptocurrency is refreshed.
And since blockchain tech records each of the transactions made by the appliances, homeowners can scan the network to see which device is consuming an unnecessary amount of electricity. But it's not just homeowners who can leverage this but other large companies that have hundreds of these energy-consuming devices.
This technology isn't new as the U.K. is currently employing the same design, although it was scaled it up to houses rather than appliances. Dubbed Repowering London, the project involves a neighborhood that's harvesting solar power via panels on the roof.
Under the network, each household can use, sell, or trade the energy they harness in real-time. So let's say a household runs out of power, the network will then find households that have excess energy and transfer that to units that are currently in need. The purchase is then paid via a particular cryptocurrency, which is then recorded on a blockchain once per day to decrease energy costs.
Moreover, there is also an artificial intelligence integrated into the project that calculates exactly how much a certain household consumes. This, in turn, will help the AI make an accurate decision on how to accurately distribute the energy harvested by the neighborhood as a whole.


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bond investors on Friday gave a $1.8 billion boost to Tesla Inc's (TSLA.O) balance sheet by snapping up the electric car maker's first foray into the U.S. junk bond market, where yield-hungry investors have raced to lock in relatively higher returns.
Those robust returns, however, have shrunk as a strong reservoir of cash ready to deploy in the riskiest areas of the high-yield fixed income market has pushed them to near their lowest levels in three years. That has given junk-rated issuers such as Elon Musk's U.S. car company the opportunity to raise cash cheaply.
Cash proceeds will help finance production of Tesla's Model 3, which it is banking on to hit the mass market bullseye and finally help the company turn a profit. Tesla aims to boost production to 500,000 cars next year, about six times its 2016 output.
"It's a milestone for a company from a relative unknown to what it is today," said David Knutson, head of credit research at Schroders Investment Management.
At the launch of the Model 3, with a base price of $35,000, Musk warned that Tesla would face months of "manufacturing hell" as it increases production of the sedan.
Standard & Poor's assigned a B-minus on Tesla's junk bond issue, while Moody's Investors Service rated it B3.
"Tesla is not one of these companies," said Stan Shipley, a strategist at Evercore ISI in New York.
Despite lingering skepticism, there has been no shortage of funds to fuel Tesla's ambition to popularize electric cars.
"There is a lot of liquidity in the market. There's, on average, adequate compensation for investors," said Robert Tipp, chief investment strategist at PGIM Fixed Income.


Planning to go on a trip with your family or friends to the United Kingdom but don't know how to apply for the visa? Well, do not worry we got you covered!
You will then get an appointment for your visa and make sure you arrive at least 15 minutes early on the day of your appointment at the visa application center. You need to have all the important documents in place for this so bring your appointment letter and application pack, your passport, along with a valid passport or travel document with at least 1 page or A1 sheet which is blank on both sides.
When you arrive at the visa application center you will get a token for going ahead with your appointment.
Once you are finished with the process of filing your visa you will be issued with an acknowledgment receipt. Keep this receipt very safe as this will be required later on when you will need to collect your documents.
Important note: Once your application has been submitted at the visa application center you will not be allowed to submit any document in the future. The documents that you will submit at this hour are the only documents that are considered to make sure you have everything in place.
To finally complete the application process, it is mandatory that you book and attend an appointment at the visa application centers in India. All UK visa applicants are required to book an appointment without fail before you can get your application approved.
You have then the option to choose whether you want to collect your visa documents in person at the visa application center or you want them delivered to you by post.
Finally, after this, you need to enroll your fingerprints and photograph (known as the biometric information collection) at the visa application center. This will also include a digital finger scan (of all the 10 digits) and a digital photograph of you. The finger scan procedure is done by an electronic scanner. No ink, liquid or chemical. You should ensure that your fingertips are free from any forms of decoration and are fit to be scanned (for example you can't have henna on your hands while you apply for it, cuts, abrasions or other markings as these may affect your ability to provide finger scans accepted by them). Your digital photograph is always taken with a full face and without any sunglasses or tinted spectacles, or head covering unless it is worn for religious or medical reasons. The point is that your face should be clearly visible with no hair or any obstruction to the eyes or the clarity of the face. The visa cannot be processed it the applicant does not submit his biometric information.
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WORLD Leader
Founded in Northern Italy in the late '70s, Cifra is a manufacturing company better known as "warp knit centre of excellence" that produces garments for private brands with an exclusive technology.
Our commitment to innovation, flexibility, strong production capacity and know-how made us the most innovative in the production of WKSTM items.
Cifra is a B2B oriented Company, that produces for the major international brands. Our knitting facility with Rachel and jacquard double needle bar machines, is fully located in Verano Brianza.
We are committed to creating a win-win situation for our customers and being the partner with an exclusive technology that offers the best performing and unique products.
4000 sqm of production plant in Italy
10 cad design computers
Knitting operations are entirely made in Italy
Sewing and dyeing: we have partnerships in Italy, Sri Lanka, Portugal, Moldova, Albania, Jordan, Turkey, U.S.A.
25 Karl Mayer Double needle bar Jacquard knitting machines ("Cifra is the biggest company in the World for WKSTM", Karl Mayer). Discover more
Production capacity: 10.000 units/day
"Today CIFRA is the most innovative and largest producer of warp knitted seamless apparel in the World"
Oliver Mathews
Vice President Business Unit Warp Knitting at Karl Mayer GmbH
Here some of our partner companies around the World for sewing and dyeing operations.
You can click on the logos to discover more
Evolution over time
It all started in the '70s with the production of agricultural nets. Price competition brought Cifra to look for more complex products.
In the early 2000s the purchase of the first double needle bar Jacquard machine from Japan.
This new machine gave to Cifra the possibility to shift from the price competition (low cost product) to the uniqueness of the product.
Afterwards the Company's focus on the development of an amazing style department brought Cifra to be one of the most creative companies in the World.
Cifra quickly became well known in the hosiery field, and soon later also in fashion and sportswear as guarantee of high quality. Nowadays popularity of athleisure as new trend finds Cifra in front line in terms of offer and reliability.
Warp knit fabrics technical nets
First spacer fabrics knitting machine
APOC by Issey Miyake is presented in Paris ready to wear SS woman collection. WKS represents the progress and the industrialization of this innovative idea
First WKS fashion collection
first time in ISPO-2012, Cifra presents the WKS sport collection.
Center for samples development (ultrasonic bonding, heat seal machines, interlock stitch machines, bar-tacking, dyeing)
New generation WKS machine: electronic management of the EL design group for all cross bars and jacquard by synchronous motors.
Cifra exports to the following countries:
U.S.A., Austria, Croatia, Portugal, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Poland, Great Britain, Mexico, Belarus, Switzerland, Serbia, France, Japan, Greece, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Lebanon, Pakistan, Slovenia, Germany, Hungary, Denmark, Canada, South Korea, Spain and Russia.