text:
Dalrymple leafs through Eyes Left! (1943) by Reg Ellery, the Australian psychiatrist and fellow traveller, and is amused by this sort of stuff:
The Soviet Union must be the pattern for our reconstructional efforts. We should remember that it succeeded in spite of overwhelming obstacles because the socialist ideology appealed to men and women with courage and enthusiasm, willing to risk personal pleasure and private satisfaction for the splendid purpose in the task that lay ahead of them. We, likewise, can succeed if we can enlist the pliant sympathies of youth to a doctrine which aims at the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.
As for Stalin, Ellery found him to be
a man whose modesty is as disarming as his determination is inflexible—a man of great vision, a sincere student, a warm friend.
Dalrymple explains also that Ellery felt that he had discovered the secret source of German fascism, which he identified as homosexuality. He appeared to blame the whole of Nazism on homosexuality, latent or otherwise. Ellery wrote:
Nazism is a homosexual culture. The Nazi ideal is masculinity. The typical Nazi has the homosexual's fear of the female. Hitler and his satellites, under the strong pressure of their own latent homosexuality, have foisted this masculinity on the German nation once again, knowing, perhaps, that militarism flourishes best in the atmosphere of repressed homosexuality.


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Directed by Oh In-chun (오인천)96min | Release date in South Korea : 2016/01/07
Also known as "Catch Him to Survive"
This movie tells the story of a man, who suffers daily because of a delinquent high school student.
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text:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stopped oil exports to Exxon Mobil on Tuesday, escalating a multibillion-dollar fight with the U.S. company two days after threatening to cut off all supplies to America.
The anti-U.S. president's retaliation for Exxon's legal offensive, which froze $12 billion in Venezuelan assets, pushed oil prices higher in late trading.
State oil company PDVSA said it broke off commercial ties and halted the supply of crude and petroleum products to America's largest company in a fight over Exxon's demand for compensation after Chavez seized a crude project last year.
"Faced with the legal-economic harassment started by Exxon Mobil against PDVSA and as an act of reciprocity, PDVSA has decided to suspend commercial relations," the Venezuelan company said in a statement.
Venezuela is the No. 4 energy supplier to the United States, which is its biggest customer.
Washington has played down Chavez's threat, industry analysts say it is unlikely he will carry it out and even his deputy energy minister said Venezuela wanted to avoid a general cutoff because it would be costly for the OPEC nation.
But after regularly issuing conditional warnings over ending exports to what he calls the evil superpower, Tuesday's albeit limited move was the first time Chavez has taken any concrete action over supplies in a dispute.
PDVSA said it would not break certain contracts with Exxon, an apparent reference, analysts said, to the jointly owned Chalmette refinery in Louisiana.
Venezuela's other sales to Exxon in November were about 90,000 barrels per day, a drop in the bucket for the world's largest oil company.
Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates oil consultants, said Chavez's move was "saber-rattling."
"It is to Venezuela's interest to keep oil prices high and its response to the Exxon Mobil asset freeze orders has done just that," he said.
With two-thirds of Venezuela's oil exports going to the United States, industry analysts believe Chavez is unlikely to carry out his supply threat because it would slash revenue he uses to fund the social programs that underpin his popularity.
The Exxon battle pits Chavez, a leading proponent of resource nationalism who calls capitalism an evil, against one of a giant company seeking access to increasingly restricted oil deposits around the globe.
Chavez, a self-styled socialist revolutionary who clashes with Washington over everything from oil prices to democracy, says Exxon is a proxy in a U.S. economic war against him.
Venezuela's oil minister, Rafael Ramirez, said fellow OPEC members had expressed solidarity with the South American nation in the fight and consulted with the oil producers group's lawyers on a defense strategy.
But an official of the Bush administration, which has distanced itself from the Exxon action, said the United States had lined up allies in the spat too.
Other major oil producers have assured Washington they would make up for any interruption to Venezuelan supplies, said the official who declined to be named, adding a cutoff would hurt ordinary Venezuelans.
And the head of the International Energy Agency, which coordinates the release of global crude oil and refined product stockpiles in the event of a major supply disruption, said the group was willing to act if needed.
It was not immediately clear whether PDVSA would still supply some crude to Chalmette or what it would do with the excess crude that would normally go to the U.S. company.
Exxon Mobil said it will act to ensure supply to its clients.
"It is our long-standing practice to take appropriate steps to meet our customer needs," spokeswoman Margaret Ross said.


