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Nassim Taleb is a literary essayist, hedge fund manager, derivatives trader and professor of risk engineering at The Polytechnic Institute of New York University. But he is best known these days as the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. During a recent visit to Wharton as part of The Goldstone Forum, he spoke with Wharton finance professor Richard Herring — who taught Taleb when he was a Wharton MBA student — about events in the Middle East, the oil supply, investing in options, the U.S. economy, the dollar, health care and of course, black swans.
An edited transcript of the conversation follows:
Richard Herring: It has been much too long since we have seen you here, but we certainly have been reading about you…. Your first best-seller — Fooled by Randomness — was a wonderful reminder to us all that we know a lot less than we think we do about who is competent and who is not. There could not have been any better real-life illustration of it than the crisis we have all been through in which many people we thought were enormously competent, and who took very big bonuses, turned out to have made losses, not profits, and were merely lucky and not competent at all. But you were thinking about an even earlier era and the problems in evaluating who is good at financial management.
Taleb: Yes. Fooled by Randomness was actually much more general than finance. It was about the fact that we cannot identify skills because of sampling error. I call it the easy problem of statistical knowledge because it is easy to solve. It is very curable. I had two problems, of course — the black swan, the second problem, is much more difficult to cure.
But the 'fooled by randomness' problem we can deal with. We can definitely exercise some skepticism in some cases. It is, of course, more general than finance — more general than management. For example, if a general won a war, was it because he was a good or lucky? Of course, you'd rather be lucky — particularly if you are at war. So the problem is much more general than finance. But it has wonderful solutions. And a lot of people have broached these solutions.
The black swan problem is much more difficult, vastly deeper and does not have a solution that does not entail a total revamping of some institutional architecture. That's why I am having a rough time getting the message across.
Herring: On the contrary, I think you have actually had a wonderful success in getting at least the fundamental message across. I have heard people who have no relation to finance ask, 'Are we facing a black swan here?' which is a wonderful contribution. Because fractal theory is very, very difficult for non-specialists to comprehend.
Taleb: That's true. But I've been trying to emphasize the true message of the black swan, which is that there are some environments in which rare events are simply not predictable.
Most people think that they can predict the black swan, that with quantitative sophistication they can get answers. They don't get the idea that because we can't predict black swans, then we need to restructure institutions and rethink strategies to be more robust in the face of uncertainty.
Herring: Yes, that is very much in line with your contribution to our recent book, The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable in Financial Risk Management.
Taleb: The map into this terrain is quite difficult to follow. You have to avoid having things fail too late. You have to avoid debt because debt makes the system more fragile. You have to increase redundancies in some spaces. You have to avoid optimization. That is quite critical for someone who is doing finance to understand because it goes counter to everything you learn in portfolio theory…. I have always been very skeptical of any form of optimization. In the black swan world, optimization isn't possible. The best you can achieve is a reduction in fragility and greater robustness. You may have heuristics, but not an optimization rule. I hope the message will finally get across because I haven't succeeded yet. People talk about black swans but they don't talk about robustness, which is the real lesson of the black swans.
Herring: I would agree that you have raised interest in the phenomenon of black swans and certainly the emphasis on looking for them. But it is a very tough problem to know what to do…. We have to go to the next level of raising it, and really starting to identify what is vulnerable and what is not. Like we know that solar energy is not vulnerable to black swans, but nuclear — as we have just discovered — is found with the black swans. The one in a million year accident has happened…
We seem to have had over the last six weeks a number of black swans flying through our global universe. You know a lot about the Middle East. Should the "Arab Spring" of political revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa be considered a black swan?
Taleb: The events in the Middle East are not black swans. They were predictable to those who know the region well. At most, they were gray swans or perhaps white swans. One of the lessons of "Wild vs. Mild Randomness," my chapter with Benoit Mandelbrot in your book, is what happens before you go into a period of wild randomness. You will find a long quiet period that is punctuated with absolute total turmoil…. In The Black Swan, I discussed Saudi Arabia as a prime case of the calm before the storm and the Great Moderation [the perceived end of economic volatility due to the creation of 20th century banking laws] in the same breath. I was comparing Italy with Saudi Arabia. Italy is an example of mild randomness in comparison with Saudi Arabia and Syria, which are examples of wild randomness. Italy has had 60 changes in regime in the post-war era, but they are inconsequential…. It is a prime example of noise. It's very Italian and so it's elegant noise, but it's noise nonetheless. In contrast, Saudi Arabia and Syria have had the same regime in place for 40 some years. You may think it is stability, but it's not. Once you remove the lid, the thing explodes.
The same kind of thing happens in finance. Take the portfolio of banks. The environment seemed very placid — the Great Moderation — and then the thing explodes.
Herring: I would agree that people knew the Middle East was very vulnerable to turmoil because of the demographics, a very young population, and widespread unemployment, the dissatisfaction with the distribution of income and with regimes that were getting geriatric. But knowing how it would unfold and knowing that somebody immolating themselves in a market in Tunisia would lead to this widespread discontent — and we still don't know how it will end — is a really remarkable occurrence that I think would be very difficult to predict in any way.
Taleb: Definitely, and it actually taught us to try not to predict the catalyst, which is the most foolish thing in the world, but to try to identify areas of vulnerability. [It's] like saying a bridge is fragile. I can't predict which truck is going to break it, so I have to look at it more in a structural form — what physicists call the percolation approach. You study the terrain. You don't study the components. You see in finance, we study the random walk. Physicists study percolation. They study the terrain — not a drunk person walking around — but the evolution of the terrain itself. Everything is dynamic. That is percolation.
And then you learn not to try to predict which truck is going to break that bridge. But you just look at bridges and say, "Oh, this bridge doesn't have a great foundation. This other one does. And this one needs to be reinforced." We can do a lot with the notion of robustness.
Herring: Going back to the Middle East, how would you suggest that people deal with that?
Taleb: I would rather have a little bit of turmoil — physical turmoil — because that noise rises to the surface. It was a very bad idea to suppress the Islamic Fundamentalists. [We have been] living in this environment now for 14 centuries. We all understand that you shouldn't stifle dissident voices. You let them rise … because you are actually strengthening the system. It is a hydra-affect. Call it anti-fragility. You should let everyone partake of the political process and make it messy. Just like people go to the health club — it is a painful experience. I mean, for me at least, it is not a very pleasant experience. But it makes you stronger. You see? You should let that noise rise because if you stifle the noise for a long time, the thing can erupt.
The second myth that I would like to debunk is about revolutions. I recently read a few books on the French Revolution. I realized that the places that are vulnerable are not places where you have a starving lower class. You simply give them a little bit of bread and they are comfortable. The real danger is a rising middle class with thwarted expectations, like the upper middle class in Saudi Arabia. They are deprived of power and extremely resentful of the royal family because they encounter them daily, while the lower classes do not. The same is true of Bahrain. It does not have economic problems. It has an upper middle class that feels stifled by the regime. When you have resentment, it comes usually from the educated, upper middle class like the French Revolution.
Herring: They feel they are being blocked.
Taleb: They feel they are being blocked. Exactly. And they feel resentful. They feel their jealousy. This is what will eventually threaten Saudi Arabia. People are saying that there are between 7,000 and 15,000 extended relatives of the King and members of the royal family who own the place. So technically they own the place. Their private purse is the public purse. If you are part of the upper middle class, you will become increasingly resentful. These are the spots that are the most fragile.
Herring: Given your view on the fragility of Saudi Arabia, how should we think about making direct investments in Saudi Arabia, the supply of oil or military alliances?
Taleb: I think that an oil shock would be very good because we need to be trained to finally give up on these stupid cars. We have so many alternative sources, and people are too lazy. We need to enhance anti-fragility in this area. You can move from wild randomness into mild randomness by creating some. It is like hormesis: You give someone a little bit of poison and they get stronger. Economic life gets stronger not with bailouts, but with bankruptcies.
Evolution works not with bailouts — there are no bailouts in nature — but with competition and natural selection. So you need to have some stressors and to use stressors to strengthen the system. We have not been stressed enough about the oil crisis, and it has led to a horrible situation in which the U.S. government is playing a hypocritical role driven by humanitarian forces in Libya, but at the same time supporting the Saudi royal family, essentially one tribe running a place — even giving its name to it. It is the most unstable place and the most backward of regimes in the world — all in the name of oil security.
So you realize that you have some schizophrenia as far as how a lot of Western governments are behaving. So we need a little bit of oil shock….
Herring: It requires more than a shock, doesn't it? Because we have had those before…. In fact, the price of oil in real terms was even lower than just after the OPEC increase. So the motives for making substitutions just were not there.
Taleb: I see. But do you think that we will eventually wean ourselves from that nasty dark product from the ground?
Herring: One hopes. But it is hard to see how given the reality of the way we have built our society, with remote suburbs and interstate highways linking everything. We cannot make a very quick substitution out of the petroleum-based economy. But you are absolutely right. It has got to be faced.
Taleb: This is the fragility of having dependence on one source — one product — rather than more than one…. It is optimal to use oil visibly. But it is more dangerous. In my new book, I focus on optimization; almost 99 cases out of 100 optimizations make you vulnerable and fragile.
Herring: Yes. That's the darker side of Adam Smith's pin factory. You become more efficient by becoming more specialized, but you also become more vulnerable to some kinds of shocks.
Taleb: [When a company becomes] more specialized with things, and it works better, the numbers look better. But your hidden risks rise and rise. And then when you are faced with a problem, you don't know what to do about it, whereas in other cases you have more variations all the time. You have more fluctuations and, of course, you are a lot more robust.
Herring: So you would advocate investing in options because you don't know which one you are going to need?
