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WASHINGTON, Sept. 21, 2006– The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Interior today announced a detection of the H5 and N1 avian influenza subtypes in samples from wild Northern pintail ducks in Montana. Initial tests confirm that these samples do not contain the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain that has spread through birds in Asia, Europe and Africa. These samples were collected from apparently healthy ducks and initial test results indicate the presence of low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) virus, which poses no threat to human health.
The duck samples were collected on Sept. 15 in Cascade County, Montana, by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks as part of a cooperative, expanded wild bird monitoring program. Sixty-six samples were collected directly from the birds using cloacal swabs. Samples were initially screened at the Colorado State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. Of the 66 samples tested at the Colorado State University state lab, 16 samples were sent to USDA's National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL) in Ames, Iowa for confirmatory testing.
One of the 16 samples screened by NVSL tested positive for both H5 and N1. However, this does not mean these birds are infected with an H5N1 strain. It is possible that there could be two separate avian influenza viruses, one containing H5 and the other containing N1. Confirmatory testing underway at NVSL will clarify whether one or more strains of the virus are present, the specific subtype, as well as confirm the pathogenicity. These results are expected within two to three weeks and will be made public when completed.
The Departments of Agriculture and Interior are working collaboratively with States to sample wild birds throughout the United States as well as in Canada and Mexico for the presence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). As a result of this expanded testing program, USDA and DOI expect to identify additional cases of common strains of avian influenza in birds, which is not cause for concern.
Low pathogenic avian influenza commonly occurs in wild birds and can be found in a number of duck populations including the Northern pintail. It typically causes only minor or no noticeable symptoms. These strains of the virus include LPAI H5N1, commonly referred to as North American H5N1, which is very different from the more severe highly pathogenic H5N1 circulating overseas.
Duck populations, including Northern pintail ducks, are commonly hunted. There is no known health risk to hunters or hunting dogs from contact with low pathogenic forms of avian influenza virus. Nevertheless, hunters are always encouraged to use common sense sanitation practices, such as hand washing and thorough cooking, when handling or preparing wildlife of any kind. Interior has issued guidelines for safe handling and preparation of wild game.
For full story: http://www.usda.gov/2006/09/0369.xml. For more information about USDA's efforts and research related to avian influenza, go to http://www.usda.gov/birdflu. For more information about Interior's efforts and hunter education program, go to http://www.doi.gov/issues/avianflu.html. For information about the federal government's overall efforts related to avian influenza and human pandemic preparedness, go to http://www.avianflu.gov.


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RBI said Rs 15.28 lakh crore, or 99 per cent of the demonetised notes, had returned to the banking system.
New Delhi: The RBI has said that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, returned to banks when the government demonetised high value currency 15 months ago, are still being "processed for their arithmetical accuracy and genuineness".
This is being done in an "expedited manner", the central bank said.
"Specific bank notes are being processed for their arithmetical accuracy and genuineness and the reconciliation for the same is ongoing. This information can, therefore, be shared on completion of the process and reconciliation," the RBI said in reply to an RTI application filed by a PTI correspondent.
To a query on the number of demonetised notes, it said, "...subject to future corrections if any, arising in the course of verification process, the estimated value of specified bank notes received as on June 30, 2017 is Rs 15.28 trillion (lakh crore)".
Asked to provide the details of the deadline for finishing the counting of demonetised notes, the RBI said "specified bank notes are being processed in an expedited manner".
As on date, 59 sophisticated Currency Verification and Processing (CVPS) machines are in operation in RBI for the purpose, it said.
The reply did not specify the location of the machines.
"Besides, eight CVPS machines available with commercial banks are also being used. In addition to this, seven more CVPS machines on lease basis have been installed at RBI regional offices," the RTI reply said.
The government had on November 8, 2016 banned the use of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes and allowed the holders of these currency bills to deposit them with banks or use them at certain notified utilities.
In its annual report for 2016-17 released on August 30 last year, the RBI said Rs 15.28 lakh crore, or 99 per cent of the demonetised notes, had returned to the banking system.
The central bank said in the report, for the year ended June 30, 2017, that only Rs 16,050 crore of the Rs 15.44 lakh crore in old high denomination notes had not returned.
As on November 8, 2016, there were 1,716.5 crore pieces of Rs 500 and 685.8 crore pieces of Rs 1,000 notes in circulation, totalling Rs 15.44 lakh crore, it had said.

subset: commoncrawl


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I ran across an article this morning that mentioned that Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind turns 75 this month. In June of 1936, Mitchell published this now classic saga while recovering from a broken ankle. It was an instant hit, and brought immediate fame to the Atlanta journalist.
What is it about? Well....er...I haven't actually read it. "I'll never go hungry again!", right? But I only know that from the movie. It is high time to put this book on my to-read list.
But in the course of reading the article, I was reminded of two of my favorite civil war novels, both of which feature complex and interesting female characters.
Cold Mountain is a book that is hard to describe and the simple plot elements don't seem like they would add up to much. Warning! For the most part, not much happens. Inman walks. Ada grows. Ruby softens. Despite the action at the end, that is about it for plot details. But the combination of those three unforgettable characters is enough to fill more than the written 400 pages. The movie starring Nicole Kidman and Jude Law follows the book very closely, but the language and writing of the book make it a fantastic read.
Widow of the South by Robert Hickman is based on a true story of Carrie McGavock and the bloodiest battle of the Civil War - the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Carrie's plantation is requisitioned for a Confederate hospital, and the ghosts of the past and future change Carrie's life forever. The real Carnton Plantation is now the location for the largest privately held Confederate cemetery, and was originally carefully arranged and documented by Carrie.


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[form], a new user on the Hack a Day forums, was thinking, "what Christmas present i can send a friend, that would be really annoying?" We think he really hit it out of the park with this one. It's a modified computer speaker that will play "explicit" audio until the power button is pressed 200 times and the light sensor is covered. When this present is unwrapped, the room will fill with sounds not suitable for children, the elderly, or those with heart conditions.
The build is based around an old powered computer speaker. Six Li-ion batteries from an old laptop provide the power, and a very simple circuit pulls sound off an SD card with the help of an ATtiny45.
The schematic for the build looks easy enough, and like a good builder, [form] included the source and HEX files. Sadly (or thankfully), there is no video of the gag gift in action; probably a good thing, because this seems like a great way to lose a friend.


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Park Square Theatre was blessed to have Jamil Jude join its artistic/production team in December 2015 to begin a two-year mentorship with Artistic Director Richard Cook, made possible through a prestigious Leadership U[niversity] – One-on-One Program award of a two-year grant to fund Jamil's professional development via a mentorship. Jamil was one of only six early-career leaders from all areas of theatre throughout the nation to receive such an award.
At Park Square Theatre, Jamil was given the title of Artistic Programming Associate, and he was placed in the foreground to help the organization remain a relevant theatre in a community with a demographic that will continue to shift towards greater diversity. During his mentorship, he would move forward the theater's vision to be "intentionally diverse" and practice "radical inclusivity" (both terms appear in Park Square's website).
It has been nearly a decade-long journey to prepare Park Square for the 21st century and beyond. This mission was initially envisioned by Richard as he witnessed the impact of live theatre on students, particularly students of color, attending its Education programs. The long journey is not surprising as institutionalized exclusionary practices are difficult to dismantle to be able to support truly inclusionary practices. An organization must have strong leadership support and clear and consistent buy-in both from within and without to be able to broaden its scope.
In his short time here, Jamil especially impacted Park Square by being a skilled connector and unifier, doing the very hard work of fostering trust amongst diverse artist communities and giving generous access to his broader network. He has also provided crucial insights and suggestions to challenge the same old approaches in the theater's programming and audience outreach. Some changes were made in tailoring post-show discussions for diverse student audiences, making script selections and recruiting and attracting more diverse talent to be onstage, behind the scenes, and as instructors for workshops. All his actions accelerated the impact of making real, lasting changes. However, there is still quite a bit to do even as Jamil's mentorship comes to an end after June and the Artistic Programming Associate position dissolves.
While Park Square is a top employer of local stage talent, 64 percent of whom are women and artists of color, it still has no core staff (including leadership positions) and just one board member of color. But a few years ago, it created the role of Artistic Associate for the purpose of broadening the organization's perspectives, and recruited Aditi Kapil, Carson Kreitzer, Ricardo Vazquez and James A. Williams to serve as ongoing Artistic Associates. Park Square has also invited local theatre companies, such as Girl Friday Productions, Sandbox Theatre Company, Theatre Pro Rata and Wonderlust Productions, to become Theatres in Residence and partnered with Mu Performing Arts to produce this season's Flower Drum Song as mutually beneficial exposure to new audiences.
Currently, Park Square is partnering with the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce to create a Community Advisory Board made up of people of color to give ideas and feedback on what types of stories need to be told on stages and who to share them with–in short, to engage in honest dialogue to better understand how Park Square fits within an evolving community. On June 21 from 5-6 pm, Jamil will be a facilitator for "Cocktails and Conversation" in our Proscenium lobby for professionals of color to give such feedback.
Only time will tell what the future holds for Park Square Theatre without the transformational presence of Jamil. It's more difficult to question and alter inherent biases and beliefs than to organically build from the ground up with that vision in mind the way that a new organization, such as Full Circle Theater Company, can do. It's more difficult to transform an organization with individuals at different spectrums of cultural competency regarding issues of equity, diversity and inclusion. Any stall into complacency, regression into status quo or backslide into habituated ways of doing things negatively impacts the outcome. Park Square will steadily need to match good intent with continued action to move forward into its total vision.
Jamil himself will move forward to Atlanta, Georgia, where he will become True Colors Theatre Company's Associate Artistic Director. At True Colors, Jamil will also get to direct a play each year and, for the first time in his career, focus his energy within one organization rather than be, as he described, "split-brained" amongst multiple organizations and freelance projects.
While Jamil has certainly left his mark on Park Square Theatre, what many may not know is the wider impact he has also had on the Twin Cities theatre scene since his arrival in Minnesota in 2011. From 2011 to 2014, he worked for Mixed Blood Theatre Company in Minneapolis' West Bank as its National New Play Network Producer in Residence and created and facilitated artist/educator-audience discussions as its Free Speech Program Director. Jamil made another strong impression in 2013, receiving the year-long Playwright Center's Many Voices Mentorship to help Minnesota-based playwright of color hone one's craft. Within a few years, Jamil had further widened his circle and influence, joining the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Theatre Alliance (2012-16), the Minnesota Fringe Festival, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (both since 2014). In 2015, he had founded the New Griots Festival to promote the work of Twin Cities black artists into the future; the festival will return this year at the Guthrie from July 6 to 16. In 2016, he directed the highly relevant and critically praised inaugural productions of Underdog Theatre's Baltimore is Burning, written by local artist Kory LaQuess Pullam, founder of Underdog Theatre, as well as local playwright Josh Wilder's The Highwaymen at The History Theatre in St. Paul.
Park Square Theatre and the Twin Cities theatre community will dearly miss Jamil Jude. Not only could he inspire us, but more importantly, he brought people together to get things done. Jamil Jude has left things better than when he'd arrived. What more could we ask for? We are very grateful and wish him well.
(Note: Be sure to also read the previous blog post, "What's That Got to Do With Jamil Jude?")


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ACCORD addresses growing role of civilians in sustaining peace at African Regional Peace Support Operations course
4 Dec 2012
ACCORD, through its Training for Peace in Africa (TfP) Programme, has addressed participants at the Southern African Development Community's (SADC) Regional Peacekeeping Training Centre (RPTC) on the important role of civilians in peace support operations.
The SADC RPTC held a two-week Battalion Commanders' Course from 21 May to 01 June 2012, in Harare, Zimbabwe. The course targeted military personnel earmarked for deployment in Peace Support Operations, and aimed to equip the selected participants with the requisite skills enabling them to work effectively as Peace Mission Battalion, Contingent or Sector Commanders. TfP/ACCORD contributed to the programme with a presentation on 'The Civilian Dimension of Peace Operations', represented by Mr. Zinurine Alghali, Peacekeeping Unit Coordinator, who addressed the participants on the crucial role the civilian component of modern multidimensional peace operations play in securing and working towards sustainable peace processes in the region and beyond.
The presentation provided ACCORD an excellent opportunity to further strengthen its partnership with one of the most prominent regional training centres in Africa, as well as reaffirm its continuing support of the work of the SADC RPTC. Such training support to key Regional Training Centres of Excellence contributes towards the development of civilian and multidimensional capacities required for current and future African Union (AU) peace operations, including those utilising the African Standby Force (ASF) which is entirely dependent on regional mechanisms such as SADC. This is in line with the core goals of the Training for Peace in Africa Programme at ACCORD (TfP/ACCORD) which seeks to significantly improve the civilian capacity of regional mechanisms, as well as other organisational structures within the AU and UN, in preparing, managing and monitoring multidimensional peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations in Africa.
ACCORD's work on strengthening civilian capacities is conducted through its Training for Peace Programme, an initiative funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
For more information on ACCORD's work through the TfP programme contact Mr. Zinurine Alghali, Peacekeeping Unit Coordinator on email@example.com, and Ms. Seun Abiola, Peacekeeping Unit Senior Programme Officer on firstname.lastname@example.com.


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The Foxborough woman could tell that her son had been using again. On that November day in 2011, he was hyper and overly affectionate. "Dear mother," he called her.
She knew that he was at risk of an overdose. The weeks the 21-year-old had gone without heroin, as the family worked to get him into a treatment program, weakened his tolerance for the drug. When she awoke that night to screams, she was ready, as ready as she could be.
Her husband had checked on their son and found that he was not breathing. As he dragged the young man's limp body from the bed to begin rescue breathing, their daughter dialed 911, and the mother sprayed a heroin antidote called naloxone into each nostril. Then the family waited, as precious moments passed, for a breath or a groan, a sign that the drug was working.
Since 2006, health officials in Massachusetts have been distributing intranasal naloxone to those most likely to witness an overdose: outreach workers, homeless shelter operators, drug users themselves, and, most recently, family members. The program, started in Boston and expanded by the state Department of Public Health, is credited with reversing more than 1,800 overdoses from heroin, prescription painkillers, and other opiates.
A recent study found that the rate of overdose deaths slowed in communities where the program was active.
Yet, in much of the country, access to naloxone, also known as Narcan, is limited. Few doctors prescribe the drug, which typically must be administered by syringe. Some communities and, in the past, federal officials have resisted, worried that people would perceive naloxone as a safety valve and use drugs without fear of an overdose.
But attitudes are changing, and leaders in addiction medicine have pointed to the Massachusetts pilot program as a model.
"The Massachusetts program is to be envied and emulated," said Dr. Sharon Stancliff, medical director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, based in New York. "We're getting the information that [naloxone] works. We're getting the information that it's not expensive for the level of effectiveness."
Two features of the program have helped it gain a foothold in Massachusetts. The state packages the drug as a nasal spray, an approach first tried here by Boston Emergency Medical Services. With no needle required, the spray is easier for the layperson to use, though it has not been approved by federal drug regulators, so it is not widely available.
And, while naloxone requires a prescription, in Massachusetts one physician serves as the prescriber of record, so that the drug can be distributed by outreach workers at 15 groups that work in communities hard hit by the overdose crisis, including Lynn, Fall River, and Lawrence.
Dr. Alexander Walley, assistant professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and medical director for the state program, said these workers and others connected to drug users can be the most effective ambassadors for naloxone rescue kits.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last month that fatal overdoses nationally grew for the 11th consecutive year in 2010, to 38,329, driven by prescription drug abuse. In Massachusetts, overdoses killed 738 people that year, twice as many as motor-vehicle deaths. That was fewer deaths than in 2006, but it is not clear to what extent the naloxone program contributed to the decline.
Members of Learn to Cope, a support group with chapters across Eastern Massachusetts for parents and other relatives of people addicted to opiates, began clamoring for access to naloxone in 2006, after members saw nine families lose people to overdoses within seven weeks.
At first, the parents worked through community groups already enrolled in the pilot program, learning how to administer the drug and how to recognize the irregular breathing and behaviors that signal an overdose.
"We couldn't believe, when we finally got this training, how many of us were seeing these signs and didn't even know it," founder Joanne Peterson said.
Her group became part of the pilot program in November 2011, and parents began counseling other parents at the start of each chapter meeting on how to use the naloxone rescue kits to save their children.
The families' eagerness surprised some state officials. Asking for naloxone meant tacitly acknowledging their child's substance use, Walley said. But the drug became one tangible tool for parents unmoored by a disease beyond their control.
"It's not a cure-for-all," Peterson said, "but it's a chance."
In the past 15 months, the group has distributed hundreds of naloxone kits to members and recorded at least nine overdose reversals.
The Foxborough mother learned to use naloxone at her first Learn to Cope meeting in summer 2011, days after her son admitted to his parents that he was using heroin. She kept it close by, on top of her refrigerator, until the day they needed it.
When she first administered the drug, her son was not responding.
"We were all screaming and yelling at each other," she said recently, tearing up as she sat in her living room in front of a portrait of her son. "He was just not waking up."
But the naloxone did work. Later, after her son was revived by first responders and recovering at Massachusetts General Hospital, doctors told her the antidote had slowed the effects of the heroin in his system.
After several rounds of inpatient treatment, her son is still struggling with substance use and the law. She asked that her name not be used to protect his privacy.
In 2009, the rate of overdose deaths in communities where the state distributed naloxone was reduced between 27 percent and 46 percent, compared with those with no naloxone program, according to a study led by Walley and published in the BMJ medical journal in January. Communities with wider distribution of the rescue kits saw a bigger effect.
Walley said there are lots of ideas about how to control illegal drug use, including drug take-back events and prescription-monitoring programs. In terms of setting public priorities, Walley said, "distributing naloxone kits should be right up there, if not in front of these other methods, because we've shown an association with mortality."
The state Department of Public Health spends about $300,000 per year on the naloxone program, mostly on purchasing the rescue kits. The program's results, taken together with a recent study that found naloxone to be cost effective, could prove pivotal at a time when support for naloxone distribution seems to be growing, said Stancliff, of the Harm Reduction Coalition.
Federal agencies, led by the US Food and Drug Administration, hosted a meeting last spring to discuss what it would take to make the drug widely available in the intranasal form and over the counter. The latter is more complicated, requiring evidence that people can use the drug safely without a doctor's advice.
Dr. Douglas Throckmorton, deputy director for regulatory programs at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said he has been talking with device makers about seeking FDA approval for a nose spray or an auto-injector similar to the spring-loaded devices used to deliver epinephrine to someone who is having a severe allergic reaction.
Ultimately it is up to the device companies to decide how to move forward, he said, but "they've asked the kind of questions I hear developers ask when they're taking a program seriously."
Meanwhile, Learn to Cope meetings — "sadly," Peterson said — continue to grow, with a seventh chapter opening this month in Cambridge. At a recent gathering in Lowell, one mother counseled another about how, if needed, she should give naloxone to her 21-year-old son, who began using heroin soon after friends passed around Percocet pain pills while playing video games.
The instructor asked the Wilmington mother whether she had ever witnessed an overdose. "None," the woman said.
"It's going to stay that way," the instructor told her, more as a prayer than a proclamation.
Chelsea Conaboy can be reached at cconaboy@boston.
com. Follow her on Twitter @cconaboy.


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Superman was able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, he was more powerful than a locomotive, and he was said to be able to travel faster than a speeding bullet.
The speed of a bullet is no big deal in these days of supersonic aircraft and spacecraft. Yet our fastest space vehicles do no better than one one-hundred thousandth of the current speed of light.
Overcoming gravity (the weakest of all the forces of physics) still takes lots of push and power. The moon remains many days away and the planets many months when traveling as fast as current chemical rocket technology allows.
The nearest star is 4 x 1017 meters away, and the current estimated size for the entire universe is greater than that by ten orders of magnitude or so (about 1026 meters). For a long time the hope of space travel has been left almost entirely in the hands of the science fiction writers.
Yet with God there are invariably hidden truths waiting to be discovered that make the best that men can imagine seem like kindergarten.
Newtonian mechanics imposes no maximum upper limit to attainable velocities in the universe, but Einstein's relativity theory does. As charged particles are pushed up near the present speed of light they grow heavier, and more and more energy input is required to gain a smaller and smaller increment of increased velocity.
At the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC), near where I live, electrons injected in the accelerator reach 99.999% of the velocity of light in the first few feet of travel, and then they ride, traveling radio waves for two miles down a long evacuated pipe, gaining virtually no additional speed, but mostly acquiring mass (and therefore energy). There is no reason to doubt the highly successful and well-verified theory of relativity in this regard. One can point to countless examples of proven relativistic effects whenever charged particles are involved.
Physicist Hal Puthoff1 has recently suggested that the ability of a spacecraft to modify the properties of space in its immediate vicinity could allow it to travel faster than light. This is because the speed of light is simply a measure of two properties of the medium of space, or the vacuum: permeability and permittivity. It has been tacitly assumed by some theoreticians that the speed of light might be a measure not only of the electrical properties of space, but the mechanical properties of space as well. It now turns out that this is probably not the case!
A very exciting possibility has now come into the light. It has long been known that gravitational forces apparently act instantaneously over the entire universe. Why this should be so is simply glossed over and ignored in every generation of physics classes and in countless technical papers.
One way to understand this is to consider what is called "the classical aberration of light"-which was discovered by Bradley in 1728. In fact, aberration data became one of the early methods for measuring the speed of light. Light from the sun requires 8.3 minutes to travel from the sun to the earth during which time the sun and the earth have moved as much as 20 arc seconds with respect to each other.
Similarly, light from the stars arrives at an angle which can be as much as 20 arc seconds because the earth is moving with respect to the stars. It is by carefully measuring these aberration angles, and knowing the relative velocities involved, that Bradley made excellent and trustworthy measurements of the velocity of light 250 years ago.
However, during the time interval it takes light to travel from the sun to the earth, the sun and the earth have kept in touch with each other "instantaneously"-or at least very much faster than c! In fact every mass in the universe communicates with all other masses in the universe in a time frame that makes the present speed of light seem like the velocity of molasses on a cold day!
Astronomer Tom Van Flandern has recently detailed all the evidence that shows that gravitational forces, unlike light, operate with no measurable aberration!2
But Van Flandern shows that there are sound reasons for believing that the "speed of gravity" is not infinite. By carefully studying the observable data, Van Flandern now concludes that the speed of gravity is greater than or equal to the present speed of light by a factor of 2 x 1010.
This velocity (6 x 1018 meters per second) turns out to be just below Barry Setterfield's latest estimate of the speed of light everywhere in the universe on Day Two of creation week! Setterfield arrives at this initial velocity of light on the basis of the maximum observed Hubble constant, which gives an initial value of c that turns out to be 2.54 x 1010 times the present value.3
Since creation week, the diameter of the universe has been constant (a static universe) and the speed of light has dropped precipitously to its present value-following decay curves we can now piece together with some confidence based on (a) measured values of c for the last 300 years, (b) corrections to known radioactive decay dates which go back to approximately 2000 B.C., and (c) the observed quantization of the red shift of light from distant galaxies for the time period from creation to about the time of Abraham.
As the universe aged, the free space permittivity and permeability increased and c decreased - but the velocity of gravity may not be tied to the permittivity and permeability of free space!
If this is the case, the velocity of gravity stayed at the original velocity of c. If we can produce a propulsion system based on gravitational principles rather than electromagnetic or chemical ones, we could travel at absolutely enormous speeds-we could hope to push a space craft anywhere in the universe, very literally at warp speeds beyond what even the Starship Enterprise could produce!
By the way, this discussion solely relates to the physical part of the created universe. For now we must defer discussion about how angels travel and communicate - they are spiritual beings. And we must postpone speculation about what we followers of Jesus the Lord may find ourselves capable of doing when we don our new resurrection bodies (these bodies are, after all, "not of this creation"-but spiritual bodies-see 1 Corinthians 15).
If Van Flandern and Setterfield are correct, space travel may indeed be just around the corner! A fringe benefit is that we may at last have clues to help us begin to understand the well-documented behavior of countless UFOs, whose velocity and acceleration behavior has thus far defied explanation by conventional physics.
** *


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Conservative media ignore reality in invoking "rationing" bogeyman
Written by Christine Schwen & Morgan Weiland
Reading from GOP playbooks, media conservatives are invoking the specter of "rationing" in arguing against health care reform efforts.
As The Washington Times observed on July 13, "In political combat, there are few more potent weapons than a single word or a catchy phrase that can be used to target a proposal and drive it into the ground. For Republicans, 'rationing' could be that poison-tipped arrow for the Democratic-led health care bill." Indeed, in a memo titled, "The Language of Healthcare 2009: The 10 Rules for Stopping the 'Washington Takeover' of Healthcare," GOP consultant Frank Luntz encouraged Republicans to attack President Obama's health care plan by warning about the possibility of rationing. But these scare tactics deny the reality that Americans currently face: Insurance companies already ration care for financial reasons, and, in many cases, these companies keep patients from getting the medical treatments they need. Indeed, noting that rationing is currently done by insurance companies, proponents of health care reform argue, in the words of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, that they are seeking to "change that situation ... to make sure that it's really health care providers that make those choices in the future."
On the June 15 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, after host Chris Matthews reported that the "concern" is that "some day, we'll have a health care system whereby somebody in Washington will say, 'No, you can't get the transplant,' " Sebelius explained that rationing by insurance companies is currently "happening every day" and that supporters of health care reform are seeking to address the problem of insurance companies denying coverage for treatment or care that is medically indicated:
SEBELIUS: Well, you know, actually, what's interesting about that fear is that it goes on everyday. It's private insurers who often are telling their clients that, "No, you can't get this recommended treatment that the doctor has made"; "No, you can't get this drug"; "No, you're not going to be able to stay in the hospital an extra day"; "No, you're not going to get this because we're concerned about costs."
So, people who say that, "Oh, this is a terrible idea; this could happen someday in the future," it's happening every day. But it's really private insurance plans that are making those decisions. What we're hoping to do is change that situation. Private insurance companies should no longer be able to decide who gets health coverage and who doesn't, what kinds of benefits are available. And we want to make sure that it's really health care providers that make those choices in the future.
During her confirmation hearing on March 31, Sebelius testified that she saw rationing by "private insurers" on "a regular basis" while serving as Kansas' insurance commissioner. From the hearing (accessed via the Nexis database):
SEBELIUS: I can't tell you that I am not concerned about, ultimately, not with comparative effectiveness research, but ultimately reaching a point where, in order to control costs, there is some effort to ration health care.
I, frankly, as insurance commissioner, where I served for eight years, saw it on a regular basis by private insurers, who often made decisions overruling suggestions that doctors would make for their patients, that they weren't going to be covered. And a lot of what we did in the office of the Kansas Insurance Department was go to bat on behalf of those patients to make sure that the benefits that they had actually paid for were, in fact, ones that were delivered.
Additionally, Sebelius said in May 6 testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee that another aim of health care reform is to "end barriers to coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions." She continued: "In Kansas and across the country, I have heard painful stories from families who have been denied basic care or offered insurance at astronomical rates because of a pre-existing condition. Insurance companies should no longer have the right to pick and choose. We will not allow these companies to insure only the healthy and leave the sick to suffer."
Insurance companies acknowledge that they ration care
The insurance industry has readily admitted to using cost-benefit analyses in coverage decisions. For instance, during the July 15 edition of NPR's Morning Edition, WellPoint chief medical officer Dr. Sam Nussbaum told co-host Steve Inskeep that "where the private sector has been far more effective than government programs is in limiting clinical services to those that are best meeting the needs of patients." Moreover, while conservative media figures who oppose Obama's health care plan -- like Fox News contributor Dick Morris -- warn that the president would ration the use of imaging services such as MRIs and CAT scans, Nussbaum specifically pointed to the industry's effectiveness at reducing the use of those very services when they are "not necessary":
NUSSBAUM: When we look at advanced imaging, and these -- this is MRI, CAT scan, PET scans -- we know that as much as 30 percent of those procedures are not necessary. And we've been able, over the last several years, to have growth in imaging procedures of between 0 and 5 percent. The government, under CMS, has seen imaging grow 15 to 20 percent a year during the same time interval.
Wendell Potter, a former senior executive at CIGNA health insurance company, has detailed ways in which the insurance industry makes cost-based coverage decisions. In June 24 testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Potter urged the committee "to look very closely at the role for-profit insurance companies play in making our health care system both the most expensive and one of the most dysfunctional in the world." Later in his testimony, Potter discussed how "insurers routinely dump policyholders who are less profitable or who get sick" and "also dump small businesses whose employees' medical claims exceed what insurance underwriters expected":
To help meet Wall Street's relentless profit expectations, insurers routinely dump policyholders who are less profitable or who get sick. Insurers have several ways to cull the sick from their rolls. One is policy rescission. They look carefully to see if a sick policyholder may have omitted a minor illness, a pre-existing condition, when applying for coverage, and then they use that as justification to cancel the policy, even if the enrollee has never missed a premium payment. Asked directly about this practice just last week in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, executives of three of the nation's largest health insurers refused to end the practice of cancelling policies for sick enrollees. Why?
Because dumping a small number of enrollees can have a big effect on the bottom line. Ten percent of the population accounts for two-thirds of all health care spending. The Energy and Commerce Committee's investigation into three insurers found that they canceled the coverage of roughly 20,000 people in a five-year period, allowing the companies to avoid paying $300 million in claims.
They also dump small businesses whose employees' medical claims exceed what insurance underwriters expected. All it takes is one illness or accident among employees at a small business to prompt an insurance company to hike the next year's premiums so high that the employer has to cut benefits, shop for another carrier, or stop offering coverage altogether -- leaving workers uninsured. The practice is known in the industry as purging. The purging of less profitable accounts through intentionally unrealistic rate increases helps explain why the number of small businesses offering coverage to their employees has fallen from 61 percent to 38 percent since 1993, according to the National Small Business Association. Once an insurer purges a business, there are often no other viable choices in the health insurance market because of rampant industry consolidation.
Extent of rationing by insurance companies
As Potter explained, insurance companies restrict or deny coverage by rescinding health insurance policies on the grounds that people had undisclosed pre-existing conditions. On June 16, a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee held a hearing exploring this practice, with the stated goal of examining "the practice of 'post-claims underwriting,' which occurs when insurance companies cancel individual health insurance policies after providers submit claims for medical services rendered."
In conjunction with the hearing, the committee released a memorandum providing its findings about "problems with the individual health insurance market," detailing various methods by which insurance companies rescind coverage. It's conclusion that "the market for individual health insurance in the United States is fundamentally flawed" was based in part on a review of "approximately 116,000 pages of documents and interview[ing] numerous policyholders who had their coverage terminated, or 'rescinded,' after they became ill." The committee determined that three major American insurance companies rescinded 19,776 policies for over $300 million in savings over five years, as Potter noted in his testimony, and that even that number "significantly undercounts the total number of rescissions" by the companies:
The three insurance companies testifying at today's hearing reported to the Committee that they rescinded at least 19,776 policies from 2003 to 2007. This number significantly undercounts the total number of rescissions because one company, UnitedHealth, failed to provide data for 2003 and 2004, and another company, WellPoint, did not provide data from all of its subsidiaries.
The three companies also reported saving more than $300 million as a result of rescissions during this five year period. The specific amounts reported by the companies were:
WellPoint: $128.9 million
Assurant: $151.6 million
UnitedHealth: $18.7 million
According to documents provided by the companies, as well as first-hand accounts from individuals who obtained individual health insurance, it appears that insurance companies have taken advantage of the haphazard regulatory framework by engaging in a series of controversial practices involving rescissions.
Additionally, the memo noted that "[d]ocuments produced to the Committee indicate that at least one insurance company, WellPoint, has evaluated employee performance based on the amount of money its employees saved the company through retroactive rescissions of health insurance policies." The memo continued:
The Committee obtained an annual performance evaluation of the Director of Group Underwriting at WellPoint prepared on February 26, 2004. One objective this official was evaluated for was her ability to meet financial "targets" and improve financial "stability." Under "results achieved," the review stated that this official obtained "Retro savings of $9,835,564," indicating that she helped save the company nearly $10 million through rescissions. For this objective, the official was awarded a perfect "5" for "exceptional performance."
In a June 16 post on Time magazine's Swampland blog, National political correspondent Karen Tumulty detailed several of the personal stories about post-claims underwriting that were recounted during the hearing. Among them was the following:
In May, 2008, Robin Beaton, a retired registered nurse from Waxahachie, Texas, went to her dermatologist to be treated for acne. He mistakenly wrote down something on her chart that made it appear that she might have a pre-cancerous skin condition.
Not a big deal, right? It shouldn't have been, except that soon after that, she was diagnosed with something far more serious -- invasive and agressive breast cancer. Three days before she was scheduled for a double mastectomy, her insurance company, Blue Cross, called her and told her they were launching an investigation into the last five years of her health records. It turned out that dermatologist's note had been a red flag, and the company was looking for a way to cancel her policy on the grounds that she had been hiding a serious medical condition.
What Robin went through after that was a nightmare, one she tearfully described Tuesday morning in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee. "The sad thing is, Blue Cross gladly took my high premiums, and the first time I filed a claim and was suspected of having cancer, they searched high and low for a reason to cancel me," said Robin, whose hair is just beginning to grow back in from chemotherapy.
De facto rationing due to cost
Some Americans find their health care "rationed" by their inability to afford it even if they have health insurance. After Fox News host Sean Hannity cited the case of a 55-year-old British man who fixed his tooth with superglue because he was unable to find a dentist whose services were covered by the National Health Service and he could not afford to pay for the procedure himself, Media Matters for America highlighted media reports of Americans gluing and extracting their own teeth due to the costs of dental care. For example, in a March 12 article, ABCNews.com reported:
The mortgage is due, the kids have needs, and the dental insurance doesn't cover a ninth of the cost of your dental work. At that point, applying superglue to your crowns didn't seem too unreasonable for [September] Williamson.
But, the superglue was just one of a whole set of tooth troubles. Unable to pay for more expensive treatments, Williamson said she's resorted to just pulling out the problem teeth.
Although the poor have always employed questionable home treatments, some health care workers have noticed a recent increase in desperate attempts by people to play doctor out of economic desperation.
The ABCNews.com article also quoted one health services expert saying that more and more people with health insurance are increasingly unable to afford other types of medical procedures:
"They'll pull rather than try to fix; that's a huge, huge issue," said Joan Whitaker, director of health services at the Action for Boston Community Development Center in Massachusetts.
While dental insurance rarely covers the cost of more expensive treatment, health insurance doesn't always cut it either, Whitaker said.
"Even if people have health insurance right now it doesn't mean that they have money for their co-payments," she said.
Whitaker works with many low income families in the Boston area. She said that recently time, rather than money can be an issue for patients.
"What's happening with a lot of people is they are putting off finding out about problems, because if they're in low paying jobs, and if they take time off they're afraid they won't have a job when they get back," she said. "They're out here working one or two jobs but they are still marginalized, because one thing could happen to them and they can lose it all."
Similarly, in a July 15 New York Times Magazine article, Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, wrote, "In the United States, most health care is privately financed, and so most rationing is by price." He continued:
Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another. In the United States, most health care is privately financed, and so most rationing is by price: you get what you, or your employer, can afford to insure you for. But our current system of employer-financed health insurance exists only because the federal government encouraged it by making the premiums tax deductible. That is, in effect, a more than $200 billion government subsidy for health care. In the public sector, primarily Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, health care is rationed by long waits, high patient copayment requirements, low payments to doctors that discourage some from serving public patients and limits on payments to hospitals.
Rationing health care means getting value for the billions we are spending by setting limits on which treatments should be paid for from the public purse. If we ration we won't be writing blank checks to pharmaceutical companies for their patented drugs, nor paying for whatever procedures doctors choose to recommend. When public funds subsidize health care or provide it directly, it is crazy not to try to get value for money. The debate over health care reform in the United States should start from the premise that some form of health care rationing is both inescapable and desirable. Then we can ask, What is the best way to do it?
Additionally, in a June 17 article, New York Times economic and business columnist David Leonhardt identified "three main ways that the health care system already imposes rationing on us":
[W]hen middle-class families complain about being stretched thin, they're really complaining about rationing. Our expensive, inefficient health care system is eating up money that could otherwise pay for a mortgage, a car, a vacation or college tuition.
The second kind of rationing involves the uninsured. The high cost of care means that some employers can't afford to offer health insurance and still pay a competitive wage. Those high costs mean that individuals can't buy insurance on their own.
The uninsured still receive some health care, obviously. But they get less care, and worse care, than they need. The Institute of Medicine has estimated that 18,000 people died in 2000 because they lacked insurance. By 2006, the number had risen to 22,000, according to the Urban Institute.
The final form of rationing is the one I describe near the beginning of this column: the failure to provide certain types of care, even to people with health insurance. Doctors are generally not paid to do the blocking and tackling of medicine: collaboration, probing conversations with patients, small steps that avoid medical errors. Many doctors still do such things, out of professional pride. But the full medical system doesn't do nearly enough.
Diagnosis: Fear-mongering
Conservatives warning of rationing resulting from health care reform include the following:
- On July 22, the Fox Nation linked to a New York Post op-ed about the American Medical Association's endorsement of House Democrats' health care bill under the headline: "Misguided American Medical Association Endorses Rationing."
- In her July 22 syndicated column, Michelle Malkin wrote: "Big Nanny Democrats want to ration health care for everyone in America -- except those who break our immigration laws."
- On the July 21 edition of his Fox News program, Hannity referred to "government-managed coverage" as "rationing" while citing results from a July 9-12 Public Strategies Inc./Politico poll. While the poll found that 44 percent of respondents believe government-managed health care coverage would result in a higher price of health care in the United States, Hannity claimed that "44 percent of those polled said that rationing care would actually drive up the cost."
- On the July 21 edition of Fox News' Your World, host Neil Cavuto asserted that when Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) wrote in a recent Newsweek op-ed that "[m]ost of these readmissions are unnecessary, but we don't reward hospitals and doctors for preventing them," Kennedy was "[m]ore or less saying, you know, we're going to be rationing things here."
- On the June 27 edition of Fox News' Forbes on Fox, referring to Obama's remarks during the June 24 ABC health care forum, Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard claimed: "[W]hat he's indicating is that government health care involves rationing. It's kind of funny that he let it slip out." As Media Matters noted, Obama was specifically referring to medical procedures that are "not making anybody's mom better" and "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."
- On the June 15 edition of Fox News' Hannity, Fox News contributor Dick Morris claimed that one of the ways Obama can pay for health care reform is to "do what he's increasingly doing, which is to crack down on health care spending and have severe rationing."
- On June 19, Hannity claimed that "we're going to have a government rationing body that tells women with breast cancer, 'You're dead.' "
- On the June 10 edition of Hannity, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), a Fox News contributor, asserted: "This is a big-spending, big-government, big-politician, big-bureaucracy administration. I am deeply opposed to Washington bureaucrats deciding whether or not to ration your health care or the health care of your loved ones. And I think that it's a fundamental choice for America."
From the July 21 edition of Fox News' Hannity:
HANNITY: The president's trying to fulfill key campaign promises on issues like health care and climate change, but dwindling public support may prevent him from doing so. A whopping 40 percent of Americans surveyed said that the president's health care proposal would actually make health care in this country worse, not better, and, similarly, 44 percent of those polled said that rationing care would actually drive up the cost. Only 27 percent think it would lower costs, while 29 percent said prices would stay about the same.
From the July 20 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto:
CAVUTO: All right. When even Ted Kennedy says -- and Ted's been doing this since before you were born, since before I was born -- and --
TARA DOWDELL (Democratic consultant): Thank you.
CAVUTO: -- says: "Most of these readmissions are unnecessary; we don't reward hospitals and doctors for preventing them." More or less saying, you know, we're going to be rationing things.
From the July 15 broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition:
INSKEEP: Next, we'll hear from a leading insurance company, one of many opposed to the so-called public option. That's the plan for a government health insurance program to compete with private insurance. We sat down with Dr. Sam Nussbaum, chief medical officer for WellPoint.
[begin audio clip]
INSKEEP: What's wrong with the public plan?
NUSSBAUM: Steve, we do not endorse a government-run health plan. We absolutely want to see universal coverage for all Americans. We believe the private sector can provide innovative solutions to health care.
INSKEEP: Dr. Nussbaum influences coverage received by WellPoint's 35 million customers. It is the country's largest health benefits firm. He argues that the private sector is more efficient than the government.
NUSSBAUM: Let me give one specific example, Steve, that I think will be informative. When we look at advanced imaging, and these -- this is MRI, CAT scan, PET scans -- we know that as much as 30 percent of those procedures are not necessary. And we've been able, over the last several years, to have growth in imaging procedures of between 0 and 5 percent. The government, under CMS, has seen imaging grow 15 to 20 percent a year during the same time interval. That's an example --
INSKEEP: You're talking about Medicare -- Medicare payments, the --
NUSSBAUM: Yes.
INSKEEP: -- Medicare program.
NUSSBAUM: The Medicare program. I'm talking about the use of imaging services and the cost of imaging services. So I would argue that where the private sector has been far more effective than government programs is in limiting clinical services to those that are best meeting the needs of patients. Important as Medicare is for coverage for Americans, it has not been effective in controlling cost, in integrating care, and bringing the advances in medical treatment to all Americans.
INSKEEP: There are people who would argue with you about the effectiveness of Medicare or the efficiency of Medicare. I'll take the point that you have a different perspective on that, but I would just ask if you're not undermining your own argument. If the government is lousy at providing efficient health care, why is a public health plan a threat to you? You'll just -- you'll just be more efficient than they are and make money.
[end audio clip]
From the June 10 edition of Hannity:
HANNITY: Starting tomorrow -- now the president yesterday talked about pay-go after he spent all the money. He talked about pay-go, and then he's going to talk about nationalizing health care -- ObamaCare. That big debate begins tomorrow.
That is not included in the pay-go, nor is the stimulus, nor is the omnibus, nor is the $3.6 trillion budget, So, it's really deceptive -- he's trying to create the impression he's conservative on fiscal matters, when, in fact, he's not.
GINGRICH: Look, Democrats only talk about pay-go when they want to raise taxes. Democrats only sound conservative when they want to raise taxes. This administration and its allies, with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid on Capitol Hill, are spending an extraordinary amount of money.
We have passed a trillion dollars in debt already this year. It's unending, and I think the fact is that they waive every rule they want to waive to fit them and then hide behind the rules to fit them. And we ought to just relax and ignore them.
This is a big-spending, big-government, big-politician, big-bureaucracy administration. I am deeply opposed to Washington bureaucrats deciding whether or not to ration your health care or the health care of your loved ones. And I think that it's a fundamental choice for America.
Do you really want to have your future and your life and your health in the hands of the Washington bureaucracy?


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Please note: Digistump LLC is NOT currently accepting orders. We are taking a hiatus while we change fulfillment locations and focus on delivering our newest project - BuildOne - The $99 3D Printer. We are also temporarily sold out of Digisparks (over 50k sold!). We will return to normal operations and restock in the first quarter of the New Year. Thank you for your continued support!
Weather Shield
In stock
Weather Shield
The Weather Shield Kit includes the circuit board, resistors, an SHT21 precision temperature and humidity module, a BMP180 precision barometric pressure module, a photocell (for measuring ambient light), and an I2C ADC chip to provide additional ADC pins for the shield to use! In addition it comes with two RJ11 jacks that are compatible with most wired Wind vane, anemometer, and rain gauges.
This is an unassembled kit and requires basic soldering. This is designed for use with the Oak development board, which is not included.
This is an unassembled kit and requires basic soldering. This is designed for use with the Oak development board, which is not included.
Hardware License:
Instructions, tutorials, etc:
Note: Schematics, source files, software, and datasheets are provided rovided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. in no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the product or the use or other dealings in these products.


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Physcial Sciences Division
September 2013
John Loring Quoted in Physics Today Online
John Loring
Dr. John Loring, a geochemist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, was quoted by reporter Rachel Berkowitz about PNNL's investigations related to carbon dioxide storage under the Carbon Sequestration Initiative. The article "Trapping and keeping carbon dioxide emissions" was published in the September 11 online edition of Physics Today. Loring is a principal investigator for the CSI's project "In Situ Molecular-Scale Investigations of Reactions between Supercritical CO2 and Minerals Relevant to Geological Carbon Storage."


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Building Spark Applications
You can use Apache Maven to build Spark applications developed using Java and Scala.
For the Maven properties of CDH components, see Using the CDH 6 Maven Repository . For the Maven properties of Kafka, see Maven Artifacts for Kafka.
Building Applications
Follow these best practices when building Spark Scala and Java applications:
- Compile against the same version of Spark that you are running.
Build a single assembly JAR ("Uber" JAR) that includes all dependencies. In Maven, add the Maven assembly plug-in to build a JAR containing all dependencies:
<plugin> <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <descriptorRefs> <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef> </descriptorRefs> </configuration> <executions> <execution> <id>make-assembly</id> <phase>package</phase> <goals> <goal>single</goal> </goals> </execution> </executions> </plugin>
This plug-in manages the merge procedure for all available JAR files during the build. Exclude Spark, Hadoop, and Kafka (CDH 5.5 and higher) classes from the assembly JAR, because they are already available on the cluster and contained in the runtime classpath. In Maven, specify Spark, Hadoop, and Kafka dependencies with scope provided. For example:
<dependency> <groupId>org.apache.spark</groupId> <artifactId>spark-core_2.11</artifactId> <version>2.2.0-cdh6.0.0-beta1</version> <scope>provided</scope> </dependency>
Building Reusable Modules
Using existing Scala and Java classes inside the Spark shell requires an effective deployment procedure and dependency management. For simple and reliable reuse of Scala and Java classes and complete third-party libraries, you can use a module, which is a self-contained artifact created by Maven. This module can be shared by multiple users. This topic shows how to use Maven to create a module containing all dependencies.
Create a Maven Project
- Use Maven to generate the project directory:
$ mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=com.mycompany -DartifactId=mylibrary \ -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart -DinteractiveMode=false
Download and Deploy Third-Party Libraries
- Prepare a location for all third-party libraries that are not available through Maven Central but are required for
the project:
mkdir libs cd libs
- Download the required artifacts.
- Use Maven to deploy the library JAR.
- Add the library to the dependencies section of the POM file.
- Repeat steps 2-4 for each library. For example, to add the JIDT library:
- Download and decompress the zip file:
curl http://lizier.me/joseph/software/jidt/download.php?file=infodynamics-dist-1.3.zip > infodynamics-dist.1.3.zip unzip infodynamics-dist-1.3.zip
- Deploy the library JAR:
$ mvn deploy:deploy-file \ -Durl=file:///HOME/.m2/repository -Dfile=libs/infodynamics.jar \ -DgroupId=org.jlizier.infodynamics -DartifactId=infodynamics -Dpackaging=jar -Dversion=1.3
- Add the library to the dependencies section of the POM file:
<dependency> <groupId>org.jlizier.infodynamics</groupId> <artifactId>infodynamics</artifactId> <version>1.3</version> </dependency>
- Download and decompress the zip file:
- Add the Maven assembly plug-in to the plugins section in the pom.xml file.
- Package the library JARs in a module:
mvn clean package
Run and Test the Spark Module
- Run the Spark shell, providing the module JAR in the --jars option:
spark-shell --jars target/mylibrary-1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar
- In the Environment tab of the Spark Web UI application (http://driver_host:4040/environment/), validate that the spark.jars property contains the library. For example:
- In the Spark shell, test that you can import some of the required Java classes from the third-party library. For example, if you use the JIDT library, import MatrixUtils:
$ spark-shell ... scala> import infodynamics.utils.MatrixUtils;
Packaging Different Versions of Libraries with an Application
To use a version of a library in your application that is different than the version of that library that is shipped with Spark, use the Apache Maven Shade Plugin. This process is technically known as "relocation", and often referred to as "shading".
See Relocating Classes for an example.


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The death toll from devastating mudslides in affluent communities along a stretch of Southern California coastline rose to 17 on Wednesday after two more bodies were recovered, the local sheriff said, and the number of people missing also climbed to 17.
The two additional fatalities were discovered as some 500 rescuers using search dogs, helicopters and thermal-imaging equipment dug through waist-deep mud for victims or survivors of the mudslides, which were triggered by a heavy downpour early on Tuesday.
Three more people were rescued from the path of debris on Wednesday. None of the dead have been publicly identified.
"We realize that this is going to be a long and difficult journey for all of us and our community," Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown told reporters at a late afternoon news conference.
The walls of mud that roared through foothills and valleys sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and the sprawling Los Padres National Forest also destroyed 100 single-family homes, damaged hundreds of other buildings and injured 28 people, said Amber Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.
A major north-south highway along the coast, US Route 101, was closed in both directions and not expected to reopen until next week.
Among the damaged properties were historic hotels and the homes of celebrities including television personality Oprah Winfrey and talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres, who both live in the upscale hillside community of Montecito, known for its natural beauty and proximity to Los Angeles.
Verdant hillsides that had provided estates with a sense of seclusion were largely denuded by last month's historic wildfires, making them vulnerable to the massive mud and debris slides that sent boulders crashing into homes, turned highways into raging rivers and shredded cars into tangles of metal.
The sound of destruction
One resident of Toro Canyon described being awakened before dawn Wednesday when his home began shaking and he heard sounds like those of a freight train and snapping wood.
"What they were was a bunch of trees that were being snapped by the mud and boulders and debris that were sliding down Toro Canyon," Jonathan Reichlen, 45, who owns an urban landscaping company, said in a phone interview.
"I just kind of waited it out because I did not want to go down to Toro Canyon while … the mudslide was actually going on," he said.
Reichlen said he had emergency food supplies and water but no hot food and was trying to figure out a way to get safely out of the canyon.
It was the latest blow to a region still rebuilding after the wildfires.
"First we got burned out at our ranch that caught on fire and now we're flooding, so the last month has been pretty bad," said Charles Stoops, as he stood in front of his house, which was surrounded in mud 3 feet deep, or nearly a meter.
Officials have ordered residents in a large swath of Montecito to stay in their homes so that rescuers can better go about their work.
Helicopters were ferrying people out of the Romero Canyon neighborhood, where about 300 people were cut off after a massive debris flow blocked the road into the area.
The mudslides closed several historic hotels, including The Four Seasons Biltmore, which had just reopened on Monday after repairing wildfire damage. The courtyard of the 90-year-old Montecito Inn, built by silent movie actor Charlie Chaplin, was filled with a thick crust of debris driven by the slides.
The disaster followed a violent rainstorm that dumped as much as 6 inches (15 cm) of water onto areas northwest of Los Angeles.
Winfrey posted videos on Instagram showing her wading through nearly knee-deep mud on her Montecito property and later inspecting the damage.
"There used to be a fence right here. That's my neighbor's house. Devastated," she said.
Talk-show host DeGeneres posted a picture of a mud- and debris-filled street outside her Montecito home on Twitter, saying she did not yet know the condition of the house itself.
Former tennis star Jimmy Connors said in a tweet that he and his wife, Patti, had been evacuated by helicopter on Tuesday from their home in the posh hillside community.
The number of fatalities surpassed the death toll from a California mudslide on January 10, 2005, when 10 people were killed as a hillside gave way in the town of La Conchita, less than 20 miles (30 km) south of the latest disaster.
Last month's wildfires, including the Thomas Fire, which became the largest in California history, not only burned away trees, grass and shrubs that held soil in place, but also baked a waxy layer into the earth that prevents water from sinking deeply into the ground.


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Daily Readings for Sunday, August 24, 2025
- Morning Psalms 67; 150
- First Reading 2 Samuel 24:1-2, 10-25
- Second Reading Galatians 3:23-4:7
- Gospel Reading John 8:12-20
- Evening Psalms 46; 93
Morning Psalm 67
1May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us, Selah
2that your way may be known upon earth,
your saving power among all nations.
3Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you.
4Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you judge the peoples with equity
and guide the nations upon earth. Selah
5Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you.
6The earth has yielded its increase;
God, our God, has blessed us.
7May God continue to bless us;
let all the ends of the earth revere him.
Morning Psalm 150
1 Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty firmament!
2 Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his surpassing greatness!
3 Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
4 Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
5 Praise him with clanging cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
6 Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!
First Reading 2 Samuel 24:1-2, 10-25
1Again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, "Go, count the people of Israel and Judah." 2So the king said to Joab and the commanders of the army, who were with him, "Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beer-sheba, and take a census of the people, so that I may know how many there are."
10But afterward, David was stricken to the heart because he had numbered the people. David said to the LORD, "I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O LORD, I pray you, take away the guilt of your servant; for I have done very foolishly." 11When David rose in the morning, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying, 12"Go and say to David: Thus says the LORD: Three things I offer you; choose one of them, and I will do it to you." 13So Gad came to David and told him; he asked him, "Shall three years of famine come to you on your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days' pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall return to the one who sent me." 14Then David said to Gad, "I am in great distress; let us fall into the hand of the LORD, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into human hands."
15So the LORD sent a pestilence on Israel from that morning until the appointed time; and seventy thousand of the people died, from Dan to Beer-sheba. 16But when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the LORD relented concerning the evil, and said to the angel who was bringing destruction among the people, "It is enough; now stay your hand." The angel of the LORD was then by the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. 17When David saw the angel who was destroying the people, he said to the LORD, "I alone have sinned, and I alone have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let your hand, I pray, be against me and against my father's house."
18That day Gad came to David and said to him, "Go up and erect an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite." 19Following Gad's instructions, David went up, as the LORD had commanded. 20When Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming toward him; and Araunah went out and prostrated himself before the king with his face to the ground. 21Araunah said, "Why has my lord the king come to his servant?" David said, "To buy the threshing floor from you in order to build an altar to the LORD, so that the plague may be averted from the people." 22Then Araunah said to David, "Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him; here are the oxen for the burnt offering, and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. 23All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king." And Araunah said to the king, "May the LORD your God respond favorably to you."
24But the king said to Araunah, "No, but I will buy them from you for a price; I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing." So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. 25David built there an altar to the LORD, and offered burnt offerings and offerings of well-being. So the LORD answered his supplication for the land, and the plague was averted from Israel.
Second Reading Galatians 3:23-4:7
3:23Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. 24Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. 25But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, 26for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.
4:1My point is this: heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property; 2but they remain under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. 3So with us; while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world. 4But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. 6And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" 7So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.
Gospel Reading John 8:12-20
12Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life." 13Then the Pharisees said to him, "You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid." 14Jesus answered, "Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. 15You judge by human standards; I judge no one. 16Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid; for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. 17In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. 18I testify on my own behalf, and the Father who sent me testifies on my behalf." 19Then they said to him, "Where is your Father?" Jesus answered, "You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also." 20He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.
Evening Psalm 46
1 God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
3 though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah
4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
5 God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
6 The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
7 The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah
8 Come, behold the works of the LORD;
see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
10 "Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations,
I am exalted in the earth."
11 The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah
Evening Psalm 93
1 The LORD is king, he is robed in majesty;
the LORD is robed, he is girded with strength.
He has established the world; it shall never be moved;
2 your throne is established from of old;
you are from everlasting.
3 The floods have lifted up, O LORD,
the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their roaring.
4 More majestic than the thunders of mighty waters,
more majestic than the waves of the sea,
majestic on high is the LORD!
5 Your decrees are very sure;
holiness befits your house,
O LORD, forevermore.