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Former Republican U.S. Senate candidate and 'Tea Party' favorite Joe Miller is no stranger to flawed election processes in Alaska. The BRAD BLOG strongly supported Miller's attempt to receive a hand-count of questionable results in his 2010 race against Democrat Scott McAdams and victorious Republican write-in candidate Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
The experience left him understanding, as he writes in a statement given today to the progressive Alaska blog The Mudflats, that "the integrity of elections is one of the bedrocks of our nation" and "a non-partisan issue, critical to the survival of our Republic."
We've been in touch with Miller ourselves, both during his own election contest, offering advice on how his campaign might achieve oversight of the results that were tallied only by Diebold optical-scan computers (either accurately or inaccurately, who knows?), and at various times in the months that followed. Last September, Miller linked from his own website, to our exclusive on the findings by Argonne National Laboratory that Diebold systems can by hacked by remote control with little more than an 8th grade computer science education and about $10 to $25 in electronic parts.
Now the frequently far Right politician is ringing in on the recent election disaster in Anchorage, which we detailed here last month, after a ballot proposition to extend anti-discrimination measures to the LGBT community was set to win by big margins according to a conservative pollster [PDF] just before the election, but ended up "losing", according to the Diebold op-scan systems, by an even greater margin for reasons which still remain a mystery...
Alaska's April 3rd Municipal election was marred by, among too many other things, ballot shortages that inexplicably plagued more than half of Anchorage's precincts, as well as broken security seals on Diebold Accuvote paper-ballot op-scan tabulators which, as the Deputy Municipal Clerk confirmed to us during an interview for our original report, she had instructed poll workers to simply ignore. We detailed the madness of that instruction at the time, citing a number of security analyses by world class computer science and security experts warning of the "real threat" to election results posed by inappropriate memory card access, should they become unprotected prior to or during an election
"[A]nyone who has access to a memory card of the [Diebold Accuvote op-scan], and can tamper it (i.e. modify its contents) ... can indeed modify the election results from that machine in a number of ways," one of those studies [PDF] as commissioned by the state of CA warns. "The fact that the the results are incorrect cannot be detected except by a recount of the original paper ballots."
The oft-failed, easily-manipulated Diebold Accuvote op-scan system is used in more than 1,000 jurisdictions in the U.S., across all or parts of 24 different states, and will be used to once again tally paper ballots in the 2012 Presidential Election as well in the upcoming historic state recall elections in Wisconsin.
In light of the many disturbing anomalies in the Anchorage election --- for example, it now appears that Prop 5 actually won in the absentee ballot tally [PDF], while reportedly losing by huge numbers on Election Day --- Progressives there have called for a complete investigation of the election process and a full hand-count and audit of paper ballots, at a minimum, and preferably a new vote entirely, given the extraordinary number of problems that have been revealed since the election.
Alaska's conservative pollster, David Dittman, when asked by a blogger last week about the nearly 25 point "YES" to "NO" swing between his pre-election poll of Prop 5 and the unverified final results of the election, called it "one of the highest I can remember."
"I think if you look back historically, the polls have been pretty darned good," he explained. "We have on our website the graphic tracks, we have the final poll and the election, it's just within a percent. It's dead on. And I think if you look back over time, the polls have been pretty darn reliable. And in this case you've got like a ten percent shift or maybe even twenty."
While some have criticized those questioning the results of the Prop 5 election as "partisan sore losers" or "conspiracy theorists" (the Rightwing Mayor on the ballot, who is also the former boss of the Deputy Municipal Clerk in question, is said to have won his race by almost exactly the margin that had been predicted in the same pre-election poll by Dittman), Miller, no stranger to partisanship himself, sees it differently, according to his statement issued to Jeanne Devon at The Mudflats today.
"As reasonable people from all political stripes recognize," Miller wrote, "the integrity of elections is one of the bedrocks of our nation. 'We the People' is a rallying cry for many Americans, and this is manifested in our ability to vote, so that the people control what government does, and not vice versa."
"What should be simple – voting – tends to become overly complex," he accurately noted. "But vote integrity is not just about the outcome, it is about a process in which voters can have confidence."
Devon writes that she, as well as progressive Alaska blogger and broadcaster Shannyn Moore (who put Miller and his campaign in touch with The BRAD BLOG, during his 2010 contest), "strongly supported Joe Miller's (and Scott McAdams') right to a full hand count of paper ballots in the 2010 election, and for processes that were fair, laws that were consistent, and the ultimate right of citizens to have confidence in their electoral process."