Taleb: Exactly. My anti-fragility is a long option…. I started my career as an options trader. I retired several times as an options trader trying to generalize the concept…. I view the world as neutral options, long options and short options. When you long an option, you love disorder. That was the thing that hit me then — this product likes disorder — it likes volatility.
Herring: There is nothing worse than having a calm steady market if you are a volatility trader.
Taleb: Exactly. If you are a volatility trader or if you long an option. The first thing that determines the value of an option is not the spot price — the underlying price. It is the volatility — particularly when the option is remote. Uncertainty benefits an option. It is hard to explain to people that there are systems that love uncertainty. Evolution loves uncertainty. Economic life loves uncertainty, but we don't know it.
Herring: If there is one thing that politicians seem to be riveted on right now it is the uncertainty of employment, for example. We seem to have jobless recoveries, and there are arguments over whether we have actually had an improvement in unemployment just now or whether we simply have more discouraged workers.
Taleb: We did not have a recovery. What we had is massive reliance on the printing press for more money. Did your tax base improve? No. Otherwise you wouldn't have $1.3 trillion in expenses. So we are fooling ourselves with numbers….
You are eventually going to pay back this fake growth — [which is] sort of like Madoff style growth. Is it growth? Well, it looked like growth but it's not really growth if you discount it by the probability that you have to pay it back.
Herring: And the trajectory for several major countries — not least the United States — is more and more debt.
Taleb: Yes, but the thing is that we are the worst here because before us we had Greece and Ireland. They are being yelled at and they are doing something about it. Here, we now have people in Congress bickering over $60 billion? The way they account for the deficit — some of it is deficit and some of it is investment. But we still have to come up with $1.5 trillion.
Herring: It may be even more than that because there is an awful lot of funny accounting that goes behind the numbers — not least of which is the health care plan.
Taleb: Of course. You have hidden liabilities. You have hidden contingent liabilities. As options traders, we know that when you sell an option you have a liability, particularly if it's in the money. Even if in accounting ways it doesn't show up. So we are worse off than Europe because Europe has about half the deficit that we have — as a whole. People forget that Europe has at the center Germany. The Euro Zone has Germany.
Herring: As long as they are willing to write checks, it all works.
Taleb: Well, yes, but they are at the center. So if you have to dilute the GDP by that — that goes down immensely to about 7% or 6%. It depends on whom you talk to. So the numbers are about half of what we have. So I am not that worried about Europe. Asia, the BRICs — all these people — not only are they doing well, they are more robust.
Herring: How about Japan?
Taleb: It is a disaster that has been creeping up for a long time — fiscally — visibly.
Herring: And demographically as well.
Taleb: And now that they have that shock, we don't know what can happen. But the Japanese had the luxury of selling us cars. They had a big government deficit, which is a huge source of fragility. But at the same time they were getting cash and they had a high saving rate that absorbed it. So that was okay…. But here we don't have anything. We don't have the same situation here as Japan, because not only do you have a high government deficit, but it is coupled with a big current account deficit and meager private savings….
Herring: Some people would say that part of the reason we have a very different pattern than Germany and Japan is that Germany and Japan used export-led growth until they became so large that it was very hard for the rest of the world to accept their exports. We became sort of the buyer of last resort. This is not a plausible excuse for our lack of budgetary control, but it does account for a basic structural difference.
Taleb: Maybe. It can let you off the hook for a while, but at some point, no.
Herring: The same problem arises with China, which also has pursued an export-led strategy and needs at some point to have balanced internal growth to stabilize.
Taleb: That is true. But I'm looking at … what would be the worst thing that can happen to us. The U.S. has to raise $1.5 trillion for next year, okay? We're going to have to find buyers. We have some domestic savings — a few people willing to spend. Okay? The rest of the world may buy some. And then we have no buyers. So they have to call Bernanke to come and do his quantitative easing again.
Herring: And we have a set of rules developing for banks that will require them to buy bonds, which is a bit worrisome the world over.
Taleb: Yes, instead of lending…. This is what I call the situation of failed options or not being able to find buyers and then having to fudge things so they can play that game. The rest of the world would see it and I would say, "Okay, I'm not touching that currency."
Herring: That's surely going to be a hard landing.
Taleb: Definitely. That would be a rude awakening. In my new book Anti-Fragility I look at a few things…. You keep postponing the blow up, but the longer you wait, the worse it gets. But we have solutions. One of the solutions is to cut right away. Clean out the cancer right away.
Herring: Do we have the political will to do that?
Taleb: No. Plus, we have moral hazards — creeping moral hazards at the level of the bankers who are still more powerful than they were before. And the politicians want to be like this. So we have this moral hazard spread throughout the whole system. The problem came from an agency problem. And the agency problem is more acute today — paying bonuses for bankers, bigger and bigger — so visibly there is something that has not been fixed in the system and [there is] no political will. And people don't want to cut. I have — with a collaborator of mine — looked at medical expenditures in something called iatrogenics…. A solution may come in the form of people realizing finally that if you cut medical expenditures by half, people may actually live longer. Start comparing public health and then looking at what we call conditionally iatrogenics because the elective surgeons and all this is where the money goes.
Herring: Also, a lot of it is spent in the last three months of life and with no particular gain to society or the patient.
Taleb: Well, no. It's just punishing the person into living longer. We have a high medical expenditure mostly on things that actually make us sicker — like statin drugs, for example. If you are healthy and you take statin drugs, visibly you are going to get health benefits, but you have a lot of downsides — like shorting an option. The side effects are like shorting an option. The value of that short option is not visible; it takes awhile to show. You can compute it with cancer treatments. We know from mammogram studies that if someone has a lot of cancers …. just leave the cancer alone. It doesn't reduce the life as much as the treatment does. So it has this breakeven point. Cancer treatment is a bit of a touchy subject. But in a lot of situations in which elective surgeries are canceled because of hospital strikes, the person never comes back. They are healed on their own. Mother nature does a better job and with fewer side effects. So there may be some hope in cutting there and cutting into the military expenditures without repercussions.
Herring: But it does require looking at entitlements. There is just not enough in the discretionary part of the budget to deal with it.
Taleb: Definitely. You have to go everywhere.
Herring: Do you have any sense of how long we have before the hard landing is going to happen?
Taleb: No. Before that failed auction or that panic?
Herring: Yes.
Taleb: I don't know. But it may actually be healthy to have a good panic because then people realize that you can't borrow for free as we are borrowing today because some people won't buy your bonds unless there is a huge premium. That is the logical consequence of quantitative easing.
Herring: Although it is interesting that even now you see people [turning to] the U.S. dollar, I guess because reserve currencies have two attributes. We are good at one and not the other. One is liquidity, which we are unparalleled at producing in the Treasury bond market. But price stability is truly a risk at this point.
Taleb: The currencies people have been using are the metals, namely, silver and gold — more silver than gold.
Herring: And the Swiss franc.
Taleb: And the Swiss franc, and the Nordic currencies and the Canadian. The dollar comes last.
Herring: But there are still a remarkable number of flows — even when the uncertainty arises in the United States.
Taleb: Yes, but people have a habit of allocating X dollars — X to this, X to that. So there are automatic flows. Plus the Arabs have to buy Treasury bonds here. Otherwise, they wouldn't be playing the game. You see?
Herring: And if you are moving around that large a sum of money, there are very few options.
Taleb: Exactly. There are very few options to park your money. But still, the dollar is weaker than the other currencies, including Europe. The euro now as we are talking is 1.42. That's a lot stronger than it was a few months ago.
Herring: Although that, too, is probably fragile.
Taleb: Definitely fragile. The only things that are more robust are currencies without government. Although I don't know which one is optimal. I don't know if gold is the best. Gold is more fragile than a good collection of what I call repositories of value.
Herring: Yes, I think that's quite right. Because at least they have a good industrial use that then puts a floor on their price.
Taleb: And those of us who are old enough to remember what happened — it was right before I came to Wharton — gold burned so many people in the Middle East. Up until then it was considered the optimal repository of value…. So we have to be careful about repository of value.
Herring: So, again, your advice is to have lots of options and diversity.
Taleb: Exactly — a lot of optionality. For example, I don't like to buy gold. I buy options on gold either in the form of things that have gold underground — because [with oil], the cost of digging or the cost of extracting are outweighed by the profits from the revenues.
Herring: That is a fascinating concept that I think will surely have as wide an appeal as the whole idea of a black swan. Because it has left everybody thinking — once they think seriously about a black swan — "What in the world do I do with it?"
Taleb: Yes. I rephrase everything. The black swan was initially a short option. You see? This is your short option. This is your long option. And now I realize I could express it in terms of optionality. I just had to find the right English words for it to explain optionality to non-option traders.
Herring: Well, that is something that you have been really brilliant at.
Taleb: I hope it works this time.
Herring: It is amazing the extent to which black swan has entered the common vernacular [including among] people who probably have not even read the book. But it is one of the few concepts coming out of a serious economic book that has gained widespread currency the world over. It's hard to pick up a newspaper without seeing some reference to it in one way or another. So I hope you are as successful with the solutions.
Taleb: I hope I am successful in conveying the need to avoid some problems. The best thing you can do to live long is avoid smoking. So the solution may be subtractive, not additive — like advice [about] what not to do.
Herring: We need a lot less complacency about how much we think we know. Your whole work has been leading us in that direction. It is probably your philosophical bent that what we know in fact is a lot less than we all believe we do — in almost every sphere of life.
Taleb: I know, but it's not harmful in most domains.
Herring: Well, it isn't if you know it.
Taleb: There are some domains in which you can be as over confident as you want without harming you.
Herring: That seems to be a deep seated trait that behavioral psychologists pick up in virtually every sphere — that we are much more confident about things we don't know much about than the evidence warrants. When it gets to financial markets, it can be dangerous. Again, thank you very much for coming back to campus. We are delighted to have you here and really eager to hear your message about how to make a more stable, more robust world to deal with the black swans flying all around us.
Taleb: Thank you very much. I am so honored to come back after — I won't say how many years.


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subset: commoncrawl


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So pumped to wear Dodger Blue! Can't wait! #godoyers #dreamcometrue #rialtoraisedWelcome home, Ricky.
— ricky nolasco (@RNolasco47) July 7, 2013
Who will be the make-weight, Crapuano or Fife tha Didawg?
Good work by Dodgers front office to get an upgrade four-hole kind of pitcher, not give up much in return, and clear some international signing cap space. From the rumors, it seems like a SP and a back-of-the-bullpen guy are in the cards before the trade deadline, so this is the first part of that puzzle.


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A CEO on the Advantages of Running a Private Company
In the video below we hear from Fedele Bauccio, founder and CEO of Bon Appetit Management. His company has built its reputation on locally sourced, seasonal, healthy foods, and is actively involved in sustainability issues affecting every aspect of the food industry.
Bauccio explains that keeping Bon Appetit private and finding the right partner has allowed him to pursue the company's values and build sustainability without having to put the bottom line first at every turn.
The Motley Fool's chief investment officer has selected his No. 1 stock for the next year. Find out which stock it is in the special free report: "The Motley Fool's Top Stock for 2013." Just click here to access the report and find out the name of this under-the-radar company.
Audience Member: Could you talk a little bit more about the private versus public company discussion? You mentioned some great public companies that I think are exemplars; certainly Whole Foods has done some wonderful things for their employees.
As a public company, that's probably beneficial for other companies to see. Can you talk about why private? You mentioned to David [Gardner, Motley Fool co-founder], your thoughts on being private versus public, and what are the benefits of being private?
Fedele Bauccio: I know you guys are analysts and so forth, but it was really tough to try to explain, when I was with a public company, to an analyst, what this contract business was all about. The only thing that mattered was did you make your quarterly earnings.
I felt that, in order to create... I'm in a business that's hard to understand. Our margins are very, very thin. You need a lot of volume. We're not sexy like the restaurant. Chipotle's out there, and they're in the public's eye. I'm behind the scenes at a university like University of Pennsylvania.
People really don't know who Bon Appetit is, or I'm behind Google , if you will. It's Google's food service, but it's Bon Appetit doing it. We're not a retail company, in that sense. For me to get the analyst to understand that, and to understand how we work, was a whole different world for me.
I also felt strongly that if I was going to create change...
First of all, let me back up and tell you that I took money from [angel investors]. This was not venture capital money. My own money, and angels'. And I did feel I had a fiduciary responsibility to get them a return. The way I felt that I could maximize that return for them was not to go public.
I really felt that selling the company, or an exit strategy for me, was to find the right partner and the right company that would leave us alone, that I could tap into their resources when I needed to but to leave our brand -- because I wasn't ready to give the brand up -- leave our brand alone, and learn from our best practices for their own good.
I found that partner in Compass. They have been terrific. They've been the best partner in the world. It's because we march to our drummer and we pick and choose what we think is right, that they can give us.
We were able to maximize, in a strategic buy, maximize those returns for my investors, that I felt that I had a responsibility to. I wasn't sure I could do that in the public forum, or the public market, and I didn't want to have to fight going through making people understand what we stood for.
Becoming a sustainable company is not easy. You've got to really work at it, and it's a journey. It doesn't happen overnight. You've got to continue to keep fighting. To me, that's just as important as making money, if not more important, because I want that brand to be solid and strong.
If we do that, then the bottom line will follow. I don't want to have to worry about the bottom line first. I want to do this other thing first.
Audience Member: Any other questions? All right.
Isaac Pino: I think that wraps it up. I really appreciate you being here. Thanks for coming as well, but thanks a lot, Fedele, for joining us today.
Bauccio: It was great. Thank you very much.
The article A CEO on the Advantages of Running a Private Company originally appeared on Fool.com.
Isaac Pino, CPA, owns shares of Google and Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Motley Fool recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill, Google, and Whole Foods Market. The Motley Fool owns shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill, Google, and Whole Foods Market. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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Geraldo Rivera Exposes Eric Bolling, Fox's "Hardline" Stance On Immigration
Written by Solange Uwimana
It was bound to happen. Fox's Eric Bolling was primed to have a talking to for his extreme views on immigrants and his repeated calls that the entire undocumented population be deported. On Friday, fellow Fox News colleague Geraldo Rivera did just that, slamming The Five co-host for his "hardline" attitude toward immigrants, which Rivera said is "way too draconian to be in any sense humane or American."
Rivera said of Bolling's view:
RIVERA: I think it really overstates the problem. I think it helps fuel this enormous hatred. I think it's rhetorical. And I think that it's not you. You are a thoughtful person. You are passionate -- I understand that. And I think that you are eloquent, but when you talk about this whole class of people, 11 million people -- that's larger than some countries -- in one broad brush, including the grandmothers, the babies, everybody else, I think that it is negative; it is counterproductive; and it's very divisive.
Indeed, what Rivera was describing could be applied to the lion's share of Fox News' coverage of immigrants. Two recent examples include segments in which a straight news anchor on the network used the pejorative "illegals" to refer to undocumented immigrants and another that pushed a false storyline to attack the Obama administration on immigration policy.
Fox rarely, if ever, discusses immigrants as Rivera did on the show. He pointed out the numerous economic benefits they have brought the United States, including reviving economically depressed towns and the fact that they pay taxes. Rivera noted: "They are a productive, hard-working population, generally speaking, Eric; they are not a criminal -- I'm all for deporting criminals; deport them. But to treat the 2-year-old baby and the felony murderer as the same class is wrong."
And yet that's what Fox has done, repeatedly. The network has advanced the spurious idea that the majority of undocumented immigrants are criminals. And one of the ways it has pushed that narrative is by its personalities' incessant reference of immigrants using the slur "illegals." Following Bolling's use of the word, Rivera interjected: "You call them illegals. That is a word that is designed to generate a negative reaction. You wanna talk about illegals? Let's talk about fathers who don't pay child support. Aren't they illegals? ... So why don't we call them illegals?"
On December 1, the Pew Hispanic Center released a report estimating that nearly two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have been in the country for at least 10 years, more than a third for 15 years or more. Just 1 in 6 has been in the United States less than five years.
What prompted Rivera's defense of undocumented immigrants was an exchange he and Bolling had last week about a segment on The Five, during which Bolling repeated his stance on mass deportation. Bolling argued it should be done irrespective of the cost. Rivera wrote about his exchange with Bolling in a Fox News Latino column:
"Deport them all?" I continued incredulous, referring to [Bolling's] harsh suggestion that we should simply arrest and evict the 11 million plus undocumented immigrants. "What about the babies?" I asked. "The grandmothers? You're starting to sound like what's her name...Michelle Malkin who wants everyone to snitch out their illegal alien neighbors!"
"Yes, deport them," Bolling replied, still smiling broadly. "Beckel (his liberal foil on the "Five") says it would cost $160 Billion. I say it's worth every penny."
"You've got to be kidding," I muttered, shaking my head as I walked into the nearby studio for a scheduled appearance, envisioning helmeted officers running through day care and senior centers looking for undocumented immigrants.
But on Follow the Money, Bolling didn't vary his stance, claiming that if the United States deports every single undocumented immigrant, 11 million jobs will become available. This is the classic xenophobic argument.
Watch the entire segment:


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Watch Freestyle Love Supreme's Anthony Veneziale & Some Surprise Guests Spit Rhymes
The newest episode of Broadway Profiles features an interview with Anthony Veneziale, a conceiver and co-creator of the hip-hop improv sensation Freestyle Love Supreme. Not only is the show returning to Broadway on October 7 for an encore bow, but the production is receiving a Special Tony Award. "It doesn't feel real, but it's incredible," Veneziale said of the show's return to the Great Bright Way. Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek met up with him—and some special surprise guests!—in the heart of Times Square for a chat about the show's journey from the Drama Book Shop to Broadway.
Watch the full video below, and head here to check your local listings for Broadway Profiles. Hosted by Emmy-winning anchor Tamsen Fadal and powered by Broadway.com, it is the only nationally syndicated weekly theater news program.