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To examine these questions for us is Tim Beatley, from the University
of Virginia, who is going to make a presentation for us. He is the
Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of
Virginia School of Architecture, and we look forward to his remarks.
Sustaining the City: Urban Ecology
MR. BEATLEY: Thank you, Bob. It is very nice to be here and
Harriet's remarks fit nicely into the beginning of what I was going to
talk about, which is really the importance of thinking about the role
of cities in this broader sustainability movement that I think we very
much are in the midst of. I often start with this quote by Herbert
Girardet: Cities of the 21st century will be where human destiny will
be played out where the future of the biosphere will be determined.
There will be no sustainable world without sustainable cities. When
you look at where things are consumed, where carbon is emitted, cities
have to loom large in solving our global environmental problems. When
we imagine the places where we could in fact live a sustainable life,
they are places like this city, as Harriet nicely said.
Actually, I was going to start with this question. I am not going
to tell you a whole lot about what you should do in this city but
really pose a series of questions, things that we ought to be thinking
about and that ought to be part of the discussion today. Harriet had
already mentioned this, but Washington is an exemplar already in many
This is a marvelous graphic of global cities that a colleague of
mine in Australia, Peter Newman, has put together. It basically shows
the relationship between compact urban form, urban density and per
capita fuel consumption. You can't see very well here, but the densest
global cities, Tokyo, Hongkongâ-this is people per hectare on one axis
and then per capita gasoline consumption on the other. Those compact,
dense cities tend to be the most energy efficient. Well, where are
American cities? They are way, sort of at the top, very low density
and very consumptive on a per capita basis.
Well, Washington is down there. This is the metropolitan region.
If you look at the City of Washington it looks a lot better than this.
In fact, you have the conditions, as Harriet said, of a very
sustainable city. Almost 40 percent of journey to home trips are made
on public transit. That is really quite phenomenal. Harriet mentioned
the walking statistics. In fact, the percentage of journey to work
trips by walking is actually greater than New York City here, in
Washington. So, you are doing some good things here, to be sure.
We have to think about strengthening that though, and the streetcar
and other initiatives that are underway are clearly very positive
directions. Transit has to be part of any concept of what a
sustainable city is about. We know that this is the most sustainable
way to get around. Walking, of course, is best but on a BTU per
passenger mile basis, it certainly beats the car dependence that we
find in most other American cities. You probably can't see that very
I am a big fan of bicycles. You have some bicycle riding here in
Washington but not terribly much. It is very interesting, Paris was
mentioned earlier. Paris is just about to roll out a public bicycle
system that will put 20,000 bicycles, public bicycles on the streets of
Paris. Interesting. Maybe we ought to have a little friendly
competition with that capital and make our bicycle system 30,000 or
40,000, whatever, and get some tourists to move around on bicycles.
I am incorporating a little video here. I am always sort of taking
videos now wherever I am working and studying. This is Copenhagen and
almost 40 percent of the journey to work trips in Copenhagen are made
on bicycles. So, it is in fact possible to be profoundly more
sustainable in the ways that we get around, and how can we work
bicycles into our discussion?
It is interesting, there are some new ideas coming out of
Copenhagen. This green bicycle route systemâ-you can't see the map
very well but on the right-hand corner is actually a new initiative.
It is green cycle routes, identifying routes through parks and
alongside green areas that allow people to commute into the city. If
you are not wanting to be in the middle of traffic with your bicycle
there are ways to get there in a greener way. One of the neat things
Copenhagen is doing is they have got intersection lighting for
bicycles. So, all the intersection lighting now has a seven-second
lead time for bicyclists so bicyclists get seven seconds of green light
before motorists get to go.
So, we have to think about mobility, public bicycles, lots of ideas
here, notions of smart bikes which we are beginning to, of course,
apply in American cities, so walkability, transit oriented
development. I love the notion, Harriet, that we are in fact
acclimating visitors. We are training, in fact, people to ride
transit. It is a very interesting concept for thinking about tourism.
Well, the green elements–of course there are any number of green
dimensions that we ought to be talking about. Many of you know about
the long-term studies of forest canopy cover and American Forest, based
here in Washington, has been doing this marvelous work, urban ecosystem
analysis around the country. This is the product of that work for the
Washington metro area, and some of you know about the statistics
comparing tree canopy coverage from 1973 to 1997 that for the City of
Washington went down from almost 40 percent to what it is today, 22 or
something. Harriet, you will know better than I what that number is,
but a pretty substantial reduction in the canopy coverage, a coverage
of trees. Of course, trees do many things for us. They cool the
environment. They retain storm water. They provide habitat. And, in
everything we do we have to think about how we might go back to that
city of trees that Washington was in fact at one time.
There are marvelous examples of cities around the world that have
become profoundly more tree and forest oriented. This is a shot from
Kaunas, Lithuania. This is the main promenade in the center of town
there. There are 500 trees along this promenade. I know because I
counted each one. And tremendous benefit, these are the spaces, the
places where people want to be. They are the coolest on many levels.
They are the environments, the habitats that are impressive.
My numbers may be a little wrong, but 25 million visitors is what
has been talked about today. I have the 2005 number of 15 million. I
have been trying to think about what are the engines to harness in
restoring this green infrastructure in Washington. Well, there is a
lot of work now in carbon offsetting. It is very interesting that many
other parts of the world are ahead of us on, of course, global climate
change and addressing global climate change but there is now this, I
think, marvelous positive trend and people who are traveling are
beginning to think about their carbon footprint.
So, the slide on the left is actually a marvelous organization,
based in the U.K. It used to be called Future Forest. They are now
known as the Carbon Neutral Co. They will actually offer you a carbon
neutral mortgage so they are actually planting trees here as a symbolic
gesture. So, with your mortgage you can have a certain number of trees
planted to sequester the carbon associated with the energy consumption,
the heating and cooling needed for that home. The same is being done
for carbon neutral car loans.
Of course, we have American companies like TerraPass that are
offering the benefits of offsetting for travel. But most of that money
ends up going to support tree planting and renewal energy projects in
other parts of the world. So, might we imagine trying to harness all
the travel, all the visitation in Washington, offsetting that,
challenging visitors here to think about what their carbon and energy
footprint is in getting here and getting back to wherever they are
from? It is an amazing potential resource for us to tap.
It is interesting, the Carbon Neutral Co. now is getting into some
new and very creative ideas. If you are about to get married you can
actually organize a carbon neutral wedding so instead of registering at
Macy's, what you can do is register with the Carbon Neutral Co. And
your guests, instead of giving you conventional gifts can give you
trees, tree planting instead of that. It is a marvelous idea, isn't
it? We need to be thinking more creatively about that.
So, thinking about this larger system, we need to be thinking about
connected green spaces. This is Hanover, Germany which has just
completed an 87-kilometer long green ring connecting large blocks of
open space around that city, including a 600-hectare forest, a pretty
wild space, in the center of town.
Is there room for wildness in our visions for the future of
Washington? It is not just about street trees. Where can we imagine
some wildness happening?
You can't see this photograph very well but it is Hundertwasser.
He has passed away but for a number of us he was a leading figure in
green design. He proposed these amazing structures. This is one of
them, the Hundertwasser house in Vienna. And, I am posing the question
what would Hundertwasser's Washington look like? Again, you can't see
this very well, but you have trees on the rooftop and every window well
is a place for vegetation, and courtyards and side yards, and the
facade of the buildings themselves. In a city nature can be found in
many places and the wildness actually may be on the side of a building
or in a courtyard as much as it is in a large park. Can we, in moving
forward, think about the creative ways of injecting nature into the
urban fabric? We know about green rooftops, of course, ecological
rooftops, and we have a few of them now in Washington.
This again is a European sort of idea that finally made its way
here, to the U.S. Washington may be second only to Chicago in terms of
the number of green roofs but now in Chicago there are about 200 of
them and they do, of course, marvelous things for us. They are a
marvelous storm water management tool. They sequester carbon. They
reduce energy consumption of buildings. They prolong the life of
rooftops. They are beautiful to look at. They provide habitat in the
center of the city. That, by the way, is Lenz, Austria where they have
300 green rooftops. They mandate them for certain buildings and they
provide a subsidy for retrofitting buildings with green rooftops.
There are so many of them in that city that you can see them in
satellite imagery. It is that important.
Lots of new buildings, of course, in the U.S. now have green
rooftops. This is the Ballard Branch of the Seattle Public Library.
It is one of my favorite examples. It has a beautiful grasslands
rooftop, 14 species of native grasslands. You can actually see this
rooftop from all spaces around it from the streets and sidewalks. It
becomes a very visibly present feature in the urban landscape.
Again, we do have some green rooftops here, in Washington. We have
lots of issues and problems that we need to be addressing with
rooftops. The combined sewer overflow problem is certainly a big one
and storm water management generally. Washington has been taking a
more structural approach with underground retention tunnels, and I
would like to argue that we take a more low impact development, LID
sort of approach where we try to address this issue through lots of
things, lots of green features integrated into the urban fabric of the
city. It makes a lot more sense to me.
This is the green rooftop of the Earth Conservation Corps
headquarters building, along the Anacostia River. It is a beautiful
rooftop and a place where lots of people kind of hang out.
Even the facades of buildings, of course. Green walls offer some
great potential. I am a big fan of a French botanist by the name of
Patrick Blanc who has designed these marvelous vertical gardens. Can
we imagine some federal buildings and some monuments perhaps with this
kind of greenery worked into the design? This green facade, this green
wall offers virtually the same benefits as a green rooftop so it
sequesters carbon. It provides habitat for birds. It retains storm
water. It cools the environment. We are worried, of course, about the
urban heat island effect, the fact that cities like Washington are much
hotter than surrounding areas. So, it responds to the ecological needs
of the city in lots of ways. Plus, it is just beautiful to look at,
really kind of profoundly redefining what a building, what a hard
surface, what a structure is to be organic, to be natural, profoundly
Well, we need to be rethinking the notion of streets. I know some
of that is happening here, in Washington, with the Green Streets
initiative and with at least one or two streets being designated green
streets. There is a lot of activity, a lot of interest in this around
the country. Cities like Seattle have designated many streets green
This is one of my favorite examples. It is the Growing Vine Street
initiative in Seattle, in the Denny Regrade neighborhood, essentially
re-conceiving what a street is. It is not just about conveying
traffic; it is about retaining storm water; about growing food; about
planting trees.
You can't see this very well but the image on the right is being
built over time. It hasn't been completed but this marvelous
pedestrian space is taken from a part of the roadway, and then the
water from the rooftops is collected, brought down from the rooftops
and collected in a series of cisterns and those cisterns then feed
water into a runnel system, actually a little flowing creek that treats
the water as it makes its way down to Elliott Bay.
That very interesting object in the lower photograph is a bit of
public art as well. There is an artist by the name of Buster Simpson
who has designed this. He calls it the Becknoning Cistern. So, the
thumb is actually collecting the rainwater from that roof and then
sending it eventually into this runnel system. So, it is a profoundly
different way of thinking about streets but we can find these sort of
creative ways to green the urban environment.
Many of you probably know about the street edge alternatives
program in Seattle, this kind of redesigning of suburban streets to be
linear rain gardens and a lot of edible landscaping, a marvelous way of
thinking about storm water, celebrating storm water, integrating storm
water in green features into the city, into neighborhoods instead of
putting it in pipes and sending it away.
We ought to find creative ways to restore much of the natural
hydrology of the communities we live in. I am wondering, as a
question, whether more of this could be done here, in Washington. We
have a number of very positive examples of cities that have stream day
lighting programs. One example is here on the left. The notion of
actually returning to the surface streams that have been put under
ground, put in pipes, which is something we typically do when we
urbanize, when we build cities.
Other green features, there is the green street on the upper
right-hand image and the lower image is actually a green bridge in
London. This is a bridge actually that is a pedestrian and bicycle
only bridge which has mature trees planted and, of course, no cars and
it actually connects to pieces of parkland in that city.
Can we find creative ways to bring water back into cities? I think
it is important for us to, where we can, restore the natural rhythms of
nature, the sights, the sounds, the feeling of water. We know that
water is a key element to our human species. There are marvelous
creative ideas and creative projects, and this is one of my favorites
by designer Herbert Dreiseitl who has done work in this city in this
part of the world. This is a project actually that converted the steps
of the town hall in Hochstadt, Germany into this free-flow, free-form
water system. So, this water starts at the town hall and then it
meanders through the town plaza, the town square, pops under ground for
a little while, pops up in certain spots and eventually it becomes a
very natural stream at the edge of the town. So, it actually connects
the countryside, the surrounding green space, with the interior town
centerâ-a marvelous project and we ought to be looking for those kinds
of ideas.
When we are looking at the historic hydrology of this city, of
course, there are abundant possibilities and, of course, rethinking our
relationship with the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers has got to be part
of our agenda, and also looking at all the first- and second-order sort
of streams and the possibilities, again, of restoring some of that
natural hydrology, celebrating that natural hydrology, celebrating the
uniqueness of the ecology of this place. And, we can do it. There
are, again, lots of examples and lots of very interesting ways of
celebrating rivers.
This is one example from London, a new ecological district called
Greenwich Millenium Village. This is part of fairly dense housing,
green housing. They have restored an area of wetlands. This is what
much of the Thames River actually looked like before it was developed.
So, everything that we build from now on ought to be about healing the
landscape; ought to be about restoring and renewing these ecological
systems and that is the message from these marvelous projects.
Even places like Los Angelesâ-this is the LA River-âoffer some hope
for us. We are better situated here than Los Angeles. The LA River
looks like the image on the left. It is mostly a flood control project
at this point. But they have just issued a river revitalization
plan-âthat is the rendering on the bottomâ-that is really visionary and
it involves actually getting people down to the level of the water. It
involves connecting the neighborhoods along that river to that river
system. At the moment they can't even see the river, let alone
physically get to it, be on it and touch it.
When we think about creative ways maybe the rivers themselves ought
to be what we celebrate and what we ought to be visiting. This is a
colleague of mine at UVA, Phoebe Crisman, who has come up with this
marvelous idea of the learning barge. She is just about to start
building this thing. The idea is essentially that it is a movable
educational center with renewable energy and doing a number of things,
but getting kids out there on the water. It is an interesting way of
thinking about monuments, isn't it? Maybe what we ought to be thinking
about is kind of movable monuments actually, and the river itself
becomes the place where we send at least some of the people who come
here to the nation's capital. A very interesting idea, reconnecting
with the river, rediscovering these marvelous rivers.
I have a great interest in trying to find creative ways of
reconnecting us to our natural heritage and to the natural systems that
ultimately sustain us. We have become profoundly disconnected of
course, and we don't know much about natural history. We don't know
much about the native flora and fauna in the places we live. We don't
know much about geology. There is a geological map of Washington on
the top. We have fascinating geology here. We straddle two
geographical provinces. But most visitors, of course, and most
residents don't understand that very well.
There are a couple of images of ideas. On the left is Fremantle,
Australia where they have used a pattern of brick to actually delimit
where the original shoreline used to be. I wonder if we ought to be
doing something like that? Perhaps we can delimit where the coastal
plains start and the Piedmont begins. It is an interesting idea, and
some understanding of the vast and deep geologic history of this place.
The lower photograph is from Victoria, British Columbia where they
have a very prominent geological feature which is a result of
glaciation there and there is actually a little plaque that tells you
something about glaciation, integrated into a hotel, an interesting
I have become particularly concerned about the ways in which kids
are not having the exposure to nature and natural systems in the way
that they have in previous generations. So, I want to throw that out
as a challenge. You all know about Rich Louv's book, "Last Child in
the Woods." He has coined this term nature deficit disorder. He would
be the first to question another set of medical terms but there is a
lot of truth to this, this notion that kids are being raised indoor
most of the time, not having the same levels of freedom that perhaps
many of us had growing up, and not having much interaction with nature.
So, he goes around and interviews a lot of kids and he gets some
pretty telling quotations, like this one, I like to play indoors better
because that is where all the electrical outlets are. This is a
problem. So, many of us are arguing for another paradigm, one that
says get kids outside, leave no child inside. That is the motto. And,
we can do it and we should be doing it in every school. Every D.C.
school should involve outdoor connections and outdoor daily walks and
daily field trips connecting to the natural systems that are around
them. For a couple of years now at UVA I have given my students a
"what is this" survey? It is a series of slides kind of asking them
what they can tell me about what they see. I actually have a little
form that they fill out and I ask them to tell me what they are looking
at, and tell me as much as they can so if you see a bird and you don't
know anything else but that it is a bird, then tell me it is a bird.
It is remarkable what we don't know and what we don't recognize,
common species of birds, trees, native flora and fauna of all sorts. I
don't have an image of this but one of the images I show them is a
butterfly, a silver-spotted skipper, and I have yet to have a single
student tell me correctly that that was a silver-spotted skipper. It
is a very common species of butterfly. I have had them tell me it was
a moth. I have had them tell me it is a monarch butterfly, which
doesn't look anything like a silver-spotted skipper. I have had a
couple of students even tell me it was a hummingbird. I am not quite
sure what is going on there but we have lost contact with this amazing
natural world around us.
So, while we are talking about monuments and the celebratory
aspects of this city, let's think about the celebratory components of
nature and the fact that here, in Washington, this is a profoundly
different way of reframing the city. It is a place where you have 260
species of birds, for example, millions of migratory birds moving
through city and this region each year. We don't see that and we don't
appreciate that.
I had this idea that I was going to play for you some bird songs
and give you a test to see if you would be able to recognize the
birds. It is not working for some reason so you have gotten off the
hook-âno bird song test. But we don't know bird songs. We can't
recognize common species of birds. So, that is part of the problem.
We have some creative ideas for addressing this nature deficit
disorder. It is about reconnecting schools to the places where they
are located and this is a marvelous example from Perth, Australia. I
have just come back from six months in Australia. There are marvelous
things that they are doing. This is a school that has active bush land
behind the school. Part of the agenda here is thinking about every
school and the basic ecological equipment that a school needsâ-maybe it
is a functioning ecosystem, maybe it is a wetland, maybe it is a
forestâ-and incorporating the natural history into the scheme.
We could also begin to think about Washington in terms of the flows
of resources. That is another important perspective, sustainability
perspective. A city of any population requires inputs, food, energy,
materials. At the same time, it generates lots of outputs, waste,
water pollution, air pollution, carbon emissions. We don't generally
think about these things. Materials come from somewhere. As long as
they keep coming we don't worry. Pollution goes somewhere. As long as
it goes away we don't worry. And we often don't connect these things
together. So, one notion of a sustainable city is a city that
minimizes the throughput, reduces the flow of these resources and then
connects them, makes the metabolism a circular metabolism.