Today, Miller returned the non-partisan courtesy when he wrote:
Devon adds: "Many thanks to Mr. Miller for stepping up and proving that though we may disagree ideologically on many issues, there will always be people on both sides who put aside partisanship for the sake of this cornerstone of our democracy. Accusations of 'sour grapes' from either side of the aisle do nothing but sabotage genuine efforts to ensure free and fair elections for everyone."
We agree with Miller on very little politically --- even on one element of his statement where he writes that "it is imperative that voters be permitted to conduct a hand count, at their own expense, of any election." In truth, voters should not have to pay for their own hand-counts, they should be automatic, as "Democracy's Gold Standard", in every election. But on the core issue of election integrity, we're more than happy --- proud, in fact --- to stand arm-and-arm with "Tea Party" Joe Miller.
The Anchorage Assembly has postponed final certification of the April 3rd election, for the time being, until May 3rd. The 11-member Assembly now faces the decision whether to certify as is, call for a complete hand-count audit, name a special investigator and/or blue ribbon commission to investigate what happened and/or call for a new election entirely.
With both progressives and Joe Miller decrying what happened on April 3rd, it seems difficult to imagine that the Assembly would simply accept the inexcusably flawed results of this election as is.
Read Joe Miller's full statement on the April 3rd Anchorage Election mess at The Mudflats here...


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Casey on the Mound
Aaron Rowand's whiff with the bases loaded was a pivotal moment.
Well, that wasn't much of a nailbiter. I expected Saturday evening's Jays-Phils bout to be full of fireworks as each nation celebrates its respective birthdays. Well, the Phils' pyrotechnics must have been stopped at customs (you are, after all, bugging us slack-off Canadians to crack down on those borders), while the Jays had plenty of their own in an easy 8-1 shelling.
As promised, I kept a close eye on Casey Janssen tonight, and he's clearly shaken his funk. He got into some serious trouble in the first, though. And without a big strikeout of Aaron Rowand with the bases juiced, Janssen's night could have gone a bit more like his counterpart Adam Bernero's did. It took him 32 pitches to get through that tough first, but Janssen was in cruise control after that.
He's mostly a fastball pitcher, ranging from 86 to 91 mph, but seems to pitch most comfortably and effectively at 89 mph. Unfortunately, that leaves just a 4-to-5 mph spread between his fastball and changeup. But Janssen employed a liberal amount of north-south movement on his heater to change the batters' eyes and that was very effective, on Saturday at least. He mixed in the occasional curve (ranging 74 to 79 mph) — which he can throw for strikes, and a slider that ranged from 83 to 86 mph. I'd like to see Janssen lean more on off-speed stuff, especially his breaking ball. I believe that would really complement his fastball.
All told, it was an impressive outing for the rook. Six shutout innings with just five hits and two walks allowed against three strikeouts. He threw 66 strikes and 41 balls, and did a very good job of starting the Phils off with strikes. Janssen is now 6-6 for the season.
Don't look now, but the Jays have actually won four straight for the first time this season. And Eric Hinske, in perhaps the biggest shock of the night, was batting leadoff, a first in his professional career. Imagine our surprise when we saw a man who doesn't exactly look like he's built for speed (and in fact, more resembles someone who rather enjoys partaking in this) batting at the top of a lineup of men under the age of 55. So what does he do? Bounces a tape-measure homer off the restaurant window in straight away centre (a gargantuan shot) and ends the game with an airborne, full out stretch diving catch in right field. Apparently, someone has a bit of a Superman complex these days.

subset: commoncrawl


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A genealogy day filled with no real progress on the database and some frustration at the board meeting...then the Dodgers whipped the Padres badly to make it a real down day.
* Read email and blogs, and posted (not So) Wordless Wednesday - Post 114: Another early 1900s San Diego View. Researched and wrote Working in the Archive.org Text Archives, then got cleaned up.
* Gathered stuff for the board meeting, and took 20 minutes to create a program spreadsheet the way I want it done - no one else seems to understand. Went off to lunch at McDonalds and got to library at 11:40 AM.
* Sat through interminable board meeting until 3 PM. Took over an hour to work through the seminar details planned by a committee... very frustrating to see time wasted. Got commitments for the newsletter to be done this weekend, though.
* Home at 3:30 PM after stopping at the bank, read everything and wrote Help me improve the CVGS Member Survey. Nobody has offered yet! Oh well. Checked out several UK family tree sites that I have ancestral data on, and none of them are fast or useful IMHO. Worked in the database on sources a bit.
* Went in for dinner out on the patio at 5:30, then put out the trash. Was back online at 6:15 PM, and waded through the new WeRelate design. Still has clunky family tree, although I like the new look of the actual data.
* Went in at 7:05 PM to watch the Padres game, and started my Robert Parker book about the detective finding birth parents of a college girl. Interesting... oh, my Padres lost badly, 9-0 to the Beat-LA Dodgers.
* Read everything, sent some email, checked SCGS newsletter out, wrote this post, and am wondering what to write about on Thursday.
Genealogy today was 9.0 hours - 0.5 hour doing email, 0.5 hour reading blogs, 2.0 hours researching and writing blog posts, 3.0 hours at CVGS board meeting, 2.0 hours wandering around family trees, and 1.0 hour working in my database.


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Family Radio Spokesman: May 21 Rapture Is Guaranteed
A Family Radio spokesman affirmed with The Christian Post that the May 21 rapture is "guaranteed" and said the date of end of the world was revealed through Bible study and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Anthony Hernandez, a frequent speaker on Family Radio's Echoes program, teaches on subjects such as "Being Warned of Things Not Yet Seen" and "The Time is at Hand." Like many of Harold Camping's followers, he is preparing himself and others for May 21, the day Camping says will mark the second coming of Christ.
Despite scriptures such as those in Matthew 24:36, which says, "But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only," Hernandez insisted that Christians can know date of judgment day though Bible study and the Holy Spirit's guidance.
"It's a convenient excuse if you just read 'No one knows the day or the hour' and in other places where it says 'He is coming like a thief in the night,' [and then say] 'OK, alright, I don't have to look at this,'" said Hernandez.
Instead, he said what those scriptures are really saying is that no man knows the hour unless the Holy Spirit reveals it to him or her.
"In Corinthians, God further elaborates saying, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things, yes it's [the knowledge of the end times] for the child of God, but it's for God the Holy Spirit, in His time, to choose to begin revealing these things and the way it's revealed is through His word," Hernandez told The Christian Post.
Biblical responses such as those in Matthew and Acts are really a "test," he added, and the true children of God should feel compelled to seek out the truth about the end times.
However, studied theologians are not buying this argument.
Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., wrote Tuesday that Camping's prophecy seems to label only himself and those who affirm his teaching as true believers.
Camping, 89, said of the rapture in a May 11 interview with New York magazine, "The Bible has every word in the original language – it was written by God. Incidentally, no churches believe that at all, they don't hold the Bible in the high respect that it ought to be."
He went on to say, "When we get to May 21 on the calendar in any city or country in the world, and the clock says about – this is based on other verses in the Bible – when the clock says about 6 p.m., there's going to be this tremendous earthquake that's going to make the last earthquake in Japan seem like nothing in comparison. And the whole world will be alerted that Judgment Day has begun."
Camping further believes that the world will be completely destroyed on October 21.
Mohler noted that Christians are right to look for Christ's return. However, he said they "are not to draw a line in history and set a date."
"We are to be about the Father's business, sharing the Gospel and living faithful Christian lives," said Mohler, a Southern Baptist and influential evangelical.
According to Hernandez, Family Radio is faithfully sharing the Gospel overseas and across all 50 states ahead of Saturday. Family Radio's Project Caravan has employed four buses to spread the Gospel across the United States by this Friday. Project Jonah is sending volunteers around the world to witness to people about the second coming of Christ in "hard-to- reach" places.
Hernandez said of Family Radio's evangelizing efforts, "I look at this the same way that God sent Jonah to the people of Nineveh. He said, 'go to Nineveh, tell them in 40 days they are going to be destroyed."
The only difference between Jonah's message and Camping's, Hernandez said, is "whereas He did not destroy that city. This is guaranteed that He's going to destroy this world."
Jason Boyett, the Christian author of books Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse and O Me of Little Faith, warned that preaching the Gospel to the back drop of Camping's prophecy is bound to create real victims.
Boyett wrote in The Washington Post's On Faith page, "Camping's faith will survive the impending disappointment, as will his ministry and radio empire. He'll make excuses and set another date. I don't worry about him; I worry about his followers and their families."
Boyett shared his experience as an eighth grader living though Edgar C. Whisenant's prediction that 1988 would be the year of the rapture. His pastor – and consequently he himself – took the prediction seriously.