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Copyright (c) 2000-2009 by Petr Pajas
Copyright (c) 2010-2011 by Peter Fabian
This is a free software distributed under GPL - The General Public Licence
Full text of the GPL can be found at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
TrEd is a fully customizable and programmable graphical editor and viewer for tree-like structures. Among other projects, it was used as the main annotation tool for syntactical and tectogrammatical annotations in The Prague Dependency Treebank, as well as for decision-tree based morphological annotation of The Prague Arabic Dependency Treebank.
TrEd 2.0 is a refactored version of original TrEd.
A new installation procedure which takes advantage of popular
Nullsoft Scriptable Install System
for Windows has been created.
Since version 2.0, TrEd uses another Perl distribution on Windows:
Active Perl has been substituted by Strawberry Perl.
This allows TrEd to be shipped along with Perl distribution in one package.
TrEd runs on the following platforms (see installation instructions for details):
Current version: 2.5236 (release date Thu Feb 28 08:54:16 CET 2019)
This is a full installation package of TrEd for Microsoft Windows. This installer contains TrEd, required Perl Modules and a recent version of Strawberry Perl.
The deb package was tested on current versions of Testing Debian (Wheezy) and Ubuntu.
Current Stable Debian (Squeezy) does not contain following dependencies
(libperl-ostype-perl libmodule-metadata-perl libjson-pp-perl
libcpan-meta-yaml-perl libxml-sax-base-perl libperlio-gzip-perl
To install the package use
$> sudo gdebi ./tred_2.5236_all.deb
$> sudo dpkg -i ./tred_2.5236_all.deb
which will most likely fail so it must be followed by
$> sudo apt-get -f install
to fix dependencies and install the package.
The packages are designed for listed Linux distributions only. You may try to use these packages on other rpm-based distributions. The package cannot damage anything in incompatible distribution, but there may be some problems with package dependencies. If your distribution is not supported, we recommend to use the generic installation script for unices (presented below).
To install the package use
$> sudo yum localinstall ./tred-2-5236.noarch.rpm
The RHEL package have some dependencies in the Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository.
You can register the repository (install the epel package) using following command:
$> sudo rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-7.noarch.rpm
This is a standard Mac OS X application (installed by drag-and-drop to Application folder). The application is designed for OS X 10.14 (Mojave). If you have older version of OS X, please use the generic unix installation script.
Please note that the OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) does not include X11 server (which is essential for TrEd) in standard installation. If you do not have the X11 server, it will be automatically installed when you launch TrEd for the first time. In case of any problems, please check this keynote to install X11 server manually.
NOTE: Perl >= 5.8.2 and basic development tools,
(such as make, patch, and a C compiler (gcc)) are required to build TrEd dependencies!
Since several packages like Tk needs to be compiled, users should install these dependencies for the compilation to work:
X11 dev package, Xft dev package, lib fontconfig dev package, libpng12 dev package, zlib1g dev package and libxml2 dev package
Ubuntu/Debian users can use this command:
sudo apt-get install libx11-dev libxft-dev libfontconfig1-dev libpng12-dev zlib1g-dev libxml2-dev
Fedora/Red Hat users can use:
sudo yum install perl-core wget gcc patch libX11-devel libXft-devel libpng-devel libxml2-devel zlib-devel perl-libwww-perl
This installation script automatically fetches and builds latest TrEd and its dependencies for you.
It downloads the packages below, uncompresses tred into a given folder and compiles and installs all dependencies either locally to TrEd's directory or to a given prefix. It also creates two wrapper scripts start_tred, start_btred, and start_ntred which configure library and module paths accordingly and start the corresponding tool. You may symlink these scripts to a folder in your PATH.
Read help:
bash install_tred.bash --help | less
Install as user (everything under $HOME/tred)
bash install_tred.bash --tred-dir ~/tred 2>&1 | tee install_tred.log ~/tred/bin/start_tred
Install as root to system paths:
bash install_tred.bash --tred-dir /opt/tred --system 2>&1 | tee install_tred.log /usr/bin/start_tred
This is the latest TrEd distribution package (including documentation). It runs on all supported platforms, but is mainly intended for Linux/Unix users. It requires Perl 5.8.3 or newer and some Perl modules provided in a dependency package below. After installing all dependencies, simply ungzip+untar this package and run tred/tred.
This package bundles sources for Linux/Unix dependencies for TrEd (mostly Perl modules). The install script contained in the package automates compilation and installation of all these dependencies.
Please note that the extensions were moved to a new repository and divided into two parts for technical reasons (as of 5.10.2012). We recommend to install newest version of TrEd and delete your local configuration files. In case you cannot reinstall or you need to keep all your settings, update your settings so the Extension Manager uses following default repositories:
Click the following link for a list of TrEd Extension Packages currently available in the default extension repository


text:
- Overview
- Features
- History
- Security
- Known Issues
- Disclaimer
get latest source code
related projects
quick links
About this software
xml-qstat is an attempt to do something useful with the XML status information that Grid Engine produces. At its heart, it comprises a collection of XSLT stylesheets that can be used with render Grid Engine XML into a variety of output formats (eg, XHTML, RSS).
The current development efforts have be applied to reducing the installation size and to improving the flexiblity. The goal is to have an application that can be readily installed and run on even the weakest cluster headnodes.
The screenshots and demo pages will give a better view of the current capabilities.
When used for server-side XSLT transformations, xml-qstat contains a set of files and directories designed to function as a self-contained web application within the Apache Cocoon 2.1 XML publishing framework. For client-side XSLT transformations, xml-qstat uses modules added into the HTTPi webserver to deliver appropriate xml+xsl to the client browser.
Most of the work involved in developing this package centers on creating and improving the XSL stylesheets that guide the transformation of Grid Engine XML into various desired output formats. Quite a bit of effort has also gone into the various JavaScript, CSS stylesheets and other "web design" elements (although more work can always done).
The client-side XSLT using HTTPi is currently the recommended solution when the browser allows it. The server-side XSLT uses an older version of Cocoon and also contains some potential security issues that might be a concern. This is one of several reasons for the desire to drop Cocoon support in the future.


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Drought Threatens Fish, Wildlife, Parks in Texas
July 25, 2011
Tom Harvey, 512-389-4453, firstname.lastname@example.com
Water Recreation Still a Good Bet to Beat the Heat
Note: This item is more than 12 years old. Please take the publication date into consideration for any date references.
AUSTIN – As experts nervously watch mounting threats of record drought in Texas, several truths are evident: (1) when water won't fall from the sky, what comes out of the ground is critical, (2) there are important things people can do to prepare to weather a drought, but when you're in one the only quick fix is rain and (3) there are still parks, lakes and spring-fed rivers with water where folks can beat the dry heat.
Last month was the hottest June ever recorded in Texas. At this point, the current drought is the third worst on record based on the Palmer Drought Index, behind the droughts of 1916-1918 and 1951-1957.The Texas drought map is a sea of red, with almost the entire state in extreme to exceptional drought, except for about 10 counties in northeast Texas. What's worse, little relief is predicted, and some forecasts show a strengthening of La Niña weather conditions this fall, which could prolong the drought.
"What's on my mind is with continued lack of rainfall we could see impacts on fish and wildlife that could be apparent for years to come," said Cindy Loeffler, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's top water resource expert.
"That's based on reports from our wildlife biologists on poor recruitment of young of the year, very poor available food such as mast for deer and bugs for birds to eat, not to mention lack of drinking water. With fish, when you see these historically low levels of stream flows, we begin to see fish kills from low dissolved oxygen and high temperature."
Across the state, many springs and rivers are trickling and Texas lake levels are way down. In the west, some reservoirs have gone practically bone-dry, including O.C Fisher near San Angelo.
"If this goes on much longer we're going to have some dry springs, without a doubt," said Chad Norris, a TPWD water resource scientist who's spent the last few years studying the status of springs across the state, including many on private ranches.
"One big problem is impacts to endemic and rare species, many of which are isolated to these small springs and are found nowhere else. We might not lose an entire species, but we could lose local populations that could push them toward extinction."
Norris said people underestimate the importance of small springs. Even in drought-dried creeks, they sustain isolated pools of water, and while that's not ideal habitat, if you're an aquatic species or even a terrestrial mammal looking for water, it's critical.
"Those spring-fed pools may be what will keep our common wildlife species common. The bass, sunfish and minnows, the fish communities in our streams, they need somewhere to hold on, so they can repopulate the creek when rain finally returns."
Spring flows at San Marcos and Comal Springs, two of the largest springs in the Southwestern U.S., are declining due to drought and groundwater withdrawal from the Edwards Aquifer. There are eight threatened or endangered species that depend directly on the Edwards Aquifer system: the fountain darter, San Marcos salamander, San Marcos gambusia, Texas blind salamander, Peck's cave amphipod, Comal Springs dryopid beetle, Comal Springs riffle beetle, and Texas wild-rice. The San Marcos gambusia, last collected in the wild in 1983, may already be extinct.
These rare creatures evolved to withstand periodic droughts, but human activity, particularly increased groundwater pumping, is changing the equation.
"Jacob's Well is a great example," said Norris. "Recently its flow was down to one tenth of a cubic feet per second (CFS), but it popped back up when groundwater pumping restrictions went in, though still below one CFS, very low. The real trick is groundwater use, and the fact that there are so many more of us now."
Primary threats to aquifer-dependent species are intermittent loss of habitat from reduced spring flows, water pollution, and competition from non-native, invasive species. The good news is there are efforts underway to plan for drought and wisely manage the groundwater that sustains people and wildlife, such as the Edwards Aquifer Recovery Implementation Plan.
These days, you can track how much water's flowing in most Texas rivers online, thanks to flow gauges tracked by the U.S. Geological Survey. Interestingly, when you look at the USGS Map of Daily Streamflow offering historical comparisons, about half the state shows green dots indicating normal flow. Of course, the other half are the red of dry desperation, such as the Llano River at Llano with only about 4 percent of its normal/median flow, and even the upper Sabine in wetter East Texas near 14 percent.
San Marcos and Comal springs are also the headwaters of the San Marcos and Comal Rivers and provide important base flows, especially during drought, to the Guadalupe River and its coastal estuary. The endangered whooping crane breeds in northern Canada and winters on the Texas coast, and high salinities caused by low freshwater inflows are a stressor for whooping cranes. Extreme droughts can limit their preferred foods like blue crabs and wolfberries, and can force cranes to fly to uplands to drink, using more energy and exposing birds to more predator threats and other mortality factors. Whooping crane mortality and Guadalupe-San Antonio River discharge data over the last 20 years show that high mortality winters are associated with low water discharges.
On land, animals are on the move, going where the food and water are, sometimes in urban areas. Alligator sightings are increasing in the eastern part of the state as they search for dwindling habitat. Normally nocturnal animals like foxes and skunks are being spotted during the day, raising concerns about rabies transmission.
Without rain relief, deer recruitment will be poor this year. Deer have been eating their summer forage, and there may not be anything left later in the summer. Turkey populations may also be down due to lack of food and cover. On well-managed ranches where native grasses are healthy, wildlife may weather the drought better than in previously overgrazed areas.
Drought can actually mean better hunting and fishing in some cases. Shrinking surface water and habitat can concentrate fish and game, making them easier to find; this could be the case with coastal waterfowl, for example. But there can be a tradeoff in resource impacts from taking too many vulnerable animals in certain areas, and these situations rely on responsible stewardship from hunter/anglers.
Likewise, water recreation continues to lure Texans to rivers, lakes, spring-fed swimming holes, and state parks with water features, air-conditioned cabins and the like. State Parks with constant-level lakes have seen an increase in visitation. Texas is blessed with marvelous spring-fed rivers, which are crowded with paddlers and tubers.
However, low lake levels and stream flows have made recreational access difficult. Many boat ramps have closed as water levels decrease. Boaters who do manage to launch sometimes find a smaller surface area, and safety becomes a concern as lakes get crowded and hazards such as trees and sand bars are exposed.
Contact recreation can pose health hazards if water quality is poor. For example, primary amebic meningoencephalitis or PAM is a rare but sometimes deadly disease that can be caused when water is forced up the nose while diving, jumping or water skiing. Symptoms may include severe headache, high fever, stiff neck, nausea and vomiting. The state health department advises people not to swim or ski in stagnant water, and to hold their nose or use nose clips when skiing, jet skiing or jumping into fresh water.
All this said, the situation could change markedly for the better with rainfall from tropical storms, and Texas is now in peak hurricane season.
Record drought tends to focus the mind on the need for water planning. While some look at ways to enhance water supply, others emphasize conservation to better use what we already have.
"The big gamble we take in the water planning business is we assume the worst drought we'll ever see will be no worse than the 'drought of record' that occurred in the 1950s," said Loeffler. "But we know, based on tree ring data, Texas has weathered 'mega-droughts' worse than the drought of the 1950s. Some weather experts are wondering if our current drought could be the 'new normal.'"
While the vital but long-term process of water planning rolls on, there are things every Texan can do now. Besides practical steps like rainwater harvesting and low-flow shower heads, folks can convert water-sucking lawns to native Texas Wildscapes. Native Texas plants that evolved to withstand droughts are attractive and require less water, time and money. In rural areas, TPWD wildlife biologists can advise landowners on ways to manage land to weather drought and benefit people and wildlife.
"Water conservation has got to be a bigger part of the answer for Texas," Loeffler said. "Just because water comes out of the kitchen tap like magic doesn't mean it's a limitless resource. It's time we started treating every drop as precious."
The recently created Texas drought task force website provides a good suite of links to drought-and wildfire-related public information. It also bundles news reports from multiple sources involving agriculture, wildlife, wildfire and other topics.
On the Net:
- Texas drought map: http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/DM_state.htm?TX,S
- Edwards Aquifer rare species: http://www.edwardsaquifer.net/species.html
- Edwards Aquifer Recovery Implementation Plan: http://earip.org/
- Texas river/stream flow: http://waterwatch.usgs.gov/new/index.php?m=pa01d&r=tx&w=map
- Texas state parks with water features: http://tpwd.texas.gov/spdest/activities/outdoor_recreation/swim/
- Primary amebic meningoencephalitis: http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/news/releases/20100831.shtm
- Texas Wildscapes: http://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/wildscapes/
- Texas drought website: http://agrilife.tamu.edu/drought/


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Award-Winning Author's Readings Always Bring Surprises
Witness these reviews from Simmons' three most recent works:
"Simmons writes action scenes that'll leave your hands clammy on the page," Booklist says in describing the author's noir crime novel Hardcase.
"A cracking good read . . . surely the first psychological/horror masterpiece of the 21st century," was the Denver Post's description of Simmons' 2001 novel A Winter Haunting.
"The author's lapidary prose and ambitious ideas mesh seamlessly in this mesmerizing meditation about humanity's place in the cosmic scheme," Publisher's Weekly wrote about "The End of Gravity," one of five novellas in Simmons 2002 collection Worlds Enough and Time. "The work has the intensity of a prose poem."
The writer Stephen King wrote of Simmons' Summer of Night: "An American nightmare with scares, suspense, and a sweet, surprising nostalgia. One of those rare must-read books!"
Currently, it's the writer's science fiction that has the publishing world abuzz, as his epic Ilium, based on Homer's Iliad, is scheduled for release in July 2003. Simmons' previous science fiction novels—Hyperion and Endymion—gained the writer legions of fans and international awards, and Hyperion is currently optioned to a major movie studio, with actor Leonardo DeCaprio interested in playing a leading role.
The author admits that creating Ilium was a struggle.
"The plot was like a cage of snakes that I was supposed to tie in some sort of elaborate knot, and while I was busy working on a clever knot with three of the snakes, the fourth one would be busy biting me on the ass," Simmons says in an interview in the Fall/Winter 03 issue of Wabash Magazine. "Eventually I dropped out of the world, spent a month off email, over a month away from the phone except for the most important calls, and just went back to the mat. And the first volume of this tale shaped itself up. Whether it ultimately works or not, this is the book I wanted to write."
So at Monday night's reading, will it be science fiction, horror, speculative fiction, hard-boiled crime noir, mainstream fiction, or a little of each? Simmons hasn't decided yet.
Come find out at 8 p.m. Monday, April 7, in Center 216.


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Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google Places: Access your Places reviews as a feed – NOT!
I saw this tweet from Google last night and had a flush of excitement, at least for a second, as I thought that Google had finally solved a perennial problem for SMBs; how to track their reviews in Places.
I immediately rushed over to their post, thinking I would stay up late to write up a report only to find that it wasn't the long awaited business solution to easily knowing when there was a new Google review for you business. Silly me thinking that Google has solved a long standing problem. Nothing so elegant.
No, it is an RSS feed so that reviewers have a feed of all the reviews they have created and a way of importing more Places via an RSS feed.
Businesses have needed and wanted a solution to the review problem since the introduction of Places pages in 2009.
When was the last time you heard a reviewer ask for an RSS feed of their reviews? Well maybe some reviewer some place did… but then I suggest you follow Google instructions and go find it. Instead of attaching it to the obvious place in your main Google profile or making the existing review list more visible it is is hidden in your Hotpot area.
Google needs to be making local products easier to use, not harder. They need to be making Places a page that a business can't live without. Hopefully we will see a solution to the review tracking problem some day. In the meantime, one has to wonder whether this type of upgrade is the best way for Google to spend limited local resources.
Note: Getlisted.org and MyReviewsPage.com both offer solutions to this problem that Google should have addressed long ago.
© Copyright 2024 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.


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Fans of Spider-Man are in for a treat, because not only does anyone who buys one of the first million PSP's receive a UMD of Spider-Man 2 the movie, but there's an all-new game coming out at launch as well. Vicarious Visions, who recently worked on Crash Nitro Kart and Shark Tales is developing the title, and it looks like they are poised to bring all the action from the movie to the PSP.
Spider-Man 2 will follow the basic movie plot, and it will culminate with a battle against the evil Doc. Ock, but there are plenty of other bad guys to fight while you try to protect Manhattan. Mysterio, Rhino, Shocker and Vulture are just a few of the Rogue's Gallery of villains that will try their hand at taking down Spidey.
The game will feature 19 original levels, and will actually play like a cross between the last two Spider-Man console games. There are 3D levels where Spidey will have to swing around the city trying to defuse a bomb, and other levels that are viewed from a sideways perspective, like one that takes place with Spider-Man brawling atop a moving train.
All of the web-slinging moves that you'd expect to be in the game are here, like wall crawling, web yanking and capture webbing, but Spider-Man 2 PSP brings a host of new moves to the handheld as well, such as the "cocoon," "web net" and "heavy web ball." These new moves will be a part of the combo system that promises to make combat more rewarding than in previous games.
Spider-Man 2 will feature several fully 3D environments that are some of the most impressive the PSP has seen to date. The game will have a variety of locations, each one with a unique look and a visual standard that won't disappoint just because it's on a handheld.
The game will have full voice-acting, and Tobey Maguire will provide the voice of Spider-Man himself. The game will feature familiar themes from the movie soundtrack which was scored by the legendary Danny Elfman, of Batman, The Simpsons, and Mission Impossible fame.
It looks like combining the strengths of the previous two games is going to work out well for the latest game in the Spider-Man Franchise. The game is rated T for "Teen" and will be available as early as March 15th. Check back for our review of the game shortly.


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Sharp SD-PX2 DVD/Receiver
In a previous lifetime, the Sharp SD-PX2 was probably a too-cool 1940s Bakelite radio—boxy, plastic, and proud of it. The SD-PX2 DVD/receiver is a certifiable forward-thinker. Utilizing Sharp's 1-Bit digital amplifier technology, the streamline SD-PX2 packs a DVD player and receiver into a stand-up chassis that, at only 4.5 inches deep, wouldn't look out of place on a bedside stand.
Of course, modern marvel that it is, the SD-PX2 would rather hang (it comes with a wall-mounting bracket) next to an LCD or plasma display. At $599, however, this HTIB without the speakers should not be typecast. It's a space-saving building block for a budget system for a small room or apartment.
How does Sharp get a five-pack of 25-watt amplifiers, a progressive-scan universal disc player, Dolby Digital and DTS decoders, an AM/FM tuner, and even a clock in a package that is fewer than
15 inches wide and 10 high? It's all in the numbers, as in digital. This unit's 1-Bit digital amplifier radiates 80 percent less heat, consumes about half the power, and is one-third the size of a conventional analog amplifier.
It works in a way similar to how an SACD reproduces sound, creating a digital snapshot of the analog original with 2,822,400 samples per second (2.8 megahertz) in 1-bit chunks. In the same time it takes a CD to take one 16-bit sample and DVD-Audio four 24-bit samples, the 1-Bit technology has sampled the same sound segment 64 times using a seventh-order delta-sigma analog-to-digital converter.
The best thing about the SD-PX2: It's not an HTIB. With too few exceptions, in a packaged system, speakers are often substandard throw-ins. With the SD-PX2, you pick your own. Just make sure they're reasonably efficient. The SD-PX2's low power output requires careful matching in terms of speakers and room size. Properly set up, the SD-PX2 offers smooth, easy sound that defies its power rating and exceptionally high distortion specification. I used it mostly with a PSB Alpha B system that included the Alpha SubSonic 5 subwoofer, about $1,200 worth of speakers. Paired with the Athena Micra 6 speaker system ($550), the SD-PX2 would challenge any $1,000 HTIB on the market.
The Silver Shakedown
The SD-PX2's faux-aluminum finish is so convincing that it takes a couple of taps to realize that, alas, it's Grade A plastic. It's an extremely attractive unit, distinctive for its upright design, vertically mounted DVD drawer with an automatic sliding door, and Plexiglas side panel illuminated by a blue LED. From the front, you'll see only the DVD mechanism and rectangular display screen that bleeds into a large, rotary volume control to the far right. A stack of tiny push-button controls abuts the Plexiglas panel.
This is a love-at-first-sight kind of machine. It's cool, compact, and incorporates of-the-moment technology like 1-Bit, SACD, and DVD-Audio. It's also underpowered, with limited connections, low-quality speaker terminals, average video quality, and, on the audio side, a weak lower-midrange region. However, the flaws are no worse than those of many other DVD/receivers and HTIB systems.
The SD-PX2's speaker terminals are about as bad as it gets. Tiny spring clips are jammed so close together that short-circuiting the speaker connection by crossing exposed wires becomes a real danger. I should know, as it happened twice while I calibrated the system. If the SD-PX2 were staying in my home permanently, I'd re-cut the speaker wire to expose only enough to insert into the terminals, leaving the rest protected by the wire's plastic sheath.
Otherwise, the SD-PX2 was easy to set up using the onscreen menu, although the test-tone signals for speaker calibration were so short, maybe two seconds each, that I had to use a test disc to ensure accuracy. I was particularly impressed that the delay and bass-management settings applied to both SACD and DVD-Audio discs (that's not always the case). There was one exception: For DVD-Audio, the crossover frequency reverts to the default 80 hertz. It didn't matter with the PSB Alphas, nor will it matter with most bookshelf or bigger speakers because 80 Hz is often the preferred setting.
With 1-Bit technology, the signal goes round and round before reaching the speakers. Let's take a ride with DVD-Audio: The SD-PX2 converts the digital signal to analog before sending it to the 1-Bit amplifier circuit, where it's converted back to a digital signal that's sent to the amplifier. The amplifier sends 2.8-MHz pulses through a low-pass filter to the speaker terminals. Sharp says that the speakers actually perform final digital-to-analog conversion.
The SD-PX2's rated distortion figures—2 percent total harmonic from 120 Hz to 20 kilohertz into a 4-ohm load—are high by solid-state standards but in line with audiophile vacuum-tube gear. A good audio receiver's distortion rating will generally be less than 0.1 percent. Sharp notes that the 1-Bit technology's exceptionally high speed is too fast for the low-pass filter on the front end of most test equipment, resulting in misleading readings, but our audio technical editor scowled when he heard that explanation. Let me put you at ease about the SD-PX2 and distortion: If this is what 2 percent distortion sounds like with a digital amplifier, you can live with it.
The vertical-mounted DVD mechanism scores heavy design points, but I never mastered removing the disc in one shot; there isn't enough finger room. The vertical design also exposes the laser-pickup lens, which makes it vulnerable to fingerprint smudges. I much prefer a top-loading mechanism that automatically ejects the disc.
Just wait until your neighbors find out that you can perform gamma correction (changing the picture's brightness curve) using the surprisingly thorough remote control. The SD-PX2 also features other tricks, like a Dim Auto setting that dims the display and shuts down the blue LED five seconds after a DVD starts playing.
Mighty Mite
As the SD-PX2 warmed up for several days in stereo mode with my B&W DM303 bookshelf speakers, it was hard not to be drawn into its warm, soothing sound. Once connected and set up in a home theater using the onscreen menu, the SD-PX2 faced an instant stress test with a special-effects chestnut: the "Time's Up" sequence from the Superbit edition of Independence Day. Not only did the SD-PX2 survive the conflagration, but it hit 90 decibels handily on an SPL meter and scared Chesty Morgan, my cat, right out of the small room. That's some big bang for an 8-pound, 25-watt DVD/receiver.
The SD-PX2 also did justice to a great soundtrack from a more up-to-date demo favorite, The Return of the King. The screeching from a pack of attacking dragons ridden by the Nazgl came from all angles. It was as powerful and dynamic as any HTIB I've heard.
The SD-PX2 scaled another Superbit title, Spider-Man, as Peter Parker tests his newfound powers in the "Scaling the Heights" scene. It negotiated all of the sonic effects, although for the first time I noticed a slight dropout in the Alpha B satellites' lower frequencies.
That dropout became even more noticeable with music, particularly female vocals. Eliza Carthy and Nancy Kerr sounded breathy, with sibilance, on the a cappella "Bushes & Briars" from On Reflection. The soundstage on Gillian Welch's "Red Clay Halo" from Time (The Revelator) didn't extend too far beyond the speakers, and her voice was also missing something in the lower midrange.
The same was true in high-resolution mode, where everything except Jane Monheit's voice on "Blame It on My Youth" from the Come Dream with Me DVD-Audio sounded on target. Patricia Barber's lowdown vocals didn't go down quite low enough on "Beat Goes On" from the Mobile Fidelity SACD reissue of Companion.
I'll take a relaxed lower midrange any day over the grating high frequencies of HTIB-style systems. Those graduating from a $200 minisystem to the SD-PX2 probably won't notice it. More likely, they'll be bowled over by the high-resolution qualities of SACD and DVD-Audio.
Although the SD-PX2 deserves a must-audition rating, especially for the HTIB shopper, Sharp's engineers no doubt will continue to fine-tune the new 1-Bit technology. It's got most of the budget class beat already, and it'll only get better, smaller, and more powerful.
• Cool, compact 1-Bit amplification
• Easy-on-the-ears sound
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Stoner Drug: One mile.
So reads the sign on Interstate 29 as it winds by the farm town of Hamburg, Iowa, population 1,187.
Surrounded by sprawling farmland and foothills, Hamburg is wedged into the southwest corner of Iowa between Missouri and Nebraska. The first business off the exit is a John Deere (DE) dealership, and the heart of town is a sparsely inhabited Main Street, with a smattering of parked cars but nary a person to be seen.
While Stoner Drug is easy to find, the storefront is so nondescript, you might think it's out of business. But you'd be wrong, because Stoner Drug is very much in business, and has been for 118 years.
The first thing you see when you walk in the door is a rack of tie-dyed T-shirts emblazoned with the store's name. That's when you realize that you're actually a tourist -- and that the people who work at Stoner Drug are in on the joke and making money from it.
Related: 5 of the oldest businesses in America
The T-shirts, sweatshirts and gifts -- along with the vintage soda fountain at the center of the room -- bring in between $10,000 to $15,000 a year.
"If we charged for bathroom stops, the number would be much greater," said Phil Kuhr, a Navy vet who became a pharmacist through the GI Bill and has worked at Stoner Drug for 35 years. "A lot of people just stop outside and take pictures."
Kuhr, the store's manager, said they used to sell the shirts online, but it didn't last.
"We shut [the site] down because no one really knew how to maintain it," he said. "I did not have the time to fool with it."
After all, the real business is in the back, where the pharmacy is located. Kuhr said that's the big reason for Stoner Drug's profitability and longevity.
"My main focus is on prescriptions," said Kuhr. "That's 95% of our business."
Related: Want a job? Try the pot industry
A pharmacist named Cosby Stoner opened the drug store in 1896 in a building that no longer exists, located two blocks from its current location, where the store has been since the 1950s. At the time of its founding, the word "stoner" didn't have the hippie meaning it holds today -- and nobody thought it was funny to associate "stoner" with "drug." The store didn't start selling its ironic T-shirts until a century after its inception.
But as it turns out, the name isn't so ironic after all. Kuhr said Stoner Drug and other 19th century pharmacies typically sold tinctures, or trace solutions, of cocaine and laudanum, a powerful opiate.
"I'm not sure when heroin was first formulated, but laudanum was perfectly legal back then," said Kuhr. "It was available over the counter. Cocaine was also legal."
He's not sure what cocaine was used for, but laudanum was one of the few available painkillers for patients suffering serious diseases like cancer. In John Wayne's last Western, "The Shootist," the terminally ill gunslinger is prescribed laudanum by a doctor, played by James Stewart.
But then the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act came along in 1914 and spoiled the party. Few people today, except for readers of William Burroughs, have even heard of the act, which was the first legislative restriction on opium and cocaine.
For the first 18 years of its existence, Stoner Drug really did live up to his name. But times have changed.
"Currently here, the big thing is meth," said Kuhr, "and we have to record sales of pseudoephedrine."


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Fishing With Jason From Florida
Fished with Jason today from Florida, cool guy and he got his first ever northern pike and Pickerel plus a largemouth bass, and a bunch of smelt and rock bass on the jig rod.
Based on 71 reviews
Chris Bernardi
September 9, 2023.
Keith was an outstanding guide. He was patient, took the time to explain the technique we were to use, and was set on us landing fishing. We had a great time and would definitely use his charter again.
Ken wholey
August 24, 2023.
Took the guys out for the day on the lake and had a blast reeling in big bass. Kieth was awesome and we will be using him again in the future.
Derrick O'Donnell
August 23, 2023.
If you're looking to catch a ton of fish and have a blast while you're doing it, you're at the right place! Can't wait to go again.
Michael Rodrigues
August 15, 2023.
I had the pleasure of being on Keith's boat August 6th fishing for my first lake trout trip. He put us on tons of fish and I put my limit in the freezer. Always a great time and an even better fishing guide.
dante canepari
August 15, 2023.
Im not much of a fisherman, but Keith made me feel like a pro. He has top notch equipment, knowledge, and was very professional and patient with a novice like me.
Brown Family
August 12, 2023.
Great trip on Lake Bomoseen with my son! Enjoyed the day - Keith did a terrific job and it was a great experience. He works hard to ensure you're catching fish! We'll see you again next year for sure. Thanks. George
Thomas Novotny
July 18, 2023.
Keith runs a great business, has great character, and is invested in your success and happiness. No other captain and charter has brought me the experience Keith catered - lessons, laughs, diligence and a personalized journey hooking into fish all day. There wasn't a half hour where we didn't put a fish on the boat - of course each day is different - but you could always feel the magic when he put a rod in your hands. 5/5
June 23, 2023.
We've now been out twice with Keith and had an awesome experience each time. He knows the lake like the back of his hand and put us right on the big fish time and time again. He worked tirelessly with my 5 year old son to make sure he had fun and learned a lot about fishing. I highly recommend Stay Bent Fishing Tours to anyone in the VT area who wants to go out and have a fun day landing monster fish.
Robert Bradley
June 12, 2023.
Awesome half day trip on Lake Rescue for smallmouth and largemouth bass. Topwater action was consistent with several really solid fish. Beautiful lake. Guide was professional, knowledgeable and fun to spend the morning with.
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A Virginia woman has become an inspiration to fed-up citizens everywhere after she rode her horse to the local DMV in protest of poor service.
NBC 12 reports that, after getting the run around from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, Amelia resident Ashlee Owens decided it was time to take matters into her own hands. Despite sending in her insurance information — both via email and through the postal service — DMV officials claimed they never received proof that Owens was insured. As a result, her license was suspended, and a new one would end up costing the 26-year-old $645 in fees.
"I've been trying for the past three days to get through to the DMV," Owen's told NBC12. "And between the answering service telling me it's too long of a wait and hanging up on me… and trying to talk to someone to get this straight, I don't feel like I should be in this predicament at all."
Rather than take this bureaucratic nightmare sitting down, Owens saddled up.
Due to her suspended license, Owens was legally unable to drive herself to the Richmond DMV. Instead, she enlisted the help of a friend, who ferried both Owens and her appropriately named pets — a dog named Tuff and a horse named Sassy — into town. From there, the Owens rode Sassy to the DMV, where she hand-delivered her paperwork, drawing a crowd of onlookers in the process as well.
To Owens' surprise, her stunt did the trick.
"I went in. The lady that's the head of the DMV came and found me, and she asked me if I was the lady with the horse outside and said 'well come over here,'" said Owens. "[She] took me to the side, and she took all my paperwork upstairs and handled it immediately and sent me on my way".
With her problems solved, Owen has everything she wanted, plus a good story to tell.


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I don't remember the first spice I ever purchased with my own money, but I'm betting it was a packet of McCormick® chili seasoning. And I'm betting it was during my senior year of college. I lived in a cozy apartment above my professor's garage. It was furnished with a blue couch from Goodwill that was missing its back legs, a twin bed, a sturdy desk, a dresser, and a couple of plants I was doing my best to keep alive.
There wasn't a kitchen, but there was a fridge downstairs in the garage and a microwave in my room. Mike assembled an electric skillet for me (he likes to say, "remember that skillet I built you?") as well. My makeshift "kitchen" wasn't much, but since I'd left the comfort (and cost) of a meal plan behind the previous year, it would have to do.
Many of my meals were hot dogs and quesadillas, usually devoured with lots of salsa while watching The Cosby Show, or People's Court. But I did call my mom and ask her to send over her chili recipe — the one we ate with peanut butter maple syrup sandwiches when I was little.
Heading to the grocery store to buy the chili ingredients was the beginning of a new adventure for me. In those days, the aisles and ingredients were unfamiliar, and I ambled to and fro searching for each item. Each line of the recipe flooded my head with new questions: Where are the canned tomatoes? Do I buy dry beans or canned? Where is the spice aisle? How lean do I want my ground beef? Wait, do I own a spoon?
I do remember my mom specifying that she used McCormick's chili seasoning though. And I remember sprinkling the packet on my ground beef just as she'd instructed. And finally, I remember the utter satisfaction of sitting down with a bowl full of cheesy, sour creamy, spicy chili (and watching A Different World, no doubt) that I'd made myself.
McCormick is definitely a part of my earliest cooking memories, and it claims a huge chunk of my spice rack (or really, spice shoe organizer) today. Far from being stuck in the past, though, the company released the McCormick Flavor Forecast 2012 on Tuesday.
This report, compiled by chefs, sensory scientists, trend trackers, marketing experts, and food technologists, highlights up-and-coming flavor trends around the world. It's used both to guide the company's product development as well as to inspire home cooks with new flavor combinations.
While McCormick has been producing a Flavor Forecast since 2000, this year's report is the first to be global in scope. It's organized into six trends: Honoring Roots, Quest for the Ultimate, Veggies in Vogue, Simplicity Shines, Flavorful Swaps, and No Boundaries. Each trend includes two innovative spice and ingredient combinations to spark your culinary creativity.
One of the flavor combinations that sounded particularly tempting to me was ginger and coconut. I decided to use this simple pair to create an indulgent Caramelized Banana Upside-Down Coconut Cake. Upside-down cakes are both simple to create and delicious. You'll love this comforting, nostalgic dessert even more with a few modern twists: the bold zing of ginger in the caramelized banana topping, a moist coconut cake in the place of a regular yellow cake, and a big dollop of coconut whipped cream on top. I added a generous sprinkle of toasted coconut for extra texture and flavor. In short, it was insane. I can't wait for you to taste this thing!
In the meantime, I'd love for you to join in the conversation: which of McCormick's flavor combinations could you see yourself using? What are some ideas for recipes you want to create? Get inspired!
Caramelized Banana Upside-Down Coconut Cake With Coconut Whipped Cream
Recipe by: Willow Bird Baking, with coconut whipped cream adapted from Nutty Kitchen
Yield: 10 pieces
This thing is downright celestial. Upside-down cakes are easy to create, but come out so beautiful and delicious. This one uses a sweet, tender coconut cake in the place of a yellow cake, and adds the bold zing of ginger to the caramelized banana topping. Enjoy it with a cloud of cool coconut whipped cream (one of my new favorite things!) and some crunchy toasted coconut.
Topping Ingredients:
3/4 stick unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
4 large just-ripe bananas, cut on a diagonal into 1/2-inch slices (you might want to have an extra banana or two on hand just in case your bananas are skinnier or something weird)
1 teaspoon McCormick ginger
1 teaspoon finely chopped McCormick crystallized ginger
pinch salt
Cake Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup Thai Kitchen coconut milk
1 teaspoon McCormick vanilla
1 egg
Coconut Whipped Cream Ingredients:
2 cans Thai Kitchen coconut milk (refrigerated overnight)
3 tablespoons powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon McCormick vanilla
flaked coconut for toasting and topping
NOTE: This recipe is designed for a 10-inch cast iron skillet, but it can also be made in a 10-inch cake pan or a 12-inch cast iron skillet. To make it in a cake pan, prepare the topping in a separate saucepan first, add it to your cake pan, and then continue with the recipe as usual. If you make it in a 12-inch skillet, it'll produce a thinner cake, may require an extra banana or two, and may take about 5 minutes less to bake. Because cast iron can vary, no matter what size you use, be sure to check the cake's doneness early and often, starting around 20 minutes, with a toothpick inserted into various spots.
Toast coconut flakes: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spread flakes out on baking sheet. Bake for a few minutes, stirring every minute or so, until the coconut is lightly browned (watch it like a hawk). Transfer to a plate to let cool.
Make cake: In a 10-inch skillet (see note above about using different pan sizes), melt the butter over medium-high heat. Stir in the brown sugar, ground ginger, crystallized ginger, and salt and simmer for 4 minutes (or until the mixture is bubbly and caramelized), whisking constantly. Be careful — hot sugar is no joke! After 4 minutes, remove the mixture from heat and add the bananas as close together as possible, fitting as many in as you can.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add the oil and coconut milk and whisk like a crazy person for 1 minute. Add the egg and vanilla and whisk it in well. Pour the batter over the banana mixture, evening it out with a spatula.
Bake 25-30 minutes or until it's lightly brown on top and a toothpick inserted in various parts of the cake comes out with just a few moist crumbs. Let cool in the pan for exactly 5 minutes (any more and it will harden in the pan, and less and it might fall apart) before running a knife around the edge of it and carefully (use oven mitts! hold both sides of the skillet, holding the plate on with the heels of your hands! enlist a spotter! did I mention that hot sugar is no joke?) invert it onto a large serving platter.
Make coconut whipped cream: Using a spoon, remove the cold coconut solids from each can of coconut milk (save the coconut water for other uses). Place it in a chilled bowl with vanilla and powdered sugar. Whisk like the dickens with a chilled beater until it has a whipped cream-like consistency (this probably took over 10 minutes with my electric mixer, but it's worth it). Serve cake warm with a big dollop of cold coconut whipped cream and a sprinkle of toasted coconut.
You don't see many product reviews on Willow Bird Baking, because I'm choosy with how I share this space. My choosiness reflects my own ideals for Willow Bird in addition to my respect for the community we have here. When I get the opportunity to work with a company I genuinely love and use in my own kitchen, though, I'm always thrilled to share. McCormick is just such a company, and I'm excited to share their forecast of upcoming flavor trends.
Disclosure: McCormick sent me a Flavor Forecast Immersion Kit of ingredients, and compensated me for other ingredients and for my time and creative energy. I value my readers such that all opinions expressed on Willow Bird are always my own.
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33 Comments on Caramelized Banana Upside-Down Coconut Cake & Coconut Whipped Cream
Wow this looks amazing. The bananas, all caramelized and wonderful. And then that coconut cream…WOW.
You outdid yourself!
I loved this post so much. I moved out of my college dorms last year and am in "my first place" now. I can't tell you how many times I have had to call up my mom as I am making dinner and ask her what temperature I should heat the oven to, or what the difference is between simmering and boiling, etc. haha. Your cake looks delicious too!
Wow. Just wow. I wish you told me that I was supposed to buy bananas when I went to the supermarket awhile ago. I want this right. now. I don't know what to do with myself here.
Sounds exotic, tropical, and very delicious. Pretty pics too. I'd like to know more about the flavor trends.
This cake is lovely! The bananas on top are absolutely beautiful! And that whipped creams sounds awesome!
I love your recipes. This one is making me drool!!
What a lovely cake! Looks delicious and comforting!
That cake looks crazy good! MCCormick spices, I'm sure, were involved in a lot of my first meals out on my own too.
Droooooool. I love bananas in desserts!
Wow. This looks fab. I've been wanting to try that whipped coconut business, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm now a follower! 🙂
McCormick Schilling played special role in my life, at one time. They used to be in Salinas, CA (where I live) and I once worked there as an office temp. I love their spices, and I would imagine they are very pleased with this beautiful recipe. I love banana and coconut, together. Who can resist anything that's been caramelized? Not I! Great job.
The first time I went to my husband's parent's house to cook dinner, the only spice in the whole house was salt. Hahaha. I am excited for the new spice combinations from McCormick, I think they all sound so intriguing and delicious, I cant wait to try them! And this cake looks great!
I've been drooling over those spice combinations since they were released, dreaming up possibilities! I think the one that intrigued me MOST was eggplant, honey and harissa because I've used it before in Middle Eastern foods. But this one was a close second. And now I know why…because it was destined for this beautiful cake!
I love this! Banana and coconut AND ginger, yes please! I want to play around with the cumin so frito flavor combo. Although Ethnic cuisine is super on trend which you can see from the flavor forecast that almost 3/4 of the combos lay along those lines. Grapefruit with red pepper makes me a little nervous… I love grapefruit and red pepper but not together, hmmm I wonder just how they intend for that combo to be used.
Coconut whipped cream!!?? Geniuse! The ultimate non dairy topping
Those caramelize bananas look amazing, I'd be tempted to eat them right off the top of that cake!
I love upside down cakes they are always very impressive looking (not to mention delicious!). Thank you for sharing this!
I made this cake last night….one word….amazing! My family LOVED it and wants me to make it again. I would definitely recommend this! The only thing I did not use was the crystallized ginger, I am not a huge ginger fan. I did use the ground ginger but only a 1/2 tsp. Thank you so much for this recipe!!
Yay! You're so welcome, Kelly! I'm so glad you enjoyed it! 🙂
I made this tonight and it was a huge hit! Guests were asking for seconds! I also have a lactose intolerant daughter so by substituting the butter with a dairy free margarine it was perfect for her, right down to the coconut whipped cream! I found the coconut cream on it's own at the store which removed the need to chill the milk overnight. Thanks so much for a delicious recipe.
That is so perfect! I'm so glad you enjoyed it, Brandie!!
Made this this evening for my boyfriend's mum and it was just the perfect dessert! He made the main, and it all went down very well, so we're feeling very accomplished right now for having successfully hosted a parent in our own home for the first time 🙂
Had a horrible moment when it was in the oven and I was tidying away and realised that I had put in ground cinnamon instead of ground ginger… but the flavour combination was really good, a happy kitchen accident 🙂 I'm intrigued to make it agan with the ginger to see the comparison! -
Hey! This recipe is AWESOME. Miss Fats altered it just a touch to make a pineapple cupcake version:
http://missfats.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/cupcakes-and-cooked-fruit-or-how-miss-fats-got-over-her-distaste-for-warm-pineapple/Here's the post: could not have done it without your perfect base recipe! Thanks!!
This looks delicious. I cannot find crystallized ginger, is it ok to not use it, or should I replace it with ground ginger? Thank you!
Welp, just wasted a bunch of butter, sugar and bananas because after 4 minutes of wisking and simmering I ended up with a burnt wad of butter and sugar. I am a very experienced baker, so I don't know what could have gone wrong.
6Pingbacks & Trackbacks on Caramelized Banana Upside-Down Coconut Cake & Coconut Whipped Cream
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Mobile video startup Qik, which was acquired by Skype earlier this year, has previously only offered a fully functional live streaming and chat app on Android via pre-loaded devices. Qik offered a simpler version of its mobile video service in the Android Market which allowed users to record video but this app lacked any chatting capabilities.
Now, Qik is bringing the full featured Qik app to the Android Marketplace, the company tells us exclusively. The app, which you can download here, allows you to live stream video and now conduct live video chats with contacts over 3G, 4G or WiFi. And you can chat between Android 2.1-2.33 phones and any iOS4 devices, including the iPad 2 and iPhone 4.
The Android app automatically integrates with your phone's contact list to show you who is available to chat live, and allows you to video chat using back camera (show what is happening around you) and/or front camera (show your face).
If you cannot connect with your friends live, you can also send video mail via threaded video mail conversations and you can send video mails to anyone, including friends who don't have Qik, via email or SMS. The Android app has also added a few social features, and allows you to connect via Facebook and will notify you when your friends share video on the app. You can play these videos within the app and comment on content. Videos can also be shared through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs and other sites.
The addition of a live video sharing and recording app in the Android Market is a big development for the company's technology, says co-founder Bhaskar Roy. Previously, Qik optimized over all experience for specific devices and carriers, but now these capabilities are being brought to all Android handsets. While Roy declined to comment on how Qik would be integrating its technology with Skype, he did say that the companies are currently working with OEMs to figure out how to integrate the streaming video technologies with the hardware to consume less CPU and battery power.
Qik is offering Video Connect Plus app for iPhone/iOS for free this week (It's normally $2.99).
Other apps that allow for live streaming on Android phones include Justin.TV, Ustream and others. But Qik says that its apps have been updated with more social features, including the ability to conduct live video chats, and share live video with friends on social networks.


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Residential property prices in the wealthy island nation of Singapore could be headed for a sizable correction of up to 20 percent by 2015, according to Barclays.
"We believe the risk of a residential property market correction in the next two years is rising, as expected higher interest rates look set to coincide with a large increase in housing supply over 2014-15," Tricia Song, analyst at Barclays wrote in a report on Friday.
The bank forecasts prices will remain flat in 2013, before falling 5 percent in 2014 and another 5-15 percent in 2015.
(Read more: Are Singapore home prices about to ease, finally ?)
Southeast Asia's financial center is home to one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world. Prices have soared over 60 percent since mid-2009, spurred by low interest rates.
The outlook is based on expectations that short-term interest rates will begin their ascent in the second quarter of 2015, and rise 200 basis points over a period of six months. The pace of property price declines will be tied to the pace of interest rate rises, Song explained.
Singapore mortgage rates are typically pegged to the short-term three-month Singapore Interbank Offered Rate (SIBOR) rate, which tracks the direction of the U.S. federal funds rate.
Adding to higher mortgage rates, a bumper supply of private and public housing is due to complete starting in 2014.
(Read more: Household debt: Singapore's 'Achilles heel'?)
Almost 95,000 private units are expected to come on stream over the next five years, alongside 25,000-27,000 public housing flats per annum, according to the Urban Redevelopment Authority.
"Total housing supply could average 40,000 units per annum and peak at 47,000 in 2015 - significantly above the historical average annual supply of 12,300 units," Song said.
"Assuming occupier demand of 15,500 units of private housing per annum, we expect the private vacancy rate to rise from 5.6 percent currently to 9.9 percent in 2016," she added, noting that historically when vacancy rates hit 8 percent, rents and prices start declining.
(Read more: More pain to come for Singapore REITs?)
Home sales have begun softening as the government's cooling measures start to bite, with the latest monthly data showing developers sold 742 units in August, compared with an average of 1,000-1,500 units in the recent years, according to Barclays.
This year, the bank expects primary home sales to total 15,500 units, 30 percent below last year's 22,179 units.
The government has introduced nine rounds of market-cooling measures since 2009, most recently targeted at the public housing market, which house 80 percent of the country's citizens. The measures announced in August included shortening the maximum loan tenure to 25 years from 30 years, and reducing the mortgage ratio limit against the borrower's salary to 30 percent from 35 percent previously.
—By CNBC's Ansuya Harjani; Follow her on Twitter @Ansuya_H


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BERLIN — In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness month this October, the Worcester County chapter of Women Supporting Women (WSW) will once again be holding a candlelight vigil in Berlin on Friday, Oct. 14.
"We're getting ready to turn the town pink," joked Rota Knott, Coordinator of the WSW Worcester Chapter.
Based in Berlin, the Worcester Chapter was founded in 1998, though this is only the second year it has done Turn the Town Pink (TTP), a string of events throughout October which includes the candlelight vigil.
"It's a month long thing," said Knott of TTP.
While most of the activities are unconfirmed or still in the planning stage, Knott was confident that a lot more will be done this year than last, all with the goal of raising awareness about breast cancer. Whatever the other activities, the vigil is confirmed and serves to exemplify the WSW's month-long message in one night of remembrance for those who have lost their struggle with breast cancer.
Last year the vigil, which begins in the Farmer's Market parking lot and ends in front of the Atlantic Hotel, attracted about 50 people. Knott is hoping that number will double or more this year, which may mean a section of Main Street will need to be closed for the event, though no official decision has been made by the town yet.
Even if a portion of the road is sealed, however, town officials don't except the closing to last more than 15 minutes or so.
Knott revealed that community support behind the vigil and the rest of the events has impressed her.
"I don't have to ask for anything," she said, explaining that town officials and the business community has been quick to volunteer to help TTP.
Mayor Gee Williams commented on the event, stating that Berlin is always glad to help organizations like WSW, especially since they're located only a stone's throw away from the heart of town.
"Whenever we can, we want to support those charities based in our community," he said.
Williams noted that WSW has "really set up a great support network" with area businesses as well, a statement Knott agreed with. She explained that more than 20 businesses have already signed up to help raise awareness in October, with more expected before the month is over.
WSW will take the next step in preparing to turn Berlin pink by hanging pink ribbons along town streets and in merchant shops this morning.
For more information about WSW and TTP, contact Knott at 410-641-2849.