So, what do we know about Washington? This is a marvelous analysis
for London and it is probably the most comprehensive urban analysis of
resource flows anywhere in the world. We need to do something like
this for Washington and begin to find ways to again connect the inputs
and the outputs. A lot of cities are already doing this. The slide on
the right is Upsala, Sweden where they are operating 40 biogas buses on
biogas harvested from household organic waste. So, something that is a
waste problem becomes a positive input to something else. We should be
designing every new complex, every new building, every new neighborhood
to understand these resource flows and to move us in the direction of a
more circular metabolism.
This is Hammarby Sjostad, Hammarby Sea City in Stockholm. You
can't see the arrows very well, but it is a profoundly different way of
thinking about that neighborhood. What are the outputs? What are the
inputs? Are there opportunities to connect them? There are a thousand
units in this development that have stoves that, again, burn biogas
generated from household organic waste. So, something that is a waste
becomes a productive input.
Thinking about the sources of materials, another important issue
for us, is a project called BedZED in London where a high percentage of
building materials are coming from a short distance away, beginning to
localize that flow of material so it is not traveling as far. All of
the wood needed for this housing project is actually coming from a
nearby borough and that borough is actually using harvesting of street
trees and urban forest as a sustainable source of lumber. In fact,
Croydon Borough in London has now been designated a sustainably managed
forest so the city has become a sustainably managed forest. It is an
interesting sort of idea. Should Washington become a sustainably
managed forest, certified as such?
We can't ignore climate change so everything that we do has to
address this problem. Could Washington re-envision itself, reframe
itself as a carbon neutral city? That is, we produce as much power as
we can here, in Washington, and then we move further to reduce whatever
carbon emissions, greenhouse emissions, are left. It can be done and
is being done in other parts of the world.
These are some images from Vastra, a new project in Malmo, where
they aspire to produce a hundred percent of the energy from the
renewable sources produced locally. And they did it, they achieved it,
partly through things like this solar hot water heating system, a
marvelous vacuum system that is feeding hot water into a district
heating grid. This would work in Washington.
We could look to other capital cities for inspiration. Washington
has signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Agreement. That takes us part of
the way. London has just released its climate change action plan which
is really quite amazing. They have set the goal of reducing carbon
emissions by 60 percent by the year 2025. This is twice as fast as the
U.K. national plan. They have laid out in great detail how they are
going to get to that point. We need to do a similar thing here, I
would propose, in fact in every American city.
They are doing some controversial things; they are proposing to do
some controversial things. Ken Livingston, the mayor there, who is
sometimes very provocative and says provocative things, is the guy who
has been largely behind the central line congestion charge. One of the
proposals in the new London plan is to dramatically increase that
charge and make it a graduated system so that the vehicles there
emitting the most carbon emissions have to pay the highest charge.
Right now I think it is at eight pounds to cross to central London.
Livingston is proposing the upper charge of 25 pounds for an SUV. That
is about 50 dollars to come into the center of the city. Could you
imagine something like that here? It is generating money to improve
the public transit system. It is making a more pedestrian-friendly
city in London and it is discouraging people from driving their cars.
So, we need to be bold in thinking about this in Washington as a carbon
neutral city?
Could Washington be a city powered by the sun? Everything that we
build, everything we design, every monument, every federal building,
every city building ought to be maximizing solar energy. The report
from Travis Bradford, another book I am plugging here, is "The Solar
Revolution." The world currently stands at the beginning of the second
silicon revolution. Solar energy will become the most economic
solution for most energy applications. I think that is true, and the
technology is here if we apply it. Could the City of Washington
produce at least as much power as it needs?
We, again, have lots of cities moving in this direction. From my
work in Australia, this is one of the cities I have been writing about,
Adelaide in south Australia. They are aspiring to be a solar city.
They have done many things that actually declared a solar precinct in
their downtown and they are putting photovoltaics on the rooftops.
They are putting photovoltaics on the parliament building, on museums
and libraries.
Again you can't see this very well, but the lower photograph is an
interesting example. Of course, Australia has lots of eucalyptus
trees. There is a particular kind of eucalyptus called Mallee. So,
they are installing these solar Mallees. They are essentially
streetlights with PVs on the top. They are very distinctive looking
and they produce about six times the energy needed to power the
streetlight so it is sending power into the grid. What a marvelous
idea! So, thinking about our lighting system in a way that makes it
regenerative, that produces more power than we need or sends power back
into the grid and helps us to become carbon neutral. Everything that
we build ought to, of course, incorporate natural daylight and passive
This is Eco-Sainsbury, a grocery store in London which uses about
50 percent of the energy needs of a conventional grocery store.
This is perhaps the first carbon neutral energy balanced street in
the world in the Netherlands. Each of these housing units produces
more power than it needs.
Thinking about schools and every institutional rooftop as an
opportunity to generate power is a marvelous idea, and this notion of
distributed energy systems, much more resilient, decentralized
neighborhood energy systems needs to be incorporated into our
thinking. Just simply understanding what Washington's solar budget is,
do we know? How much solar gain do we get? What is the resource out
there? It is not something we typically incorporate in our
comprehensive plans or in our mapping process.
Barcelona has done that and discovered, lo and behold, an awful lot
of energy, a lot more energy than they need. They just adopted a
mandatory solar ordinance that requires that for every new building at
least 60 percent of the hot water needs have to be provided from solar
hot water heating systems. So, we are moving in the direction of
mandatory renewable energy requirements.
I am going to go a little faster because I have about five or ten
minutes left and we want to provide some time to talk about some of
these ideas. Every city, of course, has its own special mix of
renewable energy opportunities and we need to think about what
Washington's is. Lots of cities have found their niche. This is
Middelgrund offshore energy in Copenhagen. It is different in
different places but, of course, solar is part of it. Biomass has to
be part of it as well. This is Vaxjo, Sweden, which is aspiring to be
100 percent fossil-fuel free and is heating and cooling itself through
My last theme I think has to do with food. As part of this
metabolic flow, can we imagine Washington as a food secure city? That
is, a city that nurtures food production and is more conscious about
where food is coming from. We have become profoundly disconnected, of
course, from where food comes from. It travels a great distance. You
often hear the figure 1,500 miles from where it is grown to where it is
consumed. We need to work on that. Part of this is about reconnecting
with the surrounding farms and farming systems that support us.
This is Joel Salatin, a local farmer. I don't have time to talk
about these slides in much detail, but there are lots of mechanisms,
community supported agriculture; kind of subscription farming; farmers
markets; lots of creative ways in which we could do this. Finding ways
within the city, places within the city to actually grow food, where
residents can grow food and where there might be commercial
agriculture, is that possible? Well, it is and we are finding this in
many cities.
This is a marvelous store with Ken Dunn where he operates what he
calls the Chicago City Farm. On one acre in downtown Chicago he
produces 40 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes and they are
highly coveted by the restaurants in that city.
I have become a big fan of this notion of the 100-mile diet. Can
we localize as much of that food production as possible? This is
Alicia Smith who started the 100-mile diet campaign. A very
interesting idea. And, some restaurants, of course, and some
management companies actually are supporting this idea of 100
miles-ânothing magical about 100 miles, but beginning to localize a lot
more what we are consuming.
Some of you know about Bon Appetit management firm, a food
management company that actually operates the café at the Georgetown
Law School, for example. They try to source as much food as possible
from within 150 miles. That is an agenda. When you think about the
restaurants, the institutional cafes and restaurants and things, here
in Washington, there is a tremendous opportunity to move that flow in a
more sustainable direction, Working food production into the design of
new communities.
This is Vikki in Helsinki. Edible landscaping, do we have
opportunities to imagine Washington as an orchard? We could be
producing a lot of food from edible landscaping. Every school– like
the Green Charter School in New Orleans which has an edible schoolyard
program where the kids are learning about food; they are growing food;
they are sitting down with their teachers and eating that food,
learning about the cycle, learning about growing things.
My last couple of slides, I promise, have to do with, again, this
need I believe for us to profoundly reconnect to the nature around us.
Partly this is about paying attention. So, a quick story from our time
in Australia, we lived about two months in Sidney and in Sidney there
are several large colonies of bats. Does anybody know what this
species is here? It is obviously a bat. It is a fruit bat. I guess I
kind of gave that away, didn't I, by calling it a bat? It is a
grey-headed flying fox, which is a large fruit bat. In Sidney, every
evening these bats fly off and they go off and hunt; they go off and
feed. As the light fades the skies fill up with grey-headed flying
foxes. We thought it was so peculiar that nobody seemed to be paying
attention to this amazing phenomenon. We would be in a cab somewhere
and, you know, the sky is full of these grey-headed flying foxes and
the cab driver is just blase.
For us it became very personal because we lived in an apartment
building. You can't see it but that palm tree was right outside our
window and every evening we had our own personal grey-headed flying fox
arrive. So, every evening you would hear this noise. We weren't sure
about her flying skills but I grew to love the sound. It was the most
important thing about where we lived and yet, again, it was the thing
that most everyone around us just was not paying attention to or just
had forgotten about it perhaps.
So, in some ways it has become a metaphor for those things in
cities that are wondrous and awe-inspiring and are about the nature
around us that we are not paying attention to. So, where are the
grey-headed flying foxes in Washington? I guess that is my question.
I could tell you about my effort at learning about mushrooms and
going on fungi forays and trying to reconnect to landscapes. I said
that was my last slide. I guess I wasn't truthful. I do actually have
a couple more slides. My last slide is about reconnecting to the night
sky. That is part of what we have lost as well. I skipped over this
lost heritage. This is all about the lost connections and
connectedness to place. Isn't it a tragedy, as Arthur Clarke says,
that our children and grandchildren can't enjoy the night sky the way
our forefathers have looked at it with awe and interest for thousands
of years?
So, when you look actually at Washington, what you are seeing are a
couple of maps produced from a star-counting project, essentially
people looking at the night sky and seeing how much they can see. As
you can sort of tell, in Washington it is very hard because of the
lighting here to see that night sky. So, the agenda here is about
lighting. It is about education. It is about finding opportunities to
reconnect celestially, if that makes sense.
There are lots of places, of course, that have done this and that
have adopted dark sky ordinances and star parties. I am wondering,
just listening to the other panelists talk today, if maybe we need some
portion of our Monumental Core as a bright sky zone or some place where
we try to address the lighting in a way that let's us connect and talk
about celebratory, and talk about reconnecting ultimately to those
bigger questions of who we are and where we are. It is about
reconnecting to the sky also.
So, that is it and I am going to leave you with this marvelous
Donella Meadows quote about envisioning green futures. The problem in
the 21st century is how to look good with just lives within limits in
harmony with the earth and each other. Livable cities like Washington
can only be sustained out of humility, compassion and acceptance of the
concept that enough is enough. Thank you.
MR. IVY: Well, I sat here taking notes and sort of dreaming while
you were talking. I thought we would have five minutes of conversation
before we open it to the floor. There is not much time here but many
of the ideas that you proposed are things that just in my own personal,
professional life I am in harmony with, but I would like to drill down
a little bit about them with you. For instance, you talked about
MR. BEATLEY: Right.
MR. IVY: This is one of the most humid places on earth. How do you
reconcileâ-I mean, I don't know if I want to get on a bicycle when it
is 96 degrees and 94 percent humidity.
MR. BEATLEY: Right.
MR. IVY: You can do it in Copenhagen but what do you do here?
MR. BEATLEY: Well, the first thing I would say is that the
experience around the world is that you have people consistently biking
in very harsh climates, much harsher than Washington. You have people
in Scandinavia in cities, you know, riding in the dead of winter in
snow. It just depends on what becomes normal. We lived a year in the
Netherlands where I essentially lived on a bike and not snow, but you
have fierce North Sea winds and you wonder, you know, wow, people are
just getting on their bikes and going. Partly it is that, partly it is
about preparing yourself. If more of our places of employment have
places to shower and maybe relax the dress code during the summer, you
know, there are many things that we could do. But I think partly it is
Is anybody here from the Washington bicyclists? There actually is
a Washington bicycle organization and one of the great things that I
think they do is they will offer to actually help you learn to ride a
bicycle in the city. You know, part of the issue is just feeling
unsafe and not feeling comfortable with cars next to you, and how do I
get through that intersection, and how do I negotiate that turn, and I
can't imagine myself commuting in that environment. They will actually
hook you up with a mentor who rides with you and will help you, give
you tips about where you should be, and it becomes a lot easier I
think. You know, the comfort level is quite important but I am not
sure that this climate is particularly difficult and it can be done. (COOL! LOOK UP)
MR. IVY: Okay.
MR. BEATLEY: I guess that is my answer. Others might have other things.
MR. IVY: Fine. Here is a question about the nature of the city.
Last night David Childs described the L'Enfant Plan, the 17th and 18th
century rational, Baroque, mathematical, monumental city that has
resulted and how that had evolved, and how Downing and others had, in
the 19th century, romanticized the landscape, created naturalistic
environments that were, on the Mall, totally out of character with
preconceptions. However, vestiges of that remain here. We have the
entire waterfront left. We have Rock Creek. The city is filled with
these more naturalistic opportunities. In a place like this which has
a variety of, let's say, urban topologies and microclimates, how would
you deal with this monumental city and the future that you envision? I
can see how it works with Rock Creek but what about with these more
hard-scape places?
MR. BEATLEY: Well, I think it is about being creative. It is about
imagining nature in a slightly different way. I showed Patrick Blanc's
images of the green wall. We don't tend to think of that hard-scape
wall as an opportunity to insert nature. There are places with
permeable paving where low impact development techniques–rain
gardens–can be integrated into the streets in ways that, gee, that is
not really the usual Rock Creek, the usual kind of park setting that we
would imagine but we have an increasingly rich set of tools and
practices and experiences that would let us do that.
Again, to go back to my grey-headed flying fox, if you don't
remember anything else from this talk, the grey-headed flying fox will
stay with you. Where are they? You know, it is all of this ordinary
nature, let me say, that is all around us to be observed and to be
celebrated and appreciated. It is not even so much trying to recreate
it, a lot of it is there whether it is an owl or whatever it is, the
migratory birds or the river systems. It is a different way of
thinking about the nature within a city.
MR. IVY: So, even in a place this prescribed, even in a place this
ordered, this hard-edged in some places or monumental, it is possible
to even rethink the elements that are there.
MR. BEATLEY: It is. It is and I would even be provocative and
suggest that perhaps we need a sustainable force on the Mall. Could we
grow some food on the Mall? That is crazy, isn't it? A functioning
CSA on the Mall.
MR. IVY: you would have some arguments over that. Does someone
have a question for Tim? Yes, please, come forward. Well, you have
had one, Ben. Let's get this gentleman, if you don't mind.
QUESTION: What have you done in Charlottesville?
MR. BEATLEY: Say again?
QUESTION: What have you done in Charlottesville along these lines?
MR. BEATLEY: Along these lines? Gosh, Maurice Cox, former mayor of
Charlottesville, is actually speaking later in the day so he is much
better able to talk about this. But, to a certain degree, all these
ideas are finding some expression in Charlottesville. We are slowly
appreciating and protecting and restoring the green infrastructure of
the city so, for example, we have a couple of places where there are
rain gardens, where we have been retrofitting parks. I took out this
slide of our downtown Mall but we have an urban forest in two long rows
of trees, large mature trees, that create this marvelous green
condition in the center of Charlottesville. For a couple of years I
have been taking temperature and humidity readings under the trees and
comparing them with places around town, and our tree-lined downtown
Mall is about ten degrees cooler on a hot summer day. So, we are
actually demonstrating some of these ideas.
Maurice may talk about our proposed streetcar. Charlottesville is
becoming more bicycle friendly. We are moving in the direction of
green building. The city actually has appointed a sustainability task
force, which I sit on, where we are looking at all of these ideas that
I have mentioned. So, there is a long story there and, especially
because of people like Maurice, we are ahead of most other cities of
that size, I would say, in some of the things we are doing.
MR. IVY: Another question?
QUESTION: I just had a couple of comments to make on what you
said. We do have bats here. I saw them. They flew out in a flock of
batsâ-do they call them a flock?-ânear Dupont Circle one night and they
went all the way up with, you know, the noise they make–
MR. BEATLEY: Yes.
QUESTION: And there were so many of them, they filled the whole sky
and they pooped all over our car. We were literally diving for cover,
jumping into the car, and they flew off into the night. I couldn't
find anyone to ask about that. I was so interested in that.
MR. BEATLEY: yes.
QUESTION: Who would you call? They are very interesting.
MR. BEATLEY: They are, aren't they?
QUESTION: But I wasn't sure why they were here. I thought they
were lost, or something. Anyway, we do have bats, as they do in Austin
and they are a big event in Austin.
MR. BEATLEY: Well, you know the story about Austin is a marvelous
story. Austin has these Mexican free-tailed bats that arrive every
summer. They are migratory and they suddenly started residing
underneath the Congress Avenue Bridge, which is a major bridge in
Austin, and it is now the largest urban bat colony in the world. It
has now gone from being sort of amusing to the colony being beloved,
and they have a batfest every year. You can go on dinner bat cruises
when night arrives and these bats fly. They named–is it their hockey
team?â-the Bats. They have gone a little batty for bats in Austin, but
it is a marvelous story.
QUESTION: We have also a green facade building which is the Finnish
Embassy, and also we have a night sky zone, surprisingly enough, which
is the old Naval Observatory.
MR. BEATLEY: The Naval Observatory, I wondered about that.
QUESTION: Nobody can benefit from that because it coexists with the
vice president's residence. So, we have it but it is not accessible
MR. BEATLEY: Does Washington have dark sky ordinances?
QUESTION: There are some lighting restrictions in that vicinity so
that they can still use the observatory, but I don't know if they are
still really using it for readings. But I want to thank you for
bringing up the part about not recognizing anything in nature, and I am
reminded that Olmsted complained about that when he went out to
Mariposa. He said people don't know any of the plants that are
growing, and he took that as a lack of civilization. I mean, he said
that this was really a serious deficit in the community.
MR. BEATLEY: Yes.
QUESTION: So, it is really a bigger thing than just not knowing what we are looking at.
MR. BEATLEY: It is. It is a tragedy on several levels. It is a
lost enjoyment and deepening of what it means to live a meaningful life
I think. But it also doesn't bode well for action to protect and
preserve the things that we need to protect and preserve. If we don't
recognize the bats or the birds, or whatever, we are not likely to care
much about them. That is my premise anyway.
What is interesting about bats, by the way, I have been thinking a
lot lately about what is the basic equipment that a green neighborhood
should have and I have been making a list. I would love anybody's
ideas but one of the things on the list is a bat detector. Do you know
about bat detectors? It actually picks up the frequency and alerts you
to the presence of bats in your neighborhood. Anyway!
MR. IVY: We have one question over here.
QUESTION: I don't know about flying foxes but we do have a family
of foxes on a local golf course that keeps down the Canadian geese
theoretically. I also don't know about growing food on the Mall but
there is a grass crop on the Mall and a great opportunity for the turf
industry to do a demonstration project on the Mall for grass that the
Park Service won't have to keep replacing every time we have a big
event there. I think it is a vastly under-utilized possibility. The
Mall has other kinds of sustainability problems. It is in the flood
zone so there is a lot that can be done on the Mall and should be done.
MR. BEATLEY: Good comments.
Sustainable Communities
To examine these questions for us is Tim Beatley, from the University


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A list of resources used in Alvarian Framework research. Periodically updated and organized by published book or unpublished manuscript.
Alvarism Book 1 – Economic Sovereignty: Prosperity in a Free Society
Economic Principles, Wealth, Poverty, Prosperity Incidence, Tax, Career Paths, Political Visions, Labor, Industry, American Economic History
Uploading soon…
Alvarism Book 2 – (Untitled)
Military, Criminal Justice, Healthcare, Immigration, Culture
CBO Report on Military Compensation (Nov 14, 2012) – Of interest to anyone who runs a business, or seeks to understand how our soldiers are compensated. The complexity of total compensation, worth of cash and non-cash benefits, tax savings, regular military compensation (RMC), bonuses, and subsidies are elaborated. Although it excludes many forms of compensation, the complexities are broken down beautifully. In Alvarism Book 1, Economic Sovereignty, this model for total compensation analysis was used to derive the five career-based socioeconomic classes in Section 3.3 – Illusory Career Paths and Wealth Erosion.


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Without even allowing grass to grow over the grave of the great Catholic Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who died on February 13, the Jesuit flagship America Magazine has devoted a front-page article to trashing the justice's legal theory in an effort to legitimize judicial activism.
The blunt instrument chosen by the magazine to do its dirty work was conveniently not a Jesuit but a Dominican friar named Anthony Giambrone, who contrasts Scalia's legal theory with that of the medieval scholar and saint, Thomas Aquinas.
Giambrone claims that Scalia's originalist approach to Constitutional law—which insisted on respecting the original and manifest intent of the writers of the Constitution rather than what modern interpreters think they should have said—stands in sharp contrast to Aquinas' theory of law, which left room for disregarding "poorly written laws" in favor of natural law principles.
Scalia would have agreed that to be an originalist one must believe in the basic integrity and goodness of the law in question, and the justice did indeed believe in the U.S. Constitution as a document worthy of defense and, indeed, veneration. Above all, he advocated judicial restraint, a specific application of the Christian virtue of humility so often lacking among those commissioned to judge according to the law.
Americans have a legislature entrusted with the enactment of law, Scalia often reminded his hearers, and a judiciary commended with the task of interpreting the laws as they apply to particular circumstances. For a political system to function where the powers of government are thus divided, this division must be respected.
Whatever the author's intent, his rambling essay, titled "Scalia v. Aquinas," plays into a thinly veiled attempt to somehow legitimate the judicial activism that has been at the core of the worst decisions ever handed down by the United States Supreme Court, from Roe v. Wade to Obergefell v. Hodges.
While this dovetails nicely with the project of the Jesuits at America Magazine, it should deeply concern conservative Americans who care about the future of the Court.
Along with the utter crassness of trying to undermine the legacy of a great Catholic jurist while people are still mourning his passing, the essay proposes the worst possible formula for enabling the Court to accomplish the purpose for which it is constituted.
It is moreover ridiculous in the extreme to enlist the testimony of Thomas Aquinas to propose that U.S. justices should impose their own vision of social organization on the country's most foundational document and its application to real-world situations and laws, a proposal that the angelic doctor would have found appalling.
With an unworthy and backhanded compliment, Giambrone expresses his hope that another "good man" like Scalia may be found to fill his chair on the Supreme Court, as long as he is unburdened with Scalia's "problematic theory."
For if you take away Scalia's deep reverence for the Constitution as it was written and intended, and his respect for the critical but limited role that justices are called to play, all you are left with is another judicial activist legislating according to his best lights without a mandate to do so.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome


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It's mid-September. You've yet to take the kids trick-or-treating, and you certainly haven't thought about cooking the Thanksgiving turkey, but Christmas decorations are already on display and holiday commercials have begun. No, you didn't miss Halloween and Thanksgiving. Christmas shopping is starting early this year. At NerdWallet Shopping and DealFinder, we're making our Christmas list early to help you start your holiday shopping – and saving – today.
With more than two months to go before the busiest retail season of the year begins, an impressive 20% of Americans have already begun Christmas shopping, according to TODAY Money. This figure is expected to reach 40% by Halloween. Stores across the country have seen this consumer demand and are starting to capitalize on the early holiday spirit.
In fact, major discount retail store chain Kmart aired its first festive "not a Christmas commercial" TV ad of the 2014 holiday season – just a few days after Labor Day. The spot highlighted the store's layaway feature.
And just this week, Target revealed its list of the top holiday toys that are sure to be a hit with kids. Making the cut this year are movie-inspired products, such as the Disney Frozen My Size Elsa and Anna Dolls and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Secret Sewer Lair Playset. Also featured are the Razor Lighted Wheel Scooter and the FurReal Friends Get Up and GoGo Walking Pup Set.
In coordination with the debut of their toy list, Target also announced a new line of boutique brand toys that are available online and in stores. These particular products, according to Target, are designed to promote child development by inspiring discovery, exploration and imagination. They include play sets, wooden toys and science kits.
With an ever-increasing number of retailers competing for your attention (and money) so early, how can you become a savvy September Christmas shopper?
Start early
If you start shopping early, you will have more time to look for the perfect gift and, more importantly, more time to compare product prices. You'll also be able to snag your must-have items before the products sell out.
Create a budget
Retailers expect you to spend around $536 on gifts this year, according to a prediction from the National Retail Federation. Avoid overspending by setting a budget. If you start shopping early, keep track of your purchases so you don't shop more in December and realize that you bought more than you can afford.
Consider layaway
Deciding where to make a purchase this year may likely be more a matter of what the store has to offer you than what the product does. A popular trend this season seems to be layaway, a service in which you can reserve a product and make payments on it before receiving it. Kmart rolled out a limited-time layaway option with no down payment, and Toys "R" Us now offers online layaway. If you want to manage your spending by paying off products before you bring them home, look for stores with convenient layaway options.
Buy according to product
Prioritize which gifts you should buy now and which you can wait on. If you shop now, you can take advantage of ongoing back-to-school and end-of-summer sales on office supplies, outdoor living essentials and more. For products such as electronics and fall clothing, you'd probably be better off waiting for Black Friday deals.
Less holiday stress
Wrap up your shopping early so you can have more Christmas spirit and less mid-December stress. Schedule your shopping right and you can save both time and money.
So, if you've already decided what you intend to buy for those special people on your list – and you definitely don't want to be one of those procrastinators who has to endure the Christmas Eve melee – consider joining the 20% of Americans who have started their Christmas shopping in September.
No one said you have to start wrapping yet.
Shoppers in short sleeves photo via Shutterstock.


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All of us (beginning with Adam and Eve) are guilty of disobeying God's holy law, and thus deserve God's judgment of death.
The Lord God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die." Genesis 2:16-17
As it is written, "There is none righteous, not even one." Romans 3:10
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23
God the Son incarnate, Jesus Christ the Lord, bore our guilt and God's judgment when He was crucified on the cross, making full atonement for our sin.
All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. Isaiah 53:6
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. I Peter 2:24
Jesus Christ, bodily resurrected on the third day, is the only Saviour - saving all who come to Him in true repentance and faith.
But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name. John 20:31
That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9
For "whoever will call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." Romans 10:13
For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. Ephesians 2:8-9
If you desire to trust in Christ as your Saviour:
Realize that you are a sinner (someone who has broken God's laws) and confess this to God, repenting of your sin. Believe that God sent His Son to die for your sins and be raised from the dead. Put your faith in this sacrifice to be wholly sufficient to cover the eternal consequences of your sin.
If you made this decision and have put your faith wholly in the sacrifice that Jesus made, or just have questions or want to discuss these ideas further, please contact us. We would love to talk with you, pray with you, rejoice with you, and help you get involved with our local church family. You can also find other presentations of this good news at Answers in Genesis.


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Magnet - Firefighter Red Line (Large)
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Regular price $14.99
Magnet - Firefighter Red Line Flag (Large Size, 12" x 7.75")
Our largest version of this firefighter magnet. Show your support for firefighters with this red line flag magnet. Looks great on your car, truck or SUV, and looks even better on the back of the fire truck, fire engine or refrigerator at the firehouse! These rectangular flag magnets are professionally made in the United States using thick magnet stock and quality screen printed graphics and are weather-proof and UV resistant.
Item: Rectangle magnet
Size: 12" x 7.75" rectangle
Materials: 0.030" magnet stock, screen printed with UV resistant inks
Application: Indoor or outdoor use, sticks to any flat metal surface
Product Packaging: Loose only (no packaging)
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North American hardwood lumber exports were quite strong in January. Chinese and Vietnamese demand was quite high despite the approach of the Chinese New Year and Tet holidays. Taiwanese demand also increased; and Japanese purchasing was steady. Even though shipments to Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia have declined in the last year, Asia still accounts for 5 of the 10 largest global markets for U.S. hardwoods.
European purchases of North American hardwoods also ticked up in January, with British and German markets showing more promise. "European business is slowly coming alive," said one exporter, and others said that inquiries and orders increased from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia. Several contacts believe European markets would have grown faster last month if White Oak was not so scarce.
While some Mexican buyers said January started slow, most were pleased with how it turned out, as were U.S. shippers. Mexico's 16% increase in lumber purchasing in 2013 was shared broadly across a range of species. Most notably, Red Oak and Hickory shipments to Mexico jumped by more than 40%. In January, Middle Eastern and African demand crept up, as some markets reemerged that had been quiet.
North American hardwood supplies continue to lag global demand. One exporter explained, "Buyers are not getting all the lumber they need and are trying to buy from new sources, but the pipeline contains no excess lumber to help them."
Have something to say? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.


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Episode 031: Say no to coffee
This week's episode is about two things. First we talk about how meeting people for lunch or coffee is often a waste of time. Or at the very least, inefficient. And in the second part of the show we talk about how to help young people and early entrepreneurs get into the field through political action.
Available here and on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook, too. Or follow Justin directly on Twitter.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download


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EVGA X99 FTW-K BIOS 2.02 Windows 8 driver download - Windows 8 Downloads
EVGA X99 FTW-K BIOS 2.02 - Details
|File Size:
|Windows Vista / Vista 64 bit / 7 / 7 64 bit / 8 / 8 64 bit / OS Independent / 8.1 / 8.1 64 bit / 10 / 10 64 bit
|Sep 9, 2016
|Total: 202 | This Month: 202
|EVGA X99 FTW-K BIOS 2.02, download EVGA X99 FTW-K BIOS 2.02, EVGA X99 FTW-K BIOS 2.02 free download, X99 FTW-K BIOS Update, EVGA X99 FTW-K BIOS Update, X99 FTW-K Motherboard BIOS, X99 FTW-K, BIOS, EVGA, X99
EVGA X99 FTW-K BIOS 2.02 driver for Windows 8 - Full description
- Support Intel XTU 10 core control.
- Add more memory ratio 3400/3600/3800.
- Optimizing fan curve.
- Add secure boot.
- Update flash information in ME firmware.
- Fix minor issues.
Windows Installation:
- Download the correct .zip file
- First go into your BIOS and load defaults, save and exit
- Close all open programs.
- Go into the folder where you unzipped this package and update.bat
- Press Y to start the flash process
- After the flashing is finished, the system will automatically shut down. Then power on again and go into BIOS to setup.
- NOTE: If flash box immediately closes after flash attempt, the flash may need to be ran from a CMD prompt with administrator privileges or DOS version.
BIOS Installation:
- Extract the contents of .zip file to USB flash drive (must be formatted as FAT32)
- Reboot the machine and go into the system BIOS
- From the BIOS, navigate to the Save & Exit tab and open "Select BIOS File."
- Select the .bin file you wish to flash.
About OS Independent BIOS:
Although installing a newer BIOS version might add new features, update various components, or improve the device's usability, this process is very risky, so the upgrade is recommended to be performed only when it is really needed.
In addition to that, this task should be performed by someone who has the knowledge to successfully complete the installation; regular users may fulfill it at their own risk.
When it comes to applying a new version without taking into account the computer's operating system, the most commonly used method to flash the BIOS is by creating a bootable USB or CD containing the update file, and running it from DOS.
The Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) is a very important software that loads the currently installed OS, and tests all of the system's hardware components – so make sure you flash it correctly.
About BIOS Update Utility:
Applying a new BIOS version can bring various fixes, add new features, or improve existing ones; however, this action is very risky and should be carefully carried out in a steady power environment (such as the one ensured by a UPS unit), and only when it is really needed.
Moreover, it is recommended that the BIOS be upgraded by someone who has the ability to use advanced system features. It can also be fulfilled by a regular user as well, but at their own risk.
When it comes to changing the BIOS version, the update utility searches for a compatible package in any given location or on the web and, if found, it will automatically install the desired build, if and when your approval is given.
Do take into account that failing to perform the installation could seriously damage your system, and the faulty BIOS might even render it unusable.
Therefore, if you intend to upgrade your BIOS, hit the download button, get and install the package, and run the utility to check if a newer version is available. Don't forget to check with our website as often as possible to be up to date with the latest releases.
It is highly recommended to always use the most recent driver version available
Do not forget to check with our site as often as possible in order to stay updated on the latest drivers, software and games
Try to set a system restore point before installing a device driver
This will help if you installed a wrong driver
Problems can arise when your hardware device is too old or not supported any longer


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Exquisite sheer tulle & beaded lace applique A-line skirt over a fitted Fit & Flare under dress. The ornate hemline is beautifully edged along with the sheer sleeves and neckline. The sheer lace back has a zip closure and the train features sheer chapel length panels to create a unique elegant look.
Available Size:
UK 4-34, Customize.
Available Color:


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American International Groupshares fell 7 percent on Friday, a day after the world's largest insurer reported a $5.29 billion quarterly loss.
After Thursday's market close, AIG posted the largest loss in its 89-year history, hurt by an $11.12 billion write-down of credit swaps held by its AIG Financial Products unit because of exposure to bad mortgage bets.
The larger-than-expected write-down -- stemming from the insurer revaluing its credit swaps without the benefit of a spread differential calculation -- led AIG's external auditor to cite the company for "material weakness" in internal controls.
AIG Chief Executive Martin Sullivan said on Friday the company was working to address the auditor's concerns.
"We have already begun the process to remediate the material weakness identified by (PricewaterhouseCoopers)," Sullivan told investors on a conference call.
He said Joe Cassano, who has been head of AIG Financial Products, would retire at the end of March.
Credit protection costs on AIG rose sharply on Friday.
The cost of protecting AIG debt with credit default swaps for five years rose to about $204,000 a year to protect $10 million of debt, up from about $181,000 a day earlier, according to data from Markit Intraday.
Earlier on Friday, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods downgraded AIG shares to "market perform" from "outperform." Late on Thursday, Fitch Ratings said the company's ratings remained on "negative watch," indicating the possibility of downgrades.
AIG shares were down about 6.5 percent on the New York Stock Exchange. The shares fell 4 percent on Thursday.
AIG said after markets closed Thursday that its fourth-quarter loss was $5.29 bllion, or $2.08 a share, compared with a profit of $3.44 billion, or $1.31 a share, in the year-ago quarter.
Over the past 8 quarters, AIG has beat expectations 4 times and missed expectations 4 times. The stock has averaged a loss of 0.7% one day after reporting results, and a gain of 0.7% after one week.


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Monoweld Galvanizers is South Africa's largest jobbing galvanizer and is characterised by consistent good quality, efficiency and flexibility.
It boasts a zinc kettle measuring an impressive 15.3m long by 3.5m deep, by 2m wide - which makes this the biggest galvanizing kettle in the Southern Hemisphere. This world class German-manufactured kettle from Pillings is complemented by a state-of-the-art, gas fired furnace system which should see the company reduce its dependence on electricity and working greener to reduce its carbon footprint.
Monoweld Galvanizers' materials handling capability includes extensive warehousing facilities, which provide adequate space for post galvanizing inspection and collation. This ensures speedy and accurate loading prior to despatching.
Monoweld Galvanizers also offers the following
value adding services:
- Total flexibility
- Throughput processing capability, especially on large contracts and projects, which results in faster delivery to site.
- Design and fabrication constraints on large and bulky products are significantly reduced.
- Enables the hot dip galvanizing of certain products which previously had to be painted.
- The Line 1 kettle eliminates the need for double-dipping resulting in better quality finishes at a lower cost.
- Consistent good quality.
Monoweld Galvanizers is a long standing member of the Corrosion Institute of South Africa. All galvanizing carried out by Monoweld Galvanizers conforms to SANS 121:2011 (formerly known as ISO 1461). Monoweld Galvanizers is ISO 14001 accredited.
Convenient Logistics
Monoweld Galvanizers is centrally situated in Germiston, Gauteng on major arterial routes to serve clients as far afield as KwaZulu-Natal, Free State, North West Province and the Limpopo Province. The company also successfully serves clients from Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and other cross border destinations.


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M.S. Environmental Science
The institute provides various MS program in the area of Environment Science Environmental Science & Management course offers research and legal opinions towards the use and conservation of natural resources; protection of habitats and control of hazards; spanning the field of applied environment without any traditional boundaries. The course's objective is to improve expertise, generate ideas and results through contributions from biology, botany, climatology, ecology, ecological economics, environmental engineering, fisheries, environmental law, forest sciences, geology, information science, public affairs, zoology and other subjects. As the principal user of nature, humanity is responsible for ensuring that its environmental impacts are benign rather than catastrophic. Environmental Management presents a novel opportunity for academic researchers and professionals outside universities, including those in business, government, research establishments, and public interest groups, presenting a wide spectrum of viewpoints and approaches.
(Eligibility for admission: Bachelor degree in any discipline of Science (except mathematics and statistics), Medicine, Pharmacy, Environmental Science, Civil / Chemical / Environmental engineering with minimum 55% marks)
Course Credits: 85
1. M.S. Environmental Science with specialization in Environmental Forensics
2. M.S. Environmental Management
3. Integrated course: M.S. Environmental Management and M.S. Environmental
Science with Specialization in Environmental Science
Environmental Science and Management offer immense career opportunities. It incorporates several activities for the protection of the environment. This in turn creates immense job opportunities for the environmental scientists, Professors, environmental biologists, environmental modelers, environmental engineers and environmental journalists. A post graduate degree holder in Environmental Science or Management can get a good position/ job according to their knowledge and experience. The employment potential of those having MS in Environmental Science and Management is in government and non-government organizations in Ministry of Environment and Forests, Urban planning, Pollution control boards, Forest and wildlife management, Water resources and agriculture, Public and private firms and industries, Social development organizations, Forest and wildlife management, Industries, distilleries, fertilizer plants, mines, refineries, textile mills etc.
Featured subjects for Environmental courses:
- Environment Management
- Environment Policy and Legislation
- Environment Impact assessment and Auditing
- Operation and Maintenance of Effluent
Treatment Plants
- Air and Noise Pollution Control Technology
- Remote sensing and GIS
- Forensic Science
Eligibility Criteria & Other Details:
Eligibility Criteria
No. of Seats
Course Fee(Per Semester)* + Application Fee
MS Environmental Science
04 Semesters
Bachelor degree in any discipline of Science (except mathematics and statistics), medicine, pharmacy, environmental / B.E. Civil , Chemical, Environmental Engineering with 55% marks
10((07 for all categories + 3 NRI/NRI sponsored/Foreign students))
Rs. 50000/- plus other University fees / Rs. 1,10,000/- (non-refundable) or equivalent to USD$ for NRI candidates and US$ 2500 for Foreign Students + other University admissible fees per semester (excluding bank charges). + Rs. 1200/-


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Two of my chickens were tired of country life and wanted to check out the bright lights of the capital. So last Monday after a very early start at 5.30am loading last year's lambs into the trailer for James to take them to the abattoir, I popped the two chickens into a box, and set off for London.
The chickens were going to live with my lovely friends in Putney – they were very exited about their new digs and the promise of home-grown, organic greens.
The plan was I would get my usual two trains to London, then hop on two tubes, get another train towards Strawberry Hill where I work, but hand over the chickens at Putney station in the short time period between the doors opening and the door shutting.
Of course I had meetings to go to at work so couldn't really afford to get off the train at Putney with the chickens and then wait for the next one. So for this very cunning plan to work timing was important – we agreed the handover would occur when the 11.03 Teddington train, leaving Waterloo, arrived at Putney station – at the very end of the platform by the first carriage.
All went well. At Ipswich I precariously balanced my coffee on top of the chicken box, school bag on my shoulder while I scurried up the platform to catch the train. I even managed to squeeze me and the chickens onto the tube.
But then I got to Waterloo. All of the trains were cancelled or delayed. Obviously I didn't have my friend's phone number so I squatted on the floor, powered up my laptop, balanced on top of the chicken box and tried to send an email. Suddenly the announcer said that the Windsor and Eton train would be leaving in a couple of minutes. It would stop at Putney and Twickenham – which is close enough for me to get a couple of buses to university.
Laptop still open and on top of the chicken box I lurched towards the train, hoping that my friend would get my message, call me and I could update them on my new arrival time which was going to be quite a few minutes earlier than arranged.
I heard nothing. What was I going to do? It just didn't seem to be appropriate to lean out of the train door and deposit a suspicious-looking box making faint clucking sounds on the platform – I reckoned this would just add to train delays.
Then as the train pulled into Putney station I saw my friend hurtling down the steps. The train started to slow down and as the doors opened I was just able to thrust the box into her arms before they shut and I continued on my way.
Apparently the hens have settled in very well and are already laying eggs …..
N.B. Still rather gutted about the lambs, especially little Bowie and Aladdin. This is the hardest part of smallholding life. But as a friend said, when they graduate from "university" they are so very, very tasty.


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As we wait for the big thaw and the dry out, I thought it would be fun to check with some gardeners throughout the area to see what vegetables they are dreaming about. Next week we'll explore more common vegetables. Here are some less common faves:
Last summer Ginny Roberts planted Botanical Interests' Tomatillo Toma Verde, an heirloom. "Tomatillos are very easy to grow, hardy and prolific," said Roberts, urban garden program assistant at Purdue-Marion County Extension.
"My husband and I enjoy using them in a variety of fresh salsas. We also make a wonderful sauce and freeze it. And, much to our pleasure, bees flock to the flowers until late fall."
Roberts started plants from seeds indoors and transplanted them outdoors. "I planted 18 and learned the hard way that they are heavy producers and can become space hogs. I will plant just six this year and fence them in. End of season clean up should include raking up any dropped fruit. Tomatillos will reseed, if given the opportunity!"
Beautiful leaves and harvesting-as-needed make leeks attractive to Chris Turner, owner of uTopos Gardens, an Indianapolis gardening company. "I am not so good at harvesting vegetables that are time sensitive, such as tomatoes, so anything that can wait for me is my kind of vegetable!"
Sowing seeds was easy and less expensive than buying starts. "I put all the seed in one pot, and then teased the seedlings apart when it is time to plant in the garden," he said. In the garden, he digs a 3-inch deep trench and sets the leek seedlings in the bottom. "As they grow I push the dirt back into the trench around the plants. This makes for longer white parts."
"I like growing less common vegetables, and last season I enjoyed growing celeriac. Sometimes celeriac is called celery root," said Fritz Nerding, manager of the Garfield Park Conservatory and Sunken Garden. "I grew the Diamant variety from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds. He sowed seeds indoors in February and transplanted seedlings outdoors about 12 weeks later.
He grew celeriac in rich garden soil amended with mushroom compost and rotted manure. "Celeriac requires more water than most garden plants, but the extra watering rewarded me with a fantastic celery-root stuffing for our Thanksgiving turkey."


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|Researchers said mussels from two locations in Bremerton's shipyard and on in Elliot Bay have tested positive for opioids. File Photo by Jim Bryant/UPI | License Photo
By Danielle Haynes, UPI
The growing use of opioids is showing up in an unexpected place -- the waters of the Puget Sound, specifically the marine life that lives there, scientists say.
Researchers at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said that for the first time, mussels living in parts of the Puget Sound are testing positive for oxycodone, a prescription drug used to alleviate pain in humans.
Trace amounts of the opioid were detected in mussels near Bremerton's shipyard and Elliot Bay.
But diners don't have to worry about contaminated mussels ending up on their plates. Researchers took clean mussels from Penn Cove on Whidby Island and placed them in cages in Puget Sound, where they took in trace contaminants from their new home after two or three months.
The transplanted locations aren't near any commercial shellfish beds.
The opioids ended up in the sound through human sewage which is processed by wastewater management systems that can't filter out drugs. And it's not just opioids that end up in water, drugs like antidepressants and chemotherapy are detected in the mussels, too.
"What we eat and what we excrete goes into the Puget Sound," Jennifer Lanksbury, a biologist at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told KIRO-TV. "It's telling me there's a lot of people taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound area."
Researchers said the mussels aren't harmed by the opioids because they don't metabolize them, but other fish can.
"Those are definitely chemicals that are out there in the nearshore waters and they may be having an impact on the fish and shellfish that live there," Lanksbury said.


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Sullivan front and center in Vikes' offense
He was an ironman performer in a Midwestern outpost where people have been known to wear green to support their team. He is now in charge of a Minnesota Vikings position that carries a rich tradition dating to the team's early years. He will be in the middle of the Purple offense when the season opens in Cleveland.
On Wednesday, he featured a distinctive growth of facial hair as he answered questions from a midweek media gathering at Winter Park.
There were three TV microphones and a half-dozen digital recorders ready to register his thoughts concerning Sunday's first-ever start for the Vikings.
"I feel like we've already been into it," he said. "This game is more significant, because it counts, but those preseason starts were also important to me."
The failure to mention any nerves that might be eating at him four days before his first Vikings' start caused Channel 9's Jim Rich to plead for an admission that the new guy's corpuscles were jumping.
"How would you say you're feeling when you're in the middle of this?" Rich asked. "You said you were into it in preseason games, but this has got to be a different feel."
John Sullivan, the second-year center from Notre Dame and Greenwich, Conn., native, decided to meet Rich halfway and said:
"I haven't been in a regular-season game, so I'm not sure. But there will be some nerves and a lot of adrenaline."
Sullivan is taking over at a position in which the Vikings have been represented in the Pro Bowl eight times in the past 11 years (Matt Birk-six, Jeff Christy-two).
He is taking over at a position where rookie Mick Tingelhoff started the opener in 1962, kicking off a streak of 240 consecutive regular-season starts that continued until his retirement after the 1978 season.
He is taking over at a position where four other Vikings centers -- Birk, Christy, Kirk Lowdermilk and Dennis Swilley -- have had runs of six seasons or longer as the starter.
He is taking over one year after being a sixth-round draft choice. It would be unusual for a late-rounder to move into the lineup so quickly, if it was a position other than center.
The Vikings have a history of successful long shots in the middle. Tingelhoff was an undrafted free agent in the era of 20-round drafts. Christy was signed in 1993 after spending a year on the Arizona practice squad. Birk was a sixth-rounder out of Harvard in 1998.
Birk was at the end of his contract in 2008. The Vikings seemed to identify Sullivan as a money-saving alternative to Birk from the day the Golden Domer was drafted. The team made a half-hearted effort to sign Birk and he wound up in Baltimore.
So, it's Sullivan getting a chance to be the Vikings' next long-term success at center. He's listed at 301 pounds, which might be heavy by 10. He's listed at 6-4, and it's mostly torso with short legs.
Steve Hutchinson, the veteran guard, was asked about Sullivan and said, "He's doing well."
What will the No. 1 issue the 24-year-old faces on Sunday?
"The 370-pound guy lined up in front of him," Hutchinson said. "I don't know what they have Shaun `Rogers~ listed at, but he's always big."
Rogers became familiar to the Vikings when he was in Detroit. He's now a straight-up nose tackle in Cleveland's 3-4 front. He didn't play in exhibitions, but the Vikings expect to see the monster surface for the opener.
The Vikings looked at '08 videotape to study Rogers. Verdict: "He's an awfully big guy," said Sullivan, smiling.
Any similar giants in his Notre Dame days? "I don't have to go back that far," he said. "I practice against Pat Williams and Kevin Williams every day."
Right guard Anthony Herrera, entering his third season as a starter, will be positioned between Sullivan and Phil Loadholt, the massive rookie tackle, on Sunday.
Herrera said, "His brain," when asked what impressed him about Sullivan.
Was this a suggestion the young man from Notre Dame was smarter than his predecessor from Harvard?
"I wouldn't take it there," Herrera said. "Matty Birk was one of a kind."
The new center did have a Birk-like response when asked one more time how he could give away 70, 80 pounds and still block Rogers, the Browns' behemoth?
"Stay low," Sullivan said.