"When Jesus didn't come back in 1988, I was relieved, but I also lost a piece of my faith. Belief became harder for me," he shared.
Camping also made a previous judgment day prediction, saying there was a very high likelihood that the world would end in 1994. Despite the failed prediction, several still sold their homes, quit their jobs and spent their savings in anticipation of May 21, 2011.
NPR recently reported that one of Camping's followers, 27-year-old Adrienne Martinez, and her husband, Joel, quit their jobs and moved to a rented home in Orlando where they passed out tracts. The couple told the radio program that they are spending the last of their savings because they did not see a need to hold on to one more dollar.
"We budgeted everything so that, on May 21, we won't have anything left," said Adrienne.
Hernandez said many of his friends are also letting go their earthly possessions in time for May 21.
"In my view that's a good thing," he remarked. "I'm in agreement. I believe with all my heart that this is the end so I don't see anything wrong with that."
Though he is in agreement with the Saturday prophecy, Hernandez has opted to use up his vacation hours rather than quit his job. Additionally, he and his wife are continuing to pay their bills.
While his wife is supportive of the prophecy, she is "not in a hundred percent agreement," Hernandez said.
Because of his wife's doubt, he said, "I totally relate to anybody who has a hard time understanding it or have doubts." He added, "My encouragement is pray for wisdom and search God's word."


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Earlier this morning, conservative talk show host Glenn Beck tweeted this photo of a gun at Kim Kardashian with the hashtag #sweetkimgunpic:
. @kimkardashian My favorite gun.#sweetkimgunpic twitter.com/glennbeck/stat…
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) February 7, 2013
Beck started the campaign — which spawned many of his followers doing the same — because of a controversy that befell Kardashian last weekend.
On her Instagram account last weekend, she posted a picture of a diamond-studded gun. She quickly deleted it, but not before some news organizations had picked up on her photo and some negative fan reactions to it. Some of her followers were upset that about two weeks before, she had tweeted a link to a pledge to reduce gun violence.
In a post on his website, Beck's staff explained that the #sweetkimgunpic campaign is pushback to that criticism of Kardashian:
Kim Kardashian came under fire from liberals for tweeting a picture of a diamond-crusted revolver. She deleted the picture, but that didn't stop the hate. So Glenn decided to start a hashtag #SweetKimGunPic and encouraged listeners to tweet pictures of their favorite guns!


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Motivated by the simple principle that eating more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains keeps people healthier longer, the Moosewood Collective presents this all-new collection of more than 200 recipes that make whole foods wholly delicious. Moosewood Restaurant's cookbooks have long been an essential resource for creative recipes for home cooks, recipes that make mindful eating an unqualified pleasure. In this latest book, the Collective has carefully crafted recipes that celebrate local and environmentally sustainable food and that reflect the latest thinking on good nutrition.
From soups to desserts, the dishes in this book are distinctive, adventurous, and globally inspired. Including plenty of vegan, gluten-free, and raw food options, the book has something to please every taste. Polenta with Greens and Eggs or Whole Grain Pancakes will get the day started right; appetizers such as Chickpea Crêpes and Pineapple Salsa with Blueberries are festive for a casual gathering; and Southwestern Black Bean Burgers are a great choice for a cookout. Tofu, Leek, and Almond Stuffed Portabellas and Quinoa and Collard Leaf Dolmas are elegant choices for a more formal occasion. Desserts like Figs Baked with Chèvre and Pistachios, Chocolate Bark, and Sweet Potato Pie with Pecan-Oat Crust are naturally sweet and packed with nutrients. Each recipe comes with a detailed nutritional analysis as well as menu and serving suggestions. The Collective discusses everything from eating locally to the Glycemic Index, and the ideas and information will prove useful to both new vegetarians and those who grew up cooking with the Moosewood Restaurant.
Eating well feels good. Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health is all about cooking for pleasure and cooking for health. You can do both!


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Arlen Specter on Principles & ValuesRepublican Sr Senator (PA) |
Specter repeatedly asked Sestak to release his service records to explain a 2005 reassignment by the Navy. Sestak ignored the requests, called his service honorable and aggressively worked to tie Specter to the policies of former President George W. Bush and even Wall Street practices that led to the evaporation of nest eggs and jobs. "There is no record except the Republican record for Arlen Specter," Sestak said.
Specter countered that he had stood with Democrats on their top priorities, even during his 28 years as a Republican. He noted his support for abortion rights and endorsements by the state AFL-CIO, as well as his opposition to the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping. "I have stood with Democrats and Democratic values on the big issues," Specter said. Specter switched parties last year.
ALITO: [Scalia�s dissent] addresses a difficult problem the court has grappled with over the years, and that is the scope of Congress� authority under the 14th Amendment. Justice Scalia�s [argument] is that Congress doesn�t have additional authority to enact prophylactic measures outside of the area of race.
SPECTER: It�s up to the Congress to have hearings, up to the Congress to find facts, up to the Congress to find out what goes on in the real world. We�re speaking not only to you, Judge Alito, but to the court. The court watches these proceedings. They ought to know what the Congress thinks about making us schoolchildren or challenging our method of reasoning. We�re considering legislation which would give Congress standing to go into the Supreme Court to uphold our cases.
�Snarlin� Arlen� warned Bush not to nominate judges who might overturn Roe v. Wade, voted for reducing tax cuts and supported Democrats on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, HMO and overtime regulation. Also opposed school choice in Washington, D.C.What�s a RINO? Wikipedia.com explains:
RINO stands for Republican In Name Only, a disparaging term for a member of the Republican Party who is thought to be too fiscally or socially moderate or even liberal. It has replaced the older term Rockefeller Republican. The term is used by conservatives to delegitimize moderate Republican office holders. Those labeled RINOs counter that the conservatives who call them RINOs are too far right and politically naive. They point out that they win in moderate and liberal areas and without their votes the Republicans would lose control of Congress.
"In the past month, many Senators have asked me about my judicial philosophy. It is simple: fidelity to the law. The task of a judge is not to make the law--it is to apply the law. And it is clear, I believe, that my record in two courts reflects my rigorous commitment to interpreting the Constitution according to its terms; interpreting statutes according to their terms and Congress's intent; and hewing faithfully to precedents established by the Supreme Court and my Circuit Court. In each case I have heard, I have applied the law to the facts at hand."
The Adherents.com website is an independent project and is not supported by or affiliated with any organization (academic, religious, or otherwise).
Such factors as religious service attendance, belief, practice, familiarity with doctrine, belief in certain creeds, etc., may be important to sociologists, religious leaders, and others. But these are measures of religiosity and are usually not used academically to define a person�s membership in a particular religion. It is important to recognize there are various levels of adherence, or membership within religious traditions or religious bodies. There�s no single definition, and sources of adherent statistics do not always make it clear what definition they are using.
When one reads accounts of Jews in American politics, the common theme is that Jews have achieved prominence in art, literature, academia, certain businesses, and entertainment, but not in politics or government. The Jewish politician was the exception, not the rule.
In the last third of the 20th century, however, that pattern changed. By 2000, Jews had become as prominent in the political realm as they have been in other aspects of American life. And Jewish participation is accepted for the contributions these activists make, not because of their Jewishness. Nothing could symbolize this trend more cogently than the nomination of Joseph Lieberman for vice president in 2000 and the national reaction to his candidacy. [Lieberman says]:
Although politics was not exactly a Jewish profession, individual Jews did throw themsleves into the democratic process. Some were traditional politicians; others machine politicians. Many more, such as Emma Goldman and the radicals of the early 20th century, were inspired by the ideal that they had a duty to repair the world�Tikkun Olam.[This book] provides brief biographical sketches for more than 400 Jews who have played prominent roles in American political life. The roster provides much of the basic information that we felt was previously lacking in one place.Many reasons account for the broader representation of Jews in American civic life today. The forces of antisemitism have been relegated to the extreme margins of society, the principle of meritocracy has increasingly opened the doors of opportunity. Moreover, the idealism and purpose that were spawned by the movements for civil rights, opposition to the war in Vietnam, environmentalism, and other causes drew many Jewish Americans into the political arena. Jews are admonished tp help perfect the world by the ancient wisdom of Rabbi Tarfon, who tells us, �You are not required to complete the task, yet you are not free to withdaw from it.�
Dedicated to building a stronger Republican majority by promoting the fundamental conservative ideals of lower taxes, less government and more personal freedom....
The Republican Leadership Council was formed in 1997 by leading Republicans throughout the country concerned that the Republican Party is being increasingly defined by the actions of an intolerant vocal minority that divides the GOP.
The Republican Party is at a crossroads. We now face a situation similar to that of the Democrats of the 1980`s who were dominated by a vocal minority from the far-left liberal wing of their Party. Our challenge now is to unite all Republicans behind a common agenda that helps us expand our majority.
The RLC believes that we must articulate a vision, and a message, based upon the Reagan legacy of limited government and expanded personal freedom. The GOP must unite around the core Republican principles of less government, lower taxes, substantive education reform, anti-crime initiatives and a strong national defense.
The RLC seeks to promote these core issues that unite Republicans, and as Ronald Reagan successfully accomplished, attract conservative Democrats and Independents to forge a winning electoral coalition in congressional and presidential elections. This is the RLC`s vision for the 21st century.
The Republican Leadership Council is committed to playing a key role in electing common-sense conservatives and promoting the core issues of the Republican Party.
The Republican Main Street Partnership was founded in 1998 to promote thoughtful leadership in the Republican Party, to serve as a voice for centrist Republicans and to partner with individuals, organizations and institutions that share centrist values.
The Partnership pursues public policies that reflect a limited, but responsible role for government and that are designed to achieve fiscal responsibility, economic growth, improvements in the human condition and a nation that is globally competitive and secure. Partnership members include individuals who are interested in moderate Republican policies, focusing on governance and on finding common sense solutions to national problems.
The Republican Main Street Partnership is an organization of party members and public officials committed to building America's principled but pragmatic center within the Republican Party and throughout the nation. The Partnership contributes to the nation's governance through developing and promoting creative public policies for implementation at appropriate levels of government.
OnTheIssues.org interprets the 2006 AU scores as follows:
Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom. AU is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to preserving the constitutional principle of church-state separation as the only way to ensure religious freedom for all Americans.
Americans United is a national organization with members in all 50 states. We are headquartered in Washington, D.C., and led by the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director. AU has more than 75,000 members from all over the country. They include people from all walks of life and from various faith communities, as well as those who profess no particular faith. We are funded by donations from our members and others who support church-state separation. We do not seek, nor would we accept, government funding.


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We have three weeks left until our Winter Break, and last week I asked students to identify three school-related goals they wanted to accomplish by that time.
After they chose them, I handed out this form, where they copied each of their goals and made a specific action plan on what they had to do to achieve them.
The action plans were a bit mixed at first, but today I was able to highlight examples of good specific ones (an action plan for the goal of "improve my reading" could be something like "read ten minutes more each night" instead of "be better in class") and students were able to re-write them.
Last Friday, and every Friday over the next three weeks, students will assess how they are doing accomplishing their goal and make adjustments (there is space in the form for that). They also share with a partner.
In addition, since we take a minute near the beginning of each class so students — if they choose — can visualize success in working towards goals, they can use these three goals as ones they focus on during that time.
It seems to be working well. And it certainly can't hurt…
I'm adding this post to The Best Posts On Students Setting Goals.


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Archive - Total Amiga Ceased Publication in April 2007 |
16th April 2010 - Amiga 25th Anniversary This Summer It will be an amazing 25 years since the Amiga 1000's introduction during the summer of 2010. Various events are being held across the world to celebrate the anniversary, find out more at the Amiga 25th Anniversary Site. Of particular interest to UK Amigans are the celebrations being organised by the ANT and LAG user groups at the Vintage Computer Festival being held at Bletchley Park on the 19th and 20th of June. Robert Williams, ex-editor of Total Amiga and possibly some other Total Amiga contributors are planning to be at the event, we hope to see lots of Amigans there! 14th December 2007 - Total Amiga Back Issues Our remaining stocks of Total Amiga back issues have been transfered to AmigaKit.com and will be appearing on their web site shortly. To check availability and order, go to the AmigaKit web site and select the "magazines/books" category. The Total Amiga web site will remain available for reference but the online ordering options have been disabled. Amiga Future English Amiga Future is now being published in English (alongside the existing German edition). As Total Amiga has now ceased publication we recommend Amiga Future English as an excellent alternative. Amiga Future is published bi-monthly (six times per year), each issue has approximately 52 pages with colour printed covers. There is also an optional cover CD which often contains full versions of games and utilities. You can find much more information about Amiga Future, including details of the latest issue and sample articles, on its web site (select English language on the left hand side). Online ordering is available from the Amiga Future shop. Total Amiga subscribers with outstanding issues on their subscription should now be receiving Amiga Future in place of Total Amiga. 7th April 2007 - Total Amiga Magazine to Cease Publication South Essex Amiga Link regrets to announce that our popular print Amiga magazine, Total Amiga, is to cease publication. Issue 26, which has just been completed, will be the final issue of the magazine and is due to be published on 23rd April 2007. The closure has come about because our editor and publisher, Robert Williams, has decided to step down after over eight years working on the magazine. Total Amiga has built up a large and supportive readership so we want to ensure our subscribers continue to receive a quality Amiga magazine in English. To this end, SEAL have come to an agreement with the German magazine Amiga Future that they will fulfill outstanding Total Amiga subscriptions. To do this Amiga Future will launch a new English edition of their magazine in July 2007. Amiga Future English will be a translated version of the current German Amiga Future. The magazine will be similar in format to Total Amiga with an A4 size, about 52 pages and colour covers. While Total Amiga is published approximately quarterly, Amiga Future English will be published six times a year at the same time as the German edition. For further information please visit the Amiga Future English web site. The transfer of subscriptions to Amiga Future will happen automatically so existing Total Amiga subscribers do not need to take any action. We have enjoyed producing Total Amiga over the years and thank everyone who has contributed to the magazine in any way for their help. We would also like to thank everyone who has purchased or subscribed to Total Amiga for their support. If you are currently a subscriber rest assured that we will do our utmost to ensure a smooth transition to Amiga Future. If you have any questions, we have added questions and answers on the closure to our FAQs page, of you are also welcome to contact us via e-mail if you have any questions. Total Amiga was an A4 printed Amiga magazine published by South Essex Amiga Link between October 1998 and April 2007. The magazine aimed to cover all aspects of the Amiga from a users point of view with honest and realistic articles. Each issue had a selection of news, product reviews, hints and tips, tutorials and opinion. The magazine was contributed to by a variety of writers, some regular and others sending in the odd piece now and then. For the first nine issues, Total Amiga was called "Clubbed". Cover images and contents of all 26 issues produced can be found on the Back Issues and Current Issue pages. Total Amiga was produced entirely on the Amiga using PageStream 4 and a variety of other software. We tried to maintain a high quality throughout the magazine and were praised for our production values. For more details on Total Amiga's production take a look at our Behind the Scenes section. Following the publication of issue 26, all Total Amiga subscriptions were transfered to a new English edition of Amiga Future magazine. We plan to keep this web site available as a resource to Amiga users for as long as possible. Total Amiga was a non-profit publication and all the contributors and everyone who worked on it gave their time for free as a service to the Amiga community. |
Total Amiga Magazine was published by South Essex Amiga Link |
If you have any questions or comments about this site please contact: email@example.com. EMail about the magazine should be directed to: firstname.lastname@example.com. |
This site is created on the Amiga and compiled using HSC. |


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Yeah, big spit, it's that Bay Area game, Sean T beats
We feedin the underground with this Yay Area tycoon shit
For my nigga jt Fig', y'all know where it come from
Never forget it, that Bay Area shit mayne
Y'knahmtalkinbout? Yeah!
Game, spit that shit
[The Game]
Hey yo the kid still at it, woke up from that coma
Seen hell came back and here comes my first classic
Still chop it up at the table, still put dope in the bag
And still got dope, under the mattress
It was hustle before rappin, nuttin before that and
12 years old, a lost soul, bumpin "Illmatic"
Gunshots tried and almost took the young kid's live
Can't do it I been through it the young kid survived
Got the ghetto on my shoulder homey, it's gon' be a long ride
Bear with me, I'ma take you there with me
Show you how the sun shine in one rhyme, no more stormy weather
Streets is mine, we gon' live forever
Get it together 'Pac is watchin, Big is listenin
Eazy is talkin to us, Big Pun is witnessin
While they souls still glistenin in ghettos from Compton to Brooklyn
The shells cry, every hood's anthem
Where everybody goes to church and prayers are never answered
And they throwin us curveballs but we Hank Aarons
A picture with no canvas, streets are so skanless
Young'uns jump rope, play ball with fiends and dope handlers
Teenage mothers, deadbeat fathers, no families
Lost and often runaway or live with grandparents
Life stories with no authors, see it through, [?] Robinson's cubicles
When time life is so beautiful
Walk with me we can make it if we try, lost soldiers sometimes
We gotta die but it's okay to cry
Mothers strugglin tryin to survive, reach out grab my hand
I got'cha, won't let you go for nuttin, I promