text:
Column dress adapted from McCalls pattern #6460. The dress was for a recent evening wedding. My inspiration was a dress Katie Couric wore on a recent special about the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. I made many fit and style alterations to the dress that included: eliminating all front and back darts, redesigning the sleeves, adding tucking to the front neckline, adding a kick pleat to the back, adding lining and overall fit adjustments. I made several muslin trials to ensure fit and style.
I used the wrong side of an inexpensive summer satin material and "Ambiance" polyester lining.
Jun 23, 2012, 08.11 AMby brisehuus
Lovely color, good work. Love it!
Jun 23, 2012, 03.04 AMby max
Love the color and the dress!
Jun 22, 2012, 10.37 PMby Jolands
Great dress and colour. Love the detail at the neckline
Jun 22, 2012, 09.55 PMby libra-s
What a beautiful color and gorgeous pattern!
Jun 22, 2012, 01.15 PMby georgiet
The color is amazing and the dress is lovely.
Jun 22, 2012, 01.13 PMby Mary Athey
Love the colour and the dress is.fab x
Editors' Pick
Break out the floral prints for this 1940s inspired spring collection.
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Hippie meets grunge in this plaid top with flared sleeves and a round neckline.


text:
Catch up on the latest innovations in MicroStation and OpenRoads as well as what you need to know now to improve workflows, introduce efficiencies, and enhance project quality. Special encore presentations of some of the most popular conference sessions share new skills, productivity-enhancing best practices, and time-saving tips and tricks. More Info >
The annual Be Inspired Awards are now a part of Bentley's Year in Infrastructure Conference, a prestigious, global forum for leading executives and decision makers focused on exchanging best practices and real-world innovations that drive the design, construction, and operations of the world's top infrastructure projects. More Info >
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
and ARGV
presented the following program describing the information contained in ARGC
and ARGV
$ awk 'BEGIN { > for (i = 0; i < ARGC; i++) > print ARGV[i] > }' inventory-shipped BBS-list -| awk -| inventory-shipped -| BBS-list
In this example, ARGV[0]
contains 'awk', ARGV[1]
contains 'inventory-shipped', and ARGV[2]
Notice that the awk program is not entered in ARGV
. The
other command-line options, with their arguments, are also not
entered. This includes variable assignments done with the -v
option (see Options).
Normal variable assignments on the command line are
treated as arguments and do show up in the ARGV
Given the following program in a file named showargs.awk:
BEGIN { printf "A=%d, B=%d\n", A, B for (i = 0; i < ARGC; i++) printf "\tARGV[%d] = %s\n", i, ARGV[i] } END { printf "A=%d, B=%d\n", A, B }
Running it produces the following:
$ awk -v A=1 -f showargs.awk B=2 /dev/null -| A=1, B=0 -| ARGV[0] = awk -| ARGV[1] = B=2 -| ARGV[2] = /dev/null -| A=1, B=2
A program can alter ARGC
and the elements of ARGV
Each time awk reaches the end of an input file, it uses the next
element of ARGV
as the name of the next input file. By storing a
different string there, a program can change which files are read.
Use "-"
to represent the standard input. Storing
additional elements and incrementing ARGC
additional files to be read.
If the value of ARGC
is decreased, that eliminates input files
from the end of the list. By recording the old value of ARGC
elsewhere, a program can treat the eliminated arguments as
something other than file names.
To eliminate a file from the middle of the list, store the null string
) into ARGV
in place of the file's name. As a
special feature, awk ignores file names that have been
replaced with the null string.
Another option is to
use the delete
statement to remove elements from
(see Delete).
All of these actions are typically done in the BEGIN
before actual processing of the input begins.
See Split Program, and see
Tee Program, for examples
of each way of removing elements from ARGV
The following fragment processes ARGV
in order to examine, and
then remove, command-line options:
BEGIN { for (i = 1; i < ARGC; i++) { if (ARGV[i] == "-v") verbose = 1 else if (ARGV[i] == "-q") debug = 1 else if (ARGV[i] ~ /^-./) { e = sprintf("%s: unrecognized option -- %c", ARGV[0], substr(ARGV[i], 2, 1)) print e > "/dev/stderr" } else break delete ARGV[i] } }
To actually get the options into the awk program, end the awk options with -- and then supply the awk program's options, in the following manner:
awk -f myprog -- -v -q file1 file2 ...
This is not necessary in gawk. Unless --posix has
been specified, gawk silently puts any unrecognized options
into ARGV
for the awk program to deal with. As soon
as it sees an unknown option, gawk stops looking for other
options that it might otherwise recognize. The previous example with
gawk would be:
gawk -f myprog -q -v file1 file2 ...
Because -q is not a valid gawk option, it and the following -v are passed on to the awk program. (See Getopt Function, for an awk library function that parses command-line options.)


text: Holiday Dress Aug 27, 2011 18:45:25 GMT -5 Quote Select PostDeselect PostLink to PostMemberGive GiftBack to Top Post by Flanuora on Aug 27, 2011 18:45:25 GMT -5 Thank you everyone for the feedback. I believe that I will look the dresses my PS thinks have a little better ribbons and perhaps exchange. I do believe mine is extra loose. If none of the dresses are any better I will probably return it and try again for a better dress. I can understand that target age children might not care about a loose ribbon but that doesn't excuse the company from holding some standards. They market themselves as a premium company with a higher price tag. I expect some quality standards to be met.Thank you for all the tips on how to fix the ribbon. If I can't find one that is made right I will probably take this route. I might try to get an older version of the dress or one that is on sale first. I really do love the color!


text:
Back 9 Biz Bites: Pinterest Makes a Killing
Pinterest moves on up, passing a few older social networks. Pinterest
- Michael del Castillo
- Upstart Business Journal Technology & Innovation Editor
- Email | Twitter
Some links that caught our eye on Friday, April 6:
- Pinterest passes LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Google Plus—now ranks third.
- Mac Flashback Trojan: Are You Infected?
- Sex offenders purged from online gaming.
- Jeffrey Katzenberg explains $2 million Super PAC donation.
- Now everyone can lose big investing in startups.
- Research In Motion loses two more executives.
- Did you know Occupy Wall Street is still very active?
- Twitter gets serious on spam.
- Scuba tours to the Titanic.
- Michael del Castillo
- Upstart Business Journal Technology & Innovation Editor
Michael earned his BA from Mercer University, along the way excavating a Roman bathhouse with the American School of Archaeology. Plus, he provided security at Oxford University, where he also studied literature and philosophy. He earned his MS from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism while training for and running in the New York marathon.
If you are commenting using a Facebook account, your profile information may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the 'Post to Facebook' box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to the space below.


text:
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Catalogue Number: 213-7491
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The delivery and return of seller items is managed by each seller. For further details, or if you have a question about the delivery or return of a seller product, please use the Seller directory to find the seller's 'help' page.
This adorable Lamaze flutter bug is a fantastic cot toy. The 2 clanking rings are bound to please and the soft teething textures help sooth sore gums. A quick release clip makes it simple to attach to a cot or pushchair and your little one will love its colourful design.
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7:30 PM ET, February 6, 2013
Philips Arena, Atlanta, GA
Top Performers
Memphis: Z. Randolph 20 Pts, 7 Reb, 2 Ast, 1 Blk
Atlanta: J. Teague 22 Pts, 2 Reb, 13 Ast
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text:
Cayucas: Bigfoot
Bigfoot posesses flirty rhythmic sensibilities both snappy and sparkling, a rosy, near-tropical warmth, and a loose and conversational feel that position you right in the line of Yudin's wry gaze.
Cayucas: Cayucos b/w Swimsuit
No one knows summer like Santa Monica?s Zach Yudin. ?Can you hear it comin'?? he asks, at the start of ?Cayucos?, the opening salvo by his band Cayucas. With a nod to 60?s beach blanket pop gems and bonfire folk songs, Cayucas hits the waves runnin?, causing involuntary head bobs, finger snaps, toe-taps and the ability to shake your booty like it?s strapped to a brand new set of maracas. Producer/multi-instrumentalist Richard Swift deftly captures Yudin?s inimitable voice as it echoes through the barrel of the perfect wave. It's a song for the ages for sure.The B-side ?Swimsuit? continues to carry the torch, with its cocktail-lounge organ flourishes painting a picture of young, carefree days spent pining for your summer love. Enjoy just a hint of the party that?s still to come, and let Cayucas take you to your inner sanctum where there's always sunshine, and a Pina Colada is always a good idea.Full length to be released early 2013.


text:
Spawn: New Beginnings
By Todd McFarlane | Paperback
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Currently out of stock online, please contact your nearest store for availability
A bold new chapter in SPAWN begins here! Jim Downing is the new Spawn, but he's also an internationally known faith healer and media darling. How long can these dual lives continue before the world finds out the truth? And watch out for the Clown and his alliance with Bludd, the vampire master - they have plans of their own for Jim as well...
Authors | |
Format | Paperback |
Pages | 160 |
Dimensions | 254mm x 152mm x 8mm |
Publisher | Image Comics |
Release Date | 15 Aug 2010 |
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text:
Up a level |
Gille, Peter and Mühlberg, M. and Parthier, L. and Rudolph, P. (1984): Crystal growth of PbTe and (Pb, Sn)Te by the bridgman method and by THM. In: Crystal Research and Technology, Vol. 19, No. 7: pp. 881-891
Winkler, M. and Genzel, C. H. and Parthier, L. and Gille, Peter (1984): Double crystal topographic investigations of PbTe grown by the travelling heater method (THM). In: Crystal Research and Technology, Vol. 19, No. 5: pp. 613-616


text:
Main Content
You're one lucky ducky. You've got yourself a job that pays the bills, some major skill on the waves and a roof over your head. Complete your good fortune by finding a respectable girl in the Ducky button-up from RVCA. It features yarn dyed plaid and custom buttons for a fly look that's sure to snag a pretty girl's attention.
- 60% Cotton/40% Polyester
- Regular fit button-up shirt
- Yarn dyed plaid
- Left chest pocket
- Quality embroidery
- Three buttons at cuffs
- Rounded hem
- Imported
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Customized items can be personalized with options such as your name, your favorite
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text:
A collection of news and information related to Downtown Partnership of Baltimore published by this site and its partners.
Top Downtown Partnership of Baltimore Articles
Displaying items 23-33
Baltimore police replace leadership in downtown district
Keith Urban soothes Ravens fans home in Baltimore
NFL concert poses a challenge for police and traffic workers
Downtown property owners oppose Harbor Point TIF
Developer plans mixed-use project for long-vacant Inner Harbor lot
Grand Prix of Baltimore track build shortened by 10 days
Story | Aug 6, 2013 | 5:05 PMThe construction time of this year's Grand Prix of Baltimore course has been reduced by 10 days, softening the effects on city traffic and downtown businesses, officials for the Labor Day weekend event announced Tuesday. General manager Tim Mayer said... -
Baltimore's rentals in high demand, fueling building boom
Keith Urban will kick off NFL season with free concert in Inner Harbor on Sept. 5
Restaurants are extending Restaurant Week menus and offers
T. Rowe Price raises safety concerns as it weighs headquarters options
Story | Jul 24, 2013 | 5:52 PMAs T. Rowe Price weighs whether to remain at its Pratt Street headquarters in the heart of Baltimore, the safety of its employees is a key concern, the company's CEO said Wednesday. Employees of the Baltimore-based money manager have been harassed by... -
Federal government struggles to unload surplus property


text:
Adjunct Weatherhead professor Jack Kleinhenz comments on Mahoning Valley unemployment news
Posted 12/30/2013
Weatherhead professor Scott Shane explains why corporate tax reform is not enough
Posted 12/30/2013
JB Silvers tells Marketplace why the one-day Obamacare sign-up extension benefits insurers
Posted 12/24/2013
Kalle Lyytinen explains why Facebook succeeded where Friendster failed
Posted 12/20/2013
Inc magazine quotes Boyatzis on what criticism does to your employees' brains
Posted 12/20/2013
Another Obamacare rule eased before deadline: JB Silvers explains why on Marketplace
Posted 12/20/2013
Weatherhead's Michael Goldberg argues entrepreneurship CAN be taught in CNBC op-ed
Posted 12/19/2013
ChicagoNow blogger draws on David Cooperrider for post on gifted kids
Posted 12/19/2013
Criticism discourages change, HBR blogger writes based on Weatherhead professor Richard Boyatzis' resonant leader theory
Posted 12/19/2013
Weatherhead team wins NSHMBA case competition
Posted 12/17/2013
Robin Dubin's current project is a unique way to address urban blight
Posted 12/10/2013
United States Comptroller General Gene Dodaro offers a window into the Government Accountability Office
Posted 12/10/2013
Businessweek on Weatherhead's "eye-pleasing" Peter B. Lewis Building
Posted 12/10/2013
Weatherhead professor Rakesh Niraj talks to Plain Dealer about price inflation from shoplifting
Posted 12/10/2013
CWRU instructor uses Cooperrider, Boyatzis research in leadership work with horses
Posted 12/10/2013
Blogger cites Chris Lazslo on the difference between "sustainable" and "flourishing"
Posted 12/10/2013
Plain Dealer highlights Weatherhead 100 winners Laudan Properties, Slate Rock Safety, ECHO Health
Posted 12/05/2013
Weatherhead makes the list of 50 most beautiful business schools in the world
Posted 12/04/2013
Laudan Properties tops the 2013 Weatherhead 100 list
Posted 12/03/2013
Michael Goldberg discusses Cleveland as a role model for developing economies
Posted 12/03/2013
Community remembers insurance executive Peter B. Lewis for business savvy, charity
Posted 11/27/2013
Fowler Center teaching case "Pyramid Air" featured item by the Aspen Institute
Posted 11/27/2013
A look at the region's sustainability leaders
Posted 11/26/2013
Insurance executive Peter B. Lewis dies at age 80
Posted 11/25/2013
Renowned philanthropist, businessman Peter B. Lewis dies
Posted 11/25/2013
Grace Bell '10
Posted 11/22/2013
Camille Thornton '09
Posted 11/22/2013
J-PAL is Hiring: 2014 Winter Recruiting Drive Now Open
Posted 11/20/2013
SEII Full Time Research Assistant
Posted 11/20/2013
ER Associate Economist-233184 Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Posted 11/20/2013
Analyst Intern
Posted 11/20/2013
Grace Bell '10
Posted 11/15/2013
Tim Fogarty named to new Thomas M. Dickerson Faculty Fellowship
Posted 11/13/2013
Michael Goldberg visits MSNBC studio; hear what he shared on Open Forum
Posted 11/11/2013
Weatherhead PhD student Phil Thompson brings home Best Student Paper prize
Posted 11/07/2013
Weatherhead students, area professionals learn about current and future trends in supply chain at campus event
Posted 11/06/2013
John Krebs
Posted 11/06/2013
Research Assistant Positions at the IR Section Princeton
Posted 10/31/2013
The Industrial Relations Section at Princeton is once again looking to hire several full-time data analysts (i.e., research assistants) for next year, and we thought you might know a student who would be a good fit. It would be a great job for a recent BA who wants to work for a while before going to graduate school in economics. Obviously, the position would be best suited for someone with interests in education, labor, or public economics, although that is not a job requirement. If interested in applying, visit https://jobs.princeton.edu and search for the requisition number 1300750.
Cooperrider's AI summit helps turn ideas into answers for Center for Economic Growth and National Grid
Posted 10/31/2013
David Cooperrider leads appreciative inquiry summit for Center for Economic Growth and National Grid
Posted 10/29/2013
Ethics of Intellectual Property in China, Feldman's book excerpt in China Business Review
Posted 10/29/2013
China Business Review interviews Steven Feldman, professor of business ethics
Posted 10/29/2013
Scott Shane describes "thinking on the margin
Posted 10/29/2013
Scott Shane describes "thinking on the margin" for small businesses
Posted 10/29/2013
Silvers quoted in Cleveland Crain's Business on more Obamacare concerns
Posted 10/27/2013
Richard Boyatzis featured in best-selling author Daniel Goleman's new book
Posted 10/17/2013
Michael Goldberg recieves $69,000 grant to develop a MOOC
Posted 10/15/2013
Richard Boyatzis offers insight as part of CNN's "Thinking Business" coverage
Posted 10/15/2013
Bill Mahnic weighs in on Obama's Janet Yellen Fed Reserve Chair recommendation
Posted 10/15/2013
Bill Mahnic shares advice on how to protect your 401k
Posted 10/15/2013
$69k grant funds Michael Goldberg's new entrepreneur-focused MOOC
Posted 10/15/2013
Scott Shane on whether peer to peer loans will replace bank loans
Posted 10/14/2013
Scott Shane weighs in on ways the government shutdown is affecting small business
Posted 10/13/2013
Diane McDaniel, EMBA '87, extends gratitude to mentors and a helping hand to Weatherhead students
Posted 10/10/2013
Richard Boyatzis will give talk at CVDL Senior Executive Roundtable on resonant leadership
Posted 10/10/2013
Chris Laszlo quoted in Chief Executive Magazine about the "business case for sustainability"
Posted 10/09/2013
Forbes releases top MBA programs with the best ROI
Posted 10/09/2013
Scott Shane's commentary on why John Boehner is boxed in
Posted 10/08/2013
Equity crowdfunding isn't a threat to venture capital, says Scott Shane
Posted 10/08/2013
Meet Weatherhead alum Mark Barker, MBA '03, President of Interlake Steamship Co.
Posted 10/07/2013
Scott Shane on how Obamacare may not boost self-employment
Posted 10/03/2013
Silke Forbes honored with Mather Prize
Posted 10/01/2013
A Global History of Accounting, co-edited by Gary Previts, set to be published in Chinese
Posted 10/01/2013
Internships with White House Council on Environmental Quality
Posted 09/30/2013
Anurag Gupta pitches in: real estate likely to play a hand in the next crash?
Posted 09/27/2013
Buchanan quoted in Businessweek's article, B-schools are starting to look more like d-schools
Posted 09/26/2013
Buchanan quoted in Businessweek's article, B-schools are starting to look more like d-schools
Posted 09/26/2013
Dick Buchanan quoted in Businessweek's article, B-schools are starting to look more like d-schools
Posted 09/26/2013
Scott Shane on employee health insurance at small businesses
Posted 09/26/2013
Cooperrider's Tefen Industrial Park visit shows business in action as an agent of world benefit
Posted 09/20/2013
The Plain Dealer reports on new Department of Design & Innovation
Posted 09/19/2013
Scott Shane on small business administration loans
Posted 09/17/2013
Case Western Reserve's Weatherhead School of Management Creates First Department of Design & Innovation
Posted 09/17/2013
New faculty chairs for Accountancy, Design and Innovation, Economics, Organizational Behavior Departments
Posted 09/16/2013
Chuck and Char Fowler give $6 million for Fowler Family Fellows
Posted 09/13/2013
Scott Shane on how Obamacare is shrinking small-business job growth
Posted 09/13/2013
A "tsunami" of retirees are moving to private health care exchanges, says J.B. Silvers
Posted 09/12/2013
Susan Case comments on Y chromosome mutation research
Posted 09/12/2013
Appreciative inquiry as "sustainable design factory": a conversation with David Cooperrider
Posted 09/06/2013
David Cooperrider, PhD, Fairmount Minerals Professor of Social Entrepreneurship, discusses recent AI work with the U.S. Dairy industry and the state of Massachusetts.
India Education shares update on Global MBA students
Posted 09/06/2013
Gary Previts inducted into TKE Circle of Excellence
Posted 09/05/2013
Research Assistants, Federal Reserve Board
Posted 09/03/2013
Scott Shane on the road to economic recovery
Posted 09/03/2013
Listen to J.B. Silvers on the Marketplace Morning Report
Posted 08/30/2013
CWRU law students will now be taught leadership by Weatherhead faculty
Posted 08/20/2013
Study by Scott Shane finds small businesses need help getting loans
Posted 08/16/2013
Study by Scott Shane finds small businesses need help getting loans
Posted 08/16/2013
Ernst & Young Founders' Archive established at Case Western Reserve University
Posted 08/15/2013
Documents related to the early history of the companies that would become Ernst & Young were given to CWRU's Kelvin Smith Library for their Special Collections.
Steven Feldman's guest post on Forbes.com covers Chinese middleman
Posted 08/12/2013
Professor Shane quoted in St. Louis Dispatch regarding non-employer businesses economic contribution
Posted 08/05/2013
Mariana Carrera co-presents at National Bureau of Economic Research institute
Posted 08/05/2013
WSJ exposes more about Feldman's Chinese middleman
Posted 08/02/2013
Finance student shares encounters with Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu
Posted 08/02/2013
Who will replace Bernanke? Prof Bill Mahnic interviewed by CCTV
Posted 08/02/2013
Professor Goldberg reports on strange dance between Turkey's government and entrepreneurs
Posted 07/31/2013
Professor Robin Dubin talks with Sound of Ideas about Detroit's Breakdown
Posted 07/30/2013
Professor Mariana Carrera presents paper at Summer Institute of NBER
Posted 07/29/2013
Weatherhead creates Department of Design & Innovation
Posted 07/26/2013
Welcome, Global MBA Pioneers!
Posted 07/26/2013
Wall Street Journal talks to Bill Mahnic about Detroit bankruptcy
Posted 07/22/2013
Scott Shane: Small biz share of employment shrinking for a good reason
Posted 07/22/2013
The Economist ranks Weatherhead EMBA #1 in Ohio, #34 in the world
Posted 07/22/2013
Bill Mahnic on Sherwin-Williams' prospects for acquiring Comex paint company
Posted 07/19/2013
Weatherhead professor Susan Helper appointed chief economist for U.S. Commerce Department
Posted 07/15/2013
Scott Shane on angel investments since the economic downturn
Posted 07/15/2013
Richard Boyatzis: Studies confirm emotional, social intelligence make for great leaders
Posted 07/15/2013
Fowler Center's Roger Saillant talks about the role of story tellling in Drucker Institute's "Drucker on the Dial" show
Posted 07/15/2013
Case Western Reserve University economics professor appointed chief economist for U.S. Commerce Department
Posted 07/12/2013
Richard Boyatzis MOOC exceeds expectations
Posted 07/10/2013
Sustainability Fatigue, Disruptive Innovation, and the Flourishing Enterprise: RMI Chats with Fowler Center Corporate Sustainability Expert Chris Laszlo (Part 1)
Posted 07/09/2013
David Cooperrider, Ron Fry and Chris Laszlo on The Positive Psychology of Sustainable Enterprise in The Journal of Corporate Citizenship
Posted 07/03/2013
Scott Shane on why entrepreneurship is on the decline in the U.S.
Posted 07/01/2013
Announcing Weatherhead's expanded Yellow Ribbon program
Posted 06/30/2013
Fowler Center's Laszlo, Fry and Cooperrider publish articles in the Journal of Corporate Citizenship
Posted 06/28/2013
Mark Votruba weighs in on the economics of UH and EMH Healthcare merger
Posted 06/25/2013
Chris Laszlo talks with GreenBiz.com about sustainability fatigue
Posted 06/24/2013
Professor Lyytinen nominated visiting professor at London School of Economics
Posted 06/19/2013
Shane on how the IRS scandal might benefit small business
Posted 06/19/2013
How to inspire a culture of innovation
Posted 06/19/2013
Steven Feldman discusses the jack of all trades, the Chinese middleman
Posted 06/18/2013
"The truth should make somebody important uncomfortable": Professor Tim Fogarty on the merits of controversial research
Posted 06/11/2013
A research paper forthcoming in the Journal of Accounting Education examined North American scholars who contributed to the top 14 accounting education journals between 1966 and 2011. The paper's authors found that among scholars who actively teach, Tim Fogarty, PhD, professor of accountancy, was the most prolific contributor between 1992 and 2011. Fogarty's interests encompass accounting education and much more; his research applies to human organizations of every kind, shape and size.
Professor Shane shares unintended consequences of Healthcare Reform
Posted 06/10/2013
Student JeShaune Jackson can't wait to give his own scholarship
Posted 06/05/2013
80,000 Ohioans health care soon to be covered by Catholic Health Partners
Posted 06/03/2013
Inventors and businesses create jobs together, Weatherhead's Silke Forbes tells Plain Dealer
Posted 05/31/2013
Commencement Address by Dan Hurwitz, CEO of DDR Corp.
Posted 05/28/2013
On May 19, 2013, Daniel B. Hurwitz, CEO of DDR Corp., a major retail property company headquartered in the Cleveland area, addressed Weatherhead graduates and their guests at the commencement ceremony.
Chris Laszlo to teach an Executive Education course on "Overcoming Business Obstacles: Innovative Solutions for Tough Times"
Posted 05/23/2013
Chris Laszlo to teach an Executive Education course on "Overcoming Business Obstacles: Innovative Solutions for Tough Times"
Posted 05/23/2013
Registration for Laszlo's Overcoming Business Obstacles Executive Education course is now open!
Posted 05/23/2013
Reality is weighing in on small business owners
Posted 05/14/2013
A class of 75,000+? Aspiring leaders flock to Professor Boyatzis' MOOC
Posted 05/08/2013
Enrollment in Distinguished University Professor Richard Boyatzis' free massive open online course, or MOOC, just hit a high-water mark of more than 82,000 students. A well known pioneer in leadership development, Boyatzis is one of two professors who launched Case Western Reserve University's very first MOOCs this spring.
Indian publication recognizes Weatherhead/XLRI MPOD program
Posted 05/08/2013
Small businesses get a boost from the housing market
Posted 05/07/2013
Professor Simon Peck discusses executive compensation
Posted 05/06/2013
Professor Mark Taylor, PhD, CPA, named Andrew D. Braden Professor of Accounting and Auditing
Posted 05/06/2013
Case Western Reserve University appoints Professor Mark H. Taylor, PhD, CPA, to a five-year term as the Andrew D. Braden Professor of Accounting and Auditing. This endowed chair is named after Andrew Braden (1916-2003) who taught accountancy at CWRU for more than 40 years.
Robin Dubin weighs in on reviving a regional economy through entrepreneurship
Posted 05/03/2013
J.B. Silvers on how Obamacare may affect you
Posted 05/03/2013
Sharma's BizEd article shares strategies to hiring international grad students
Posted 05/02/2013
Internet sales tax is bad public policy, Professor Shane in Entrepreneur
Posted 05/01/2013
Professor Mahnic shares 5 things not to do with your money on WKYC.com
Posted 05/01/2013
Where in the world are small business owners trusted?
Posted 05/01/2013
Professor Diane Bergeron wins Diekhoff teaching award
Posted 04/30/2013
Professor Steven Feldman's new book explains the reality of corruption in China
Posted 04/26/2013
David Cooperrider's affirmation model may help in weight management
Posted 04/26/2013
Three more reasons to celebrate CWRU commencement
Posted 04/24/2013
Small business crowdfunding conversation calls for Shane's advice again
Posted 04/24/2013
Community shares news of Peter B. Lewis speaking at CWRU commencement
Posted 04/24/2013
How to get a Startup Visa Act passed
Posted 04/24/2013
Cleveland.com shares commencement news of Peter B. Lewis and Frank Gehry
Posted 04/24/2013
Boyatzis's research shows emotional intelligence trumps IQ in dental students work with patients
Posted 04/24/2013
CEO of DDR Corp. to deliver keynote address at Weatherhead's commencement
Posted 04/23/2013
MAcc alum, Warner Bros. treasurer Tim Deloso shares his career journey
Posted 04/22/2013
5 questions with one of CWRU's first MOOC instructors Richard Boyatzis
Posted 04/19/2013
Scott Shane on why filing a patent is more complicated for startups
Posted 04/18/2013
What is design thinking?
Posted 04/18/2013
Professor Mahnic guest blogs about valuation method for Crain's Cleveland Business
Posted 04/18/2013
Professor Scott Shane on why Paul Ryan's budget is better for small business
Posted 04/12/2013
Rakesh Niraj wins Journal to Journal Business Marketing Outstanding Article Award
Posted 04/11/2013
Rakesh Niraj wins Journal to Journal Business Marketing Outstanding Article Award
Posted 04/11/2013
Rakesh Niraj wins Journal to Journal Business Marketing Outstanding Article Award
Posted 04/11/2013
Design and finance are two pieces of the urban planning puzzle
Posted 04/05/2013
Seeking outstanding leaders for the Alumni Advisory Council
Posted 04/04/2013
Professor Scott Fine on American Greetings Corp. going private, again
Posted 04/04/2013
Student spotlight on undergraduate Charity Taylor
Posted 04/03/2013
How to neuter patent trolls by professor Scott Shane
Posted 04/02/2013
Professor Shane asks what are would-be entrepreneurs afraid of?
Posted 04/02/2013
Scott Shane on how the sequester will affect small business contractors
Posted 04/02/2013
Steven Feldman's new book explores corruption in American-Chinese business relations
Posted 03/29/2013
Steven Feldman, PhD, is a Youngstown native who focuses on business ethics as a professor of marketing and policy studies. He spent time teaching in Shanghai while conducting research for a new book, Trouble in the Middle: American-Chinese Business Relations, Culture, Conflict, and Ethics.
Weatherhead alumna Leigh Orne, co-founder of Activyst, helps girls in developing countries through sports
Posted 03/29/2013
Weatherhead's Kip Lee delivers TED talk on design thinking
Posted 03/29/2013
How to neuter patent trolls by professor Scott Shane
Posted 03/26/2013
Crowdfunding and adoption? Professor Goldberg weighs in
Posted 03/25/2013
Fowler Center's Business Prizing Process: Something waiting to be born
Posted 03/22/2013
Bill Mahnic shares three reasons why 401K savings is a must
Posted 03/22/2013
Three members of CWRU community speak at TEDxCLE today
Posted 03/21/2013
Laszlo's insight flourishes in RMI's portfolio energy management themes
Posted 03/18/2013
Scott Shane's latest Businessweek post focuses on IRS's worker-classifications
Posted 03/15/2013
Hal Hamilton: Fifty in Ten: Stabilization of 50% of the Global Fisheries in Ten Years
Posted 03/14/2013
Mark Votruba weighs in on Cleveland Clinic's recent Nashville partner
Posted 03/13/2013
Leadership Deep Dive makes the leap to three continents
Posted 03/13/2013
Applications are now being accepted for the upcoming Leadership Deep Dive flight starting June 11, 2013. This international program has attracted hundreds of senior business executives who have looked to move beyond the limitations of their functional expertise and become better leaders.
Weatherhead part-time MBA jumps to 30th place in latest rankings
Posted 03/12/2013
Should designers fear design-thinking MBAs?
Posted 03/07/2013
Current entrepreneurship trends
Posted 03/07/2013
Trustees commit $10.5 million to Case Western Reserve University
Posted 03/07/2013
Mark Weinberger
Posted 03/07/2013
J.B. Silvers joins MetroHealth and Cleveland Museum of Art panel to discuss The Waiting Room documentary
Posted 03/06/2013
Professor Silvia Prina's research featured in CGAP Blog
Posted 03/06/2013
Business as an Agent of World Benefit prototyping workshop featured in Axiom article
Posted 03/05/2013
Michele A. Seyranian
Posted 03/05/2013
Shane tells Inc. Magazine there has been little recovery for small business
Posted 02/28/2013
Fewer Ohioans starting own businesses isn't a bad thing says Shane
Posted 02/28/2013
PhD in Management candidate awarded Best Paper at AMA Educators' Conference
Posted 02/26/2013
Boyatzis brings emotional intelligence online
Posted 02/26/2013
International alumni share tips on U.S. job hunt
Posted 02/26/2013
Weatherhead team places 4th in KeyBank case competition
Posted 02/26/2013
Jennifer Johnson on multiple careers, prepping for interviews and her favorite Cleveland athletes
Posted 02/26/2013
Jennifer Johnson is associate dean for undergraduate and integrated studies and is also an associate professor of marketing and policy studies. In the classroom she draws upon her 25 years of experience as a management consultant.
More insight from J.B. Silvers: Medicaid expansion, health insurance exchanges, and how to invest your 401K
Posted 02/26/2013
Professor Gary Hunter quoted in Plain Dealer's Smuckers expansion article
Posted 02/20/2013
Established climate ethicist Don Brown speaking at the second biennial Issa Lecture Feb. 28th
Posted 02/18/2013
Bill Mahnic talks with WKYC.com about handling student loan debt
Posted 02/18/2013
John Ehrenfeld, author of "Sustainability by Design," visits Weatherhead
Posted 02/15/2013
MBA candidate Michael Sambrook shares his experiences at Weatherhead
Posted 02/14/2013
MBA candidate Michael Sambrook shares his background and experiences at Weatherhead.
Alumni engagement with career related activities increases by 35 percent
Posted 02/12/2013
Shane says Ohio's budget plan could boost small business
Posted 02/11/2013
How design thinking could help solve the skills gap
Posted 02/08/2013
Professor Mahnic guest blogs for Crain's Cleveland Business
Posted 02/08/2013
Leading Nonprofit Organizations provides new resource for practitioners
Posted 02/07/2013
Alumni Notes - Feb 2013
Posted 02/04/2013
Scott Fine quoted in Plain Dealer on Sherwin-William's $9.5 billion record sales
Posted 02/01/2013
Weatherhead student wins Best Student paper at IAMB
Posted 02/01/2013
Fifth Third BankCorp's multi-year commitment to emotional intelligence and mindful leadership
Posted 01/31/2013
The truth about the health insurance industry ... and what J.B. actually stands for
Posted 01/31/2013
J.B. Silvers, PhD, John R. Mannix Medical Mutual of Ohio Professor in Health Care Finance, revealed to us how the health insurance industry really works and what the Affordable Care Act can do to fix it. Plus: Find out Silvers' hidden connection to a popular seafood restaurant!
Scott Shane's reveals IRS's view on small business owners
Posted 01/30/2013
Students with a message of thanks
Posted 01/30/2013
Alumni Notes - February 2013
Posted 01/30/2013
Big in Japan: Alex Warofka, BA '12, combines his interests in Japanese culture and economics
Posted 01/29/2013
Economics major Alex Warofka won a Fulbright scholarship to study the impact of the Chinese diaspora on the Japanese economy.
Weatherhead students place second in ACG Cup
Posted 01/29/2013
Cheng Gu (MS-Finance '13), Patrick Kelly (MBA '13), Shane Rourke (MBA '13), Dale Stewart (MBA '13), and Mengying Xu (MS-Finance '13) won second place in a fierce case study competition hosted by the Cleveland Chapter of the ACG. The competition attracted teams of graduate students from Case Western Reserve, Cleveland State, Kent State, Baldwin Wallace, the University of Akron and Ohio State University.
Bill Mahnic provides 5 Tips to making money to WKYC
Posted 01/29/2013
NEW 2013 Executive Education Catalog is now available
Posted 01/28/2013
Weatherhead students trade legal pads for sheet music
Posted 01/28/2013
Weatherhead MBA among top 100 worldwide, says Financial Times
Posted 01/25/2013
J.B. Silvers quoted in WKSU article on 'boomers' and retirement
Posted 01/24/2013
Weatherhead alum, Funso Lafe leads sustainable energy in Nigeria
Posted 01/23/2013
Weatherhead volunteers take the pain out of tax time
Posted 01/22/2013
Beta Alpha Psi volunteers will hold free tax preparation sessions open to students, staff and the general public.
Adjunct professor Michael Goldberg in Entrepreneur on the impact delays in crowdfunding rules have on foreign entrepreneurs
Posted 01/21/2013
The making of a design thinker, a 2009 article by Tim Brown
Posted 01/16/2013
MX: Managing Experience conference special rate expires January 31
Posted 01/16/2013
Professor Diane Bergeron provides Entrepreneur insight into employee loyalty
Posted 01/15/2013
David Kelley speaks to design thinking and breakthrough ideas
Posted 01/10/2013
WSJ places Scott Shane's fiscal cliff story as must-read of the week
Posted 01/10/2013
Alumni Notes Archive
Posted 01/09/2013
Fowler Center's design partner for the Business as an Agent of World Benefit Prize, OpenIDEO, featured on 60 Minutes
Posted 01/08/2013
CNBC features Professor Shane in 13 small business trends to watch list
Posted 01/04/2013
Chris Laszlo and Nadya Zhexembayeva's book listed as #1 in 10 Great Sustainability Books to Give as Gifts
Posted 01/03/2013


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On May 22, 2011, a tornado ripped through the town of Joplin, Missouri. The multi-vortex storm cut an eerily straight west-east line through Joplin's downtown street grid, growing to three quarters of a mile wide at its peak. In the end, the Category 5 twister physically picked up and slammed down about one-quarter of the town, creating 3 million cubic yards of debris. It flattened big-box stores such as Home Depot and Walmart and left a desert of concrete foundation slabs covering a six-mile stretch of destruction. The storm killed 161 people, displaced 9,000 more, and completely wiped out more than 4,000 structures while damaging another 3,000. It was the deadliest tornado since modern recordkeeping began in 1950, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
But as the one-year anniversary of the storm approached, Joplin found itself in startlingly good shape. Local officials estimate that insurance claims will total $2 billion, yet the town's business tax revenues are actually up for the year. School enrollment is 95 percent of what it was before the tornado, and the vast majority of displaced residents have secured lodging in or near the area.
Joplin's recovery contrasts with the fitful, fraught response to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, 700 miles to the south, in 2005. The two storms, like the two cities, were different in nature and scale. But there were also disparities in the official and unofficial responses after the initial damage. While the people of Joplin largely took matters into their own hands, pushing aside burdensome rules and refusing help when it came with too many strings attached, New Orleans and the surrounding area to this day remains hamstrung by federal, state, and local bureaucracy. Joplin's experience offers a powerful lesson in self-sufficiency and knowing when to say "no thanks" to government.
'This Isn't the FEMA of Katrina'
When I flew to Joplin in the fall of 2011 on one of the two daily flights serving the city, residents were still struggling to fathom their losses. But they were certain about one thing. Over and over, locals told me, "This isn't the FEMA of Katrina." Which was good, because after Hurricane Katrina the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) stalled the recovery and rebuilding for millions of Gulf Coast residents. In the months and years after the hurricane and resulting floods, media outlets, congressional investigations, and government reports excoriated the agency for its inept response. Indecision at local, state, and federal levels of government, as well as rigid regulations concerning everything from occupational licensing to debris removal, delayed or hindered Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts. FEMA's own internal investigation admitted that the "widespread criticism for a slow and ineffective response" was well deserved.
One reason the FEMA of 2011 did not perform like the FEMA of 2005 was that Joplin residents were determined not to let that happen. Founded by lead and zinc miners in the 19th century, this small southwestern Missouri town has a long history of self-reliance in a state that ranks fifth in overall freedom from burdensome government regulations, according to a 2011 study by the free market Mercatus Center (which sponsored my trip to Joplin as part of a broader tornado recovery research project for which I handled logistics). The community has the close-knit feel you'd expect of a small Midwestern town, with a network of active voluntary organizations and church groups that collaborate regularly. And as Beloit College economist Emily Chamlee-Wright concluded after leading more than 400 interviews with Katrina survivors, the best approach once emergency gives way to recovery is to reduce government involvement and devolve power to disaster victims, who know their own situations best. "In order to minimize signal noise that inhibits the response from markets and civil society," Chamlee-Wright writes in her 2010 book The Cultural and Political Economy of Recovery, "government at all levels should scale back its efforts as soon as possible to make room for markets and voluntary organizations to provide basic supplies, food, clean-up, and construction services."
Despite its small size, Joplin, home of St. John's Regional Medical Center and battery manufacturer EaglePicher, is a regional hub for commerce, providing jobs and connections to residents of nearby Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. "Joplin's a town of 50,000 people at night but a city of a quarter-million during the day," goes the local refrain. The recovery benefited from these trade routes. After the tornado, emergency response teams from around the state streamed into town. Four hundred and thirty police, fire, and public works departments helped with search and rescue, cleanup, and debris removal. Doctors and nurses, many of whom worked at one of Joplin's two hospitals or in the medical services sector clustered around them, came from around the four-state area. A handful of warehouses around the city are full to this day with donated material such as tarps, clothing, and food.
Most displaced people found refuge with nearby family or friends; the city estimates that 95 percent of people displaced by the storm stayed within 25 miles of town. "A lot of the residents are staying here," Assistant City Manager Sam Anselm tells me. It's "a testament to the spirit, the way the community responded to this."
The city registered 130,000 volunteers from around the country and estimates that at least that many helped and weren't counted. One even came from Japan and stayed two weeks, citing the way Americans donated to his country after the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. (Someone found the Japanese volunteer a bicycle that he rode 12 miles each day to and from his cleanup site.) In October, ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition rolled into town and built seven homes in seven days. Habitat for Humanity built 10 the next month.
The tornado sucked nine-story St. John's a few inches off its foundation before setting it back down. The medical center erected temporary structures in open space next door, complete with an emergency room, and managed to keep nearly all of its 2,200 employees on payroll. Along with medical jobs, Joplin is home to a handful of big businesses, such as building materials company TAMKO, a PotashCorp animal feed plant, and a General Mills factory.
Joplin Schools Superintendent C.J. Huff didn't want what he dubbed the "Hurricane Katrina effect" of people fleeing the area permanently, so the school district established a program for volunteers to "adopt" students and provide them with school supplies. Private donations poured in; the United Arab Emirates gave $1 million, enough to issue a MacBook to every high school student. TAMKO donated $500,000. Other sources, from Lions Club International to singer Sheryl Crow (who auctioned off a Mercedes) to a 9-year-old Nevadan who raised $360 with a car wash, combined to contribute $3.5 million of private money to the district by September 2011.
'Better to Ask Forgiveness Than Permission'
Two days after the tornado, when 4,200 kids had nowhere to go to school, Superintendent Huff stood up at a staff meeting and said, "We're going to start school in 84 days." On August 17, they did just that. The tornado had destroyed the town's only public high school and 50 percent of the school district's property, inflicting $150 million worth of damage. When school re-opened as scheduled in the fall, enrollment hit 95 percent.
How did they do it? "Sometimes," Huff explains, "it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission." A day after the storm, once Huff had canceled the remainder of the school year, the Joplin school board granted him emergency authority to circumvent usual bureaucratic procedures in order to deal directly with the disaster. "We knew that to keep things moving at a rapid pace, we needed to give our superintendent authority to make decisions as quickly as possible," says Joplin Board of Education President Ashley Micklethwaite. "The worst thing we can do as a board is get down into the weeds and worry about minute details. We had to look at the big picture, and the big picture was getting our schools back up and running."
Huff's new powers included the ability to make emergency procurement decisions instead of, for example, adhering to a mandatory two-week minimum for posting bids. The superintendent also successfully lobbied Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who signed a handful of executive orders granting the district emergency permission to speed up the contracting process faster than state regulations usually allow. Huff gathered a team of architects and contractors he had used for previous district jobs and began planning temporary construction for the approaching school year. Within a few days, he says, they were able to choose which subcontractors and building materials to use, a process that would normally take up to one month. City Hall also responded to the needs of the school district and its builders, agreeing to receive and approve plans and blueprints piecemeal rather than requiring the usual single master set. A process that would typically take months took only a few weeks.
The school system now houses most of its students in temporary structures or leased space. Joplin High School's juniors and seniors attend class in a decade-vacant Shopko store in a mall that has been refurbished with modern classrooms, a spiffy computer and video lab, and Joplin Eagles artwork on the walls.
Getting students in classes improved community morale and has been among the most consequential steps in Joplin's recovery. It would not have happened if Huff and his team did not have the flexibility to innovate around bureaucracy as usual.
'A Different Set of Rules'
East Middle School is a less happy story than Joplin High. Having opened only in 2009, the school was declared a "total loss" after the tornado. Because reconstruction has involved the federal government, the project initially was delayed for months. "We're having to follow a different set of rules," Huff says, "because federal dollars are involved."
Most taxpayers appreciate government procurement and contracting regulations designed to limit waste, fraud, and abuse. But those safeguards can exasperate locals who are racing against the clock to make important decisions in the wake of catastrophe. "For us to be able to tap into those federal funds that we'll need to rebuild," Board of Education President Micklethwaite says, "we have to follow their procedures, which are quite frankly slower than what we—even in a normal situation—would have to do in the state of Missouri."
"According to the state and how we have to bid architects, it's much more open," Micklethwaite explains. "But when you bring the federal government and FEMA into it, they have very specific requirements, for architectural bids or anything else." Micklethwaite recalls sitting around a table with fellow school board members and FEMA representatives after the tornado. "There's this giant book," she says, "that's like three inches thick with tiny, tiny print, and it's all the rules and regulations about federal emergency management. And they're flipping through the book and looking at very specific statutes and rules that we have to follow, and at that point I really thought, 'OK, this is going to be challenging.'"
Micklethwaite is quick to add that FEMA has been helpful, providing among other things "temporary modular classrooms" for seven schools damaged by the storm, as well as 600 trailers for displaced residents. But the feds are by nature bureaucratic.
"It'd sure be nice," says Superintendent Huff, "if there were federal procurement policies that allowed for expedited processes in emergency events, and that's not the case. So we're wading through paperwork." He says that, "hypothetically," the district could have broken ground on a new East Middle School in late summer of 2011. "That would be a building," Huff says, "that we could have online next fall for our kids, and now it's probably looking more like next Christmas at best." Huff's "at best" turned out to be ambitious, if not unrealistic. The school board has since approved a reconstruction schedule that predicts an East Middle School ribbon-cutting ceremony in December 2013.
'Get the Hell Out of the Way'
Owners of houses that were declared a total loss faced a daunting obstacle to rebuilding: The city government would not let them build even a temporary structure to protect their property from the rain, for fear that it would obstruct debris-removal efforts. Joplin faced a hard August 7 deadline from FEMA to have the wreckage cleared in order to get 90 percent of cleanup costs reimbursed from Washington.
On June 20, 2011, after contentious debate, the Joplin City Council voted 7 to 2 for a 60-day moratorium on new construction. City Councilman Bill Scearce, an insurance salesman, was one of the votes against, fearing displaced residents would simply settle somewhere else, as many Gulf Coast homeowners did after Katrina. "If you've got somebody that wants to build a house on site and protect their property," Scearce says, "I mean, who are we to tell them they can't do that?…We need to put up ways that people can get things done instead of making them jump through hoops." City employees, he says, should do their jobs and then "just get the hell out of the way."
In the end, the moratorium itself got out of the way: The council lifted the ban more than three weeks ahead of schedule once all but 300 lots had been cleared.
David Glenn, a local commercial real estate broker, said the city's flexible building department also smoothed reconstruction efforts. "There's some building jurisdictions that feel like they're the Gestapo," Glenn says. " 'You're going to do it our way, or you're not going to do it all.' But Joplin doesn't have that attitude." City administrators brought in extra inspectors to deal with the massive demand for building and repair permits. Meanwhile, Glenn says, most local businesses turned down the $10 million in rebuilding loans offered by the federal Small Business Administration, because they deemed the lower interest rates not worth the red tape that comes with a government-backed loan.
'We Just Keep Moving Forward'
Much of Joplin's recovery success to date is thanks to assertive local leaders and coordination between government and voluntary organizations. Hurricane Katrina wrought devastation on a much greater scale, but even accounting for that difference, stories of red tape and bureaucratic inertia are much rarer in Joplin. Freedom and discretion to rebuild have been the default setting for locals.
Mistakes after Katrina caused much delay, despair, and suffering. They also revealed lessons that have improved FEMA's disaster response. Joplin provides more learning material. If successful disaster recovery relies upon having good people in power, many if not most municipalities will fare much worse in the event of a catastrophe than Joplin has so far. We have a government of laws, not men. The good men and women of Joplin have pushed those laws to promote recovery, but in the absence of such people, and especially in the absence of improved laws, victims of future disasters are more likely to be saddled with something closer to the Katrina recovery.
Micklethwaite went through the tornado not just as president of Joplin's school board but also as a resident of her hometown, to which she returned 20 years ago. She describes her neighborhood as "closed" before the tornado; after the storm, she did laundry in a neighbor's house while hers was being repaired, and people on her street held group meetings in the cul-de-sac to discuss rebuilding. "We joke about it being group therapy," she says. "We just keep moving forward."
Tate Watkins is a 2012 Phillips Foundation fellow and a former reason intern. He lives in Port-au-Prince.
]]>"Haiti has practically become a trash can," says Ketcia Pierre-Louis, "where everything people in other countries don't need comes here."
Pierre-Louis is a businesswoman and affiliate of the Croix-des-Bouquets Chamber of Commerce, just outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Like many critics of imported second-hand clothing, which is known locally as "pepe," she believes the practice undercuts domestic businesses and industries. Some have even called for the government to ban the practice.
But Haiti's pepe trade is decidedly a business—not a charity. In fact, it starts with Haitian Americans buying goods at U.S. thrift stores and shipping products to Port-au-Prince and other ports. Pepe may include hand-me-downs, but the clothing is high-quality, stylish, and cheap. More important, average Haitians prefer the choice of wearing such apparel—and brands like Polo, Lacoste, and Converse—to not having access to such products at all.
Far from turning Haiti into a trash can, the market in pepe shows how buyers and sellers enrich each other through exchange.
Produced by Tate Watkins and Jon Bougher.
Approximately 4 minutes.
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]]>Jose Pereira came to the United States from El Salvador illegally 20 years ago. He has since worked various jobs in New Jersey, married a U.S. citizen, fathered three children who are citizens, and committed no crimes.
His recompense for building a life here: "imminent" deportation.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials recently detained Pereira while he was working a warehouse job, and ICE says his deportation is will be occurring in short order. The Jersey Journal reports his wife's reaction:
"This is something that I never thought would actually happen," said his wife, Carmen Pereira. "You have immigrants who do stuff they shouldn't, like commit crimes and stuff, and he doesn't do that."
Despite the Obama administration's penchant for deporting foreigners, the president issued a directive last summer that would seemingly help people like Pereira—unauthorized immigrants who have strong ties to the United States and have no criminal records—remain in the country.
According to Pereira's wife, the couple has tried unsuccessfully to use her U.S. citizenship to attain the same legal status for Pereira.
Read the entire story here, and see also Reason on other recent deportation news and deportation generally.
]]>"The PC is dead," declared Harvard law and computer science professor Jonathan Zittrain last week in the MIT Technology Review.
Thanks to consumers' ongoing migration from laptops and desktops to mobile devices, and thanks to those devices' relatively restrictive designs, "we're seeing an unprecedented shift of power from end users and software developers on the one hand to operating system vendors on the other," Zittrain writes. His assessment: "This is a little for the better, and much for the worse."
Zittrain is part of a cadre of Internet scholars and technology pundits who lament the shift from PCs—with their relatively bottom-up, open infrastructure, which allows users to run practically any software they choose—to devices that lack the same openness or "generativity." The complaint isn't new, and the wider debate boils down to a question over how much producers of digital devices should be able to control the products they produce and the software and content on them. But Zittrain adds a semi-nonsensical twist to the argument against walled garden operating systems.
[Apple] developers can't add an icon for their app to the desktop or the dock without user permission, an amazing echo of what landed Microsoft in such hot water. (Though with Microsoft, the problem was prohibiting the removal of the IE icon—Microsoft didn't try to prevent the addition of other software icons, whether installed by the PC maker or the user.) [Emphasis Zittrain's.]
In the eyes of U.S. and European regulators, one of Microsoft's antitrust sins of the 1990s was ensuring an Internet Explorer icon appeared on every PC desktop that shipped with a Windows operating system. Now, Apple's apparent sin is allowing users, rather than software developers, to choose which icons appear on their computers.
But the fact that apps must routinely face approval masks how extraordinary the situation is: tech companies are in the business of approving, one by one, the text, images, and sounds that we are permitted to find and experience on our most common portals to the networked world. Why would we possibly want this to be how the world of ideas works, and why would we think that merely having competing tech companies—each of which is empowered to censor—solves the problem?
This is especially troubling as governments have come to realize that this framework makes their own censorship vastly easier: what used to be a Sisyphean struggle to stanch the distribution of books, tracts, and then websites is becoming a few takedown notices to a handful of digital gatekeepers.
Setting aside Zittrain's comparison of "censorship" by tech companies with the suppression of information by governments, it's bizarre to imply that (genuine, government) censorship today—in a digital age that allows people to throw websites up and publish information in seconds—is easier than when we just had books and papyrus and the like.
And is it really so "extraordinary" that a private company would choose to design its products and offer its services on its own terms? Apple does operate its app store under relatively strict terms—a practice that may make getting an app approved a relatively onerous and lengthy process but has benefits like keeping malware out of its software offerings. Zittrain himself has noted that the shift in models of operating systems has been "driven by a desire for better security and more convenience."
Most software users aren't power users—they prefer devices that are easy to use right out of the box, like many of Apple's "closed" products. As Ars Technica's Timothy B. Lee (also an occasional Reason contributor) noted in his thorough treatment of the topic, "How I learned to stop worrying and love the App Store":
It made sense for early personal computers to demand that their users have specialized knowledge. But as computing technology matures, it's natural for most consumers to want to outsource the process of vetting software to more knowledgeable third parties.
Of course, there will always be a segment of the market that wants unfettered control over their computers, just as there is a market segment that prefers to drive a stick-shift car and change their own oil. That's important, but in the long run, these power users will be a small part of the market. Most people just want their cars and computers to work without thinking about it too much.
In Reason's March 2011 issue, Adam Thierer countered concerns shared by Zittrain and similar internet scholars while addressing "the rise of cybercollectivism."
]]>An Al Jazeera video report from Kabul yesterday describes the latest foreign aid effort in the country: "An Afghan version of Sesame Street set up in Afghanistan, where half of the schools lack buildings."
The U.S. embassy in Kabul is funding production of the Afghan version of Big Bird's show, which launches Thursday.
"The international community touts education as one of the big successes in Afghanistan, reports Al Jazeera's Jennifer Glasse. "But as with many aid programs here, there is a disconnect between what the donors offer and Afghans need."
A school without teachers is just a building, and a school with good teachers but no traditional classroom can still be a good school. But it's not clear that funding an over-sized yellow bird and his Muppet friends is the best use of aid money now.
Deputy education minister Mohammed Siddiq Patman seems to agree; he lamented to Al Jazeera that 50 percent of the country's students are forced to study al fresco. (Which, in his eyes, is a reason to send the country even more aid.)
But Al Jazeera also spoke to Afghans on the streets of Kabul who expressed disappointment with the billions of aid already spent on the country in the past decade.
"We had many expectations for women," says one Afghan woman, "that have not turned out as we wanted. Aid that came to Afghanistan hasn't been used in the best way.
"In the past 10 years," says another Afghan, "the aid has only gone to certain people. It's not gone to the right place."
Watch Al Jazeera's entire report here, and read more Reason on Afghanistan nation building troubles here.
]]>If "father and working man" Gabino Sanchez puts a face on illegal immigration, Pew Research Center provides some background about his cohort.
A report based on Census Bureau data and Pew Hispanic Center research finds that 63 percent of the estimated 10.2 million unauthorized adults in the United States have lived here for at least 10 years. The share of unauthorized immigrants who have been in the country for a long period is increasing, too:
The share that has been in the country at least 15 years has more than doubled since 2000, when about one-in-six (16%) unauthorized adult immigrants had lived here for that duration. By the same token, the share of unauthorized adult immigrants who have lived in the country for less than five years has fallen by half during this period—from 32% in 2000 to 15% in 2010.
The rising share of unauthorized immigrants who have been in the U.S. for a long duration reflects the fact that the sharpest growth in this population occurred during the late 1990s and early 2000s—and that the inflow has slowed down significantly in recent years, as the U.S. economy has sputtered and border enforcement has tightened. It also reflects the fact that relatively few long-duration unauthorized immigrants have returned to their countries of origin.
Pew also finds that almost half of the unauthorized adults in the U.S. have children who are minors—a much higher share than the 29 percent of native-born adults who have children. Pew attributes the disparity to the fact that much of the unauthorized immigrant population comprises relatively young, working-age people who are likely in their child-rearing years.
The report also notes that, based on Pew's polling, 72 percent of Americans favor a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants "if they pay fines, have jobs and pass background checks."
Read the entire report here.
]]>Gabino Sanchez came from Mexico to the United States when he was 14 years old. For the next 13 years, he worked construction and landscaping jobs in South Carolina to support his wife and two children, who are legal U.S. citizens. Sanchez is not.
Sanchez had never been arrested until he was stopped for a traffic violation and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Sanchez did not have a driver's license, and police suspected he was in the country illegally.
"You're going to fill your jails with plenty of Gabinos," said U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) when he visited ICE officials in Charleston yesterday to urge them to drop Sanchez's deportation proceedings. A new South Carolina law aimed at curbing illegal immigration goes into effect Jan. 1, pending a legal challenge by the U.S. Department of Justice. Gutierrez said he wanted to show "that the immigrant community does have a way to defend itself" and that federal policies exist that can protect immigrants from deportation if they have strong ties to the United States. He added that "deporting a father and working man is not in the best interest of our country."
"I got two boys," said Sanchez, "that are U.S. citizens. I got my wife. I worked all my life over here in this country."
Gutierrez also asked officials to review the case of Roger Rablero Martinez, 20, who was also stopped for a traffic violation and detained when he did not have a driver's license.
"My parents brought me here when I was 12," said Martinez. "I didn't want to come but they brought me." He, like Sanchez, has no prior criminal record.
"Cases like this," said Rep. Gutierrez, "show whether the Obama administration is serious about using deportation as a tool to remove serious criminals and not as a tool to split up American families."
Read more about the Justice Department's legal challenge to South Carolina's law here, Reason on immigration here, and Reason's infographic illustrating "America's absurd immigration waiting line," which includes virtually no legal path to citizenship for low-skilled workers, here.
]]>Max Marty sees a potential market in what he considers flawed U.S. immigration policies. Marty is the founder and CEO of Blueseed, a startup that plans to create a "high-tech visa-free entrepreneurship and technology incubator on an ocean vessel in international waters."
Because of the current U.S. immigration system, says Blueseed, "bold and creative entrepreneurs from around the world aren't given the chance to come to Silicon Valley and develop the technologies that could be creating jobs and propelling the economy forward." So the company plans to house these potential innovators near Silicon Valley on a floating vessel in international waters near the San Francisco Bay Area.
Most so-called "high-skilled" immigrants (scientists, engineers, computer programmers, and the like) come to the United States under the H-1B visa program. Congress caps the number of visas issued at 65,000 each year and allows an additional 20,000 exceptions for immigrants with advanced U.S. degrees.
Last week U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services announced that the Fiscal Year 2012 cap was reached, which was two months ahead of last year's pace. ComputerWorld noted that before the recession, the cap was routinely reached in just a week. It took only one day in 2007.
The son of Cuban immigrants, Marty previously worked for the Peter Thiel-funded Seasteading Institute, as did Blueseed's two other staffers. Ars Technica's Timothy B. Lee spoke to Blueseed's founder, who "acknowledged that it would be better for America to reform immigration laws and thereby make his company unnecessary."
Marty envisions the Blueseed ship as a floating incubator. They'll charge rent, but also take a small equity stake in each startup that comes on board. He hopes to cultivate a network of investors to help identify promising entrepreneurs. Blueseed will also accept applications directly from would-be entrepreneurs. Marty says they've already had expressions of interest from around the world.
Read the entire Ars interview here.
Read Shikha Dalmia on "Obama's immigration distraction," low-skilled immigration, and H-1B visas here.
And below, watch Matt Welch vehemently advocate MOAR immigration, specifically of the H-1B variety, while wearing what appears to be a pre-tied bow tie:
]]>Would you buy cufflinks that used to be part of a Kalashnikov? Peter Thum hopes you—or at least some of those one-percenters—will.
In 2001, Thum founded Ethos Water, a company he eventually sold to Starbucks that uses 5¢ from each sale of its bottled water to fund water sanitation projects around the globe. This year, he helped launch Fonderie 47, a nonprofit group company that purchases assault rifles in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and turns them into "rare jewelry, watches, and accessories." The organization's cufflinks reportedly cost around $35,000. Earrings run $150,000.
Thum and his co-founder John Zapolski started the organization after traveling extensively in Africa. "They have seen assault rifles in the hands of children," a Fonderie 47 press release says, "and witnessed firsthand the problem of assault rifles and how it hinders many aspects of development across Africa." To date, the group has destroyed more than 6,000 assault rifles purchased in the DRC and hopes eventually to eradicate illegal firearms from the continent.
The initiative sounds like a fantastic feel-good effort to fight child-soldiering and similar scourges, at least as long as you ignore the elephant in the room: How will it affect the local gun trade?
Forbes contributor Elmira Bayrasli queried Diana Wueger, who writes about international and domestic small-arms at the blog Gunpowder and Lead and for The Atlantic, about the organization. Wueger raised the salient concerns:
"Guns in conflict zones are commodities that obey basic economic principles—the market reacts to an increased demand by increasing prices, which could lead to some serious—and unpredictable—second-order effects."
Bayrasli reports that the organization only works with "verified government sources," not the open market:
Thum also notes that he would not have "started doing this" if he didn't believe that by "buying up cheap weapons we can move the supply curve inward." Replacement weapons, he notes, are more expensive in Africa, compared to the rest of the world. In Africa these weapons cost only about one-third what they do elsewhere in the world, so resupply from outside is expensive.
But if the initiative's purchases increases gun demand and prices rise, criminals and rebels and people generally will look for ways to get their weapons into the trade—through concealed government backchannels or bribes, perhaps. Fonderie 47 could wind up helping fund the types of activity it seeks to eradicate, and nefarious types still probably wouldn't have trouble acquiring some of the estimated 20 million assault rifles in Africa.
The prevalence of illegal firearms may be an epiphenomenon anyway, clouding the underlying causes of the African conflicts Fonderie 47 seeks to remedy.
Read Reason on the related-but-different topic of gun control here.
]]>Today in The Guardian, Bill Easterly describes how U.S. foreign aid programs have been "taken over by national security interests, abetted by delusions of nation-building" since George W. Bush announced increased aid funding in 2002:
The resultant failures overshadowed notable successes in more traditional aid programmes like health. These disasters and the neglect of more feasible poverty relief failed to sustain the compassionate constituency evident earlier in the decade.
Easterly therefore reccommends building a "firewall" between Defense and U.S. aid programs. If you're going to fund foreign aid, you may as well do things like vaccinate kids against deadly diseases or provide antiretroviral drugs to HIV-positive patients instead of throwing funding at too-grandiose-not-to-fail nation-building efforts.
Yet half of U.S. aid increases following President Bush's announcement went to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. "Another fifth," Easterly notes, "went to other violent, corrupt or autocratic places where 'nation-building' also had little chance of succeeding, such as Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia."
As Congress considers whether (or where) to slice foreign aid funding, you'd think that money for extravagant nation-building programs would look like warm butter. Still, Easterly writes, a current House proposal features smaller cuts in aid to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan than anywhere and everywhere else on the planet.
As I wrote in a recent piece about the Millennium Villages Project, George Soros et al. dropping loads of money on aid projects for a handful of African villages might improve those villagers' lives. But it isn't likely to lead to long-term development. Similarly, U.S. aid programs may be able to vaccinate a lot of children around the world, but don't expect them to build successful nation-states anytime soon.
Read more Reason on nation-building.
]]>Shortly after Steve Jobs' death last month, a copy of a VHS tape that had long been thought lost was discovered in a London garage. On the tape was about 70 minutes of a 1995 conversation between Jobs and Robert Cringley, who used nine minutes of the footage in his PBS series Triumph of the Nerds that aired in 1996.
The master tape of the interview was lost while being shipped from London to Portland and thought to be gone forever, until Triumph director Paul Sen found the VHS copy in his garage a few weeks after Jobs' death. He did not have a copy of any of the 124 other interviews from the series.
Last night I went to a screening of Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, Cringley's entire unedited conversation released in various cities on Nov. 16 and 17 in Mark Cuban's Landmark Theaters. Cringley, whom Jobs hired and fired three times, had known Jobs almost 20 years at the time of the interview. Ten years earlier, in 1985, Apple CEO John Sculley had exiled Jobs from the company.
During the film, Jobs laments Apple's decline, predicting that it "isn't reversible." A 10-year stagnation in innovation had allowed Microsoft to catch up because, Jobs says, "Apple stood still." He blames the slide on poor company leadership and complacency fostered by a lack of competition.
"The Macintosh that's shipping today," Jobs says at one point, "is like 25 percent different than the day I left." He notes the ease with which monopolies or companies with substantial market share—like Apple in the 1980s and, later, Microsoft—become satisfied with simply persisting instead of innovating.
That many if not most monopolies are government-granted probably wasn't lost on Jobs, who compared the U.S. public education system to a monopoly in another 1995 interview, this one with the Smithsonian Institution:
What happens when a customer goes away and a monopoly gets control, which is what happened in our country [with public education], is that the service level almost always goes down. I remember seeing a bumper sticker when the telephone company was all one. I remember seeing a bumper sticker with the Bell Logo on it and it said, "We don't care. We don't have to." And that's what a monopoly is. That's what IBM was in their day. And that's certainly what the public school system is. They don't have to care.
More recently, Jobs was infuriated by President Obama's obsession with "reasons why he can't get things done" instead of focusing on what's possible. Jobs also recently railed on Bill Gates, saying, "He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once" and that Gates "just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas."
"The only problem with Microsoft," Jobs says in The Lost Interview, "is they just have no taste." His feelings toward Microsoft and Gates illustrate his motivation for inventing and tweaking products that continue to better the lives of Apple customers. Most people were (and probably still are) content to use inelegant, frustrating devices and software. They don't know or don't care that there's a better way to process words than Word.
Jobs had a vision of creating tools that upgrade not only the way we do things like process words and communicate via phone but also improve, he hoped, humanity. "The way that we're going to ratchet up our species," he says, "is to take the best and spread it around to everybody so that everybody grows up with better things." An unceasing devotion to solving problems and creating new possibilities—an obsession with the idea that "there's got to be a better way"—consumed Jobs.
About two years after the "lost interview," Jobs would return to Apple, which was 90 days from bankruptcy at the time. He eventually transformed it into the most valuable company in America—after he transformed the way we operate computers, listen to music, use phones, and interact with each other and the world around us.
Read more Reason on Steve Jobs, and watch the The Lost Interview trailer below:
]]>President Obama is on pace to deport more illegal immigrants in his first term than George W. Bush did in two. The current administration isn't opposed to deporting legal permanent residents either, at least when it comes to the Haitian-born variety.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
[Wilberle] Vereus was only 2 years old when his family fled Haiti on a boat following the 1991 coup d'état of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But after a U.S. immigration judge sent him to Haiti this year, Vereus found himself back where he was born, in a country he barely knew.
But he is not alone. Since January, the United States has deported more than 250 Haitians knowing that one in two will be jailed without charges in facilities so filthy they pose life-threatening health risks. In recent years, immigration officials have stepped up deportations of legal immigrants like Vereus because of criminal convictions.
Due to a Supreme Court decision, detainees facing deportation can only be held for up to 180 days before being released back into American society. So U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) often opts to deport rather than release. The Chronicle reports that an ICE spokeswoman claimed the agency would "prioritize [deportations for] those who pose the greatest threat to the community."
What egregious crime did Vereus commit to warrant deportation? While in high school, he and a friend stole some iPods from a group of teenagers, for which he served a three-year sentence.
The Chronicle also notes that ICE hasn't just been deporting Haitians convicted of crimes in recent years:
A review of federal data shows ICE deported at least 2,684 non-criminal immigrants to Haiti from 2007 to 2010. As recently as 2008, 74 percent of all Haitian deportees did not have criminal convictions, according to the data. In the three months leading up to Haiti's earthquake, 67 percent of deportees were non-criminals.
Read Jacob Sullum on how rigid deportation rules make a mockery of justice, as well as other Reason coverage of U.S. deportation frenzy.
]]>Americans still don't want to pick fruit. Or gut catfish. BusinessWeek reports on "Why Americans Won't Do Dirty Jobs":
Skinning, gutting, and cutting up catfish is not easy or pleasant work. No one knows this better than Randy Rhodes, president of Harvest Select, which has a processing plant in impoverished Uniontown, Ala. For years, Rhodes has had trouble finding Americans willing to grab a knife and stand 10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room for minimum wage and skimpy benefits.
Most of his employees are Guatemalan. Or they were, until Alabama enacted an immigration law in September that requires police to question people they suspect might be in the U.S. illegally and punish businesses that hire them. The law, known as HB56, is intended to scare off undocumented workers, and in that regard it's been a success. It's also driven away legal immigrants who feared being harassed.
Rhodes has struggled to find workers since the law went into effect, but not for a lack of out-of-work Alabamians:
There's no shortage of people he could give those jobs to. In Alabama, some 211,000 people are out of work. In rural Perry County, where Harvest Select is located, the unemployment rate is 18.2 percent, twice the national average. One of the big selling points of the immigration law was that it would free up jobs that Republican Governor Robert Bentley said immigrants had stolen from recession-battered Americans. Yet native Alabamians have not come running to fill these newly liberated positions. Many employers think the law is ludicrous and fought to stop it. Immigrants aren't stealing anything from anyone, they say. Businesses turned to foreign labor only because they couldn't find enough Americans to take the work they were offering.
The entire piece is worth a read, especially the closing paragraph:
]]>While the politicians and business owners argue, others see opportunity. Michael Maldonado, 19, wakes up at 4:30 each morning in a trailer in Tuscaloosa, about an hour from Harvest Select, where he works as a fish processor. Maldonado, who grew up in an earthen-floor shack in Guatemala, says he likes working at the plant. "One hundred dollars here is 700 quetzals," he says. "The managers say I am a good worker." After three years, though, the long hours and scant pay are starting to wear on him. With the business in desperate need of every available hand, it's not a bad time to test just how much the bosses value his labor. Next week he plans to ask his supervisor for a raise. "I will say to them, 'If you pay me a little more—just a little more—I will stay working here,' " he says. "Otherwise, I will leave. I will go to work in another state."
In a press release today, Amazon announced that it now officially supports the Marketplace Fairness Act*, which would force online retailers to become tax collectors in states where they have no physical presence, contradicting Supreme Court precedent.
"Amazon strongly supports enactment of the Enzi-Durbin-Alexander bill and will work with Congress, retailers, and the states to get this bi-partisan legislation passed," said Paul Misener, Amazon vice president, global public policy.
As Ars Technica's Nate Anderson notes, just a few months ago Amazon was still crusading against efforts by states like California to turn the online retailer into a tax collector:
"We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors," Amazon wrote in a letter this summer. "Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action."
But now the online retailer has done an about-face. "It's a win-win resolution," the press release read, "and as analysts have noted, Amazon offers customers the best prices with or without sales tax."
Perhaps those analysts also noted that fighting myriad proponents of an internet sales tax is exhausting, especially when the company's size and efficiencies would ensure that complying with any new tax legislation would be easier and less costly than for most of its competitors.
Read recent Reason coverage of internet sales tax developments here, and Veronique de Rugy's extensive treatment of the topic here.
*UPDATED: A previous version of this post erroneously referred to the legislation Amazon now supports as the "Main Street Fairness Act."
]]>Squads of military-trained agents deployed by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration are muddling the war on terror in Central Asia with the drug war in Central America.
On Monday, The New York Times reported:
The D.E.A. now has five commando-style squads it has been quietly deploying for the past several years to Western Hemisphere nations—including Haiti, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Belize—that are battling drug cartels, according to documents and interviews with law enforcement officials.
The program—called FAST, for Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team—was created during the George W. Bush administration to investigate Taliban-linked drug traffickers in Afghanistan. Beginning in 2008 and continuing under President Obama, it has expanded far beyond the war zone.
In Honduras last March, a training mission including one of the D.E.A. squads and Honduran police was interrupted "when they received word that a suspicious plane from Venezuela was being tracked to a clandestine landing strip nearby." After a 20 minute firefight during which a Honduran officer was wounded and two drug traffickers were killed, the law enforcement officials seized the plane's cocaine and withdrew from the skirmish.
The D.E.A. squads' expansion to the Western Hemisphere is the latest evidence of the war on terror seeping into the drug war. Mike Riggs recently reported on some House Republicans' wishes to designate Mexican drug cartels as "Foreign Terrorist Organizations," a move that would allow U.S. law enforcement officials to pursue cartels more aggressively but would also probably damage U.S.-Mexico relations.
Eric Olson of the Woodrow Wilson International Center's Mexico Institute gave Riggs his thoughts on the subject:
"The government of Mexico certainly does not describe the organizations as terrorist organizations. They're not like Al Qaeda. They're not motivated by an ideology or a religion, they don't have an intention of taking over the government and running the country. They're not enemies attempting to tear down the United States. They wreak terror on civilians, there's no question about that. But they're not organized in the same fashion."
Riggs also noted that State Department official William Brownfield has testified that cartels' activities in Mexico are different from activities in "other parts of the world that we describe as having insurgencies." Brownfield added that "if we cannot reach basic agreement with the government of Mexico, our efforts will probably not succeed. It has to be cooperative, they have to agree."
Read Riggs' related coverage on why waging the war on drugs in Latin America is a gold mine for contractors and a waste for taxpayers.


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Teens @ HMCPL
Bailey Cove Young Adult: The Hunger Games
In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.
Bailey Cove Young Adult: Abandon
A near-death experience, a horrible incident at school, and a move from Connecticut to Florida have turned seventeen-year-old Pierce's life upside-down, but when she needs him most John Hayden is always there, helping but reminding her of her visit to the Underworld.
Bailey Cove Young Adult: Terrier
When sixteen-year-old Beka becomes "Puppy" to a pair of "Dogs," as the Provost's Guards are called, she uses her police training, natural abilities, and a touch of magic to help them solve the case of a murdered baby in Tortall's Lower City.
Nutcracker-pa-looza presents: Nutcracker on Ice
The cast of Nutcracker on Ice will be visiting the Youth Services area to help children make Nutcracker crafts.
Nutcracker-pa-looza presents: Nutcracker on Ice
Music Story Time will be visited by the cast of Nutcracker on Ice as they show videos of past performances and talk about their upcoming show.
Nutcracker-pa-looza presents: Alabama Youth Ballet
Nutcracker cast members from Alabama Youth Ballet will visit the library. The traditional Nutcracker story will be read; performers will show off their costumes and some graceful ballet moves; and everyone will have a good time. (Miss Lexie, who is a cast member in this production, might even dance and show you her costume!)


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Explore Belgium and the Netherlands September 13
Learn why Belgium and the Netherlands boast much more than windmills and wooden shoes. Long-time Oak Park residents and over-seas travelers Bob and Cora Burton will showcase the culture, art, and history of these cultures on Thursday, September 13 at 2 pm at Oak Park Public Library, 834 Lake Street. If you have stories, interesting items, or photos from Belgium and the Netherlands, please bring them to share. Refreshments will be served.
At this armchair travel event, Bob and Cora Burton will show how the lands of Belgium and the Netherlands inspired great artists, formed foundations of contemporary government and commerce, survived centuries of tumultuous times and, of course, cultivated awe-inspiring floral landscapes. The Burtons will share their travel adventures from Brussels, the heart of the European Union, to Amsterdam, the "Venice of the North." Enjoy photographs of centuries-old cities that line the canals in the Netherlands and learn about the arts, foods, industries, and flowers of these two countries.
Bob Burton is Professor Emeritus of Communications at Oakton Community College (Des Plaines) where he produced the college's TV programs for 31 years. Cora Burton worked for 25 years as the administrative assistant to the director of a local social service agency.
Find more free events happening at Oak Park Public Library at http://oppl.org/events/calendar [1].


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NIST cloud guidance puts emphasis on user security
Wednesday - 1/25/2012, 7:34pm EST
The finalized guidelines from the National Institute of Standards and Technology compel users to "carefully plan the security and privacy aspects of cloud computing solutions before implementing them and to make sure you fully understand the public cloud computing environment offered by the cloud provider," according to a post on GovInfoSecurity.
NIST issued draft guidance on the public cloud last winter.
This story is part of Federal News Radio's daily Cybersecurity Update. For more cybersecurity news, click here.


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The use of AJAX in the Google gadget directory can confuse the heck out of alot of users. When you add a gadget from the directory, it does not take you back to your home page so you can see the gadget in action, it just used to say "added". and left you on the same page of the directory and new user would have to sorta flail around to figure out how to get back to heir iGoogle page to interact with the gadget.
Today there is a new feature where they have made the fact that a gadget has been added more clear to a user…
Now you will see a more distinct box, and a link to "other gadgets" you may be interested in….
This small change is rather significant, and definately useful because the old system you culdn't even tell if gadget had been added unless you were really watching.
Unfortunately it does not really resolve the problem of getting back to the iGoogle home page where the gadget that was just installed actually resides.
I think it would be really useful if they added a second link in that box that said "Back to your homepage" or "see your gadget". Something that told users how to see their gadget that they just installed.


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Thank you again, Bob. Yes, the ideas are easier than the names!I was doing the exercises at the mathopolis link where they ask you to click on which law was in operation for a given equation. I knew what the equations were doing but I kept getting the name wrong!Margarita
hi Margarita,Haven't got a 'mnemonic' as such but this is what I do:Commutativity:A x B = B x A etcAt rush hour people from town A get in their cars and drive to work in town B. And people in town B get in their cars and drive to work in town A. At the end of the day, they all swap back. I believe that's why they are called commuters; because they swap over.Associativity:If you've got three numbers to multiply / add / divide etc, which ones do you associate together first?A # B # C ? Is it A # B, get the answer and then do (answer # C)Or is it B # C, get the answer and then do (A # answer).So it's all to do with the ones you associate together first.# is an associative operation if (A # B) # C = A # (B # C)Distributivy:A # (B @ C) where # and @ are different operations you can do with 2 numbers.So A has to be distributed to the contents of the bracket; B gets it and C gets it:(A # B) @ ( A # C)You are probably learning which operations are commutative, associative and distributive over another operation.What is correct in each case is much more important than remembering the correct word, so I shouldn't worry too much about them.Hope that helps,Bob
I find myself getting stuck on the NAMES 'commutative', 'distributative' and 'associative' - they are introduced in the Kindergarten level at the website...Has anyone got a mnemonic for remembering them? Margarita


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Bengal Activities Below, you will find information about many of our activities at BHS. Feel free to contact any of the Coaches and Advisors listed for additional information. Many programs also have separate websites linked below. BHS Activities Web Pages BHS Activity Forms and Summer Weight Training BHS Activities-Advisors Northwest Suburban Conference Activities Calendar Minnesota State High School League Site MapQuest |
Monday, March 10th, 2014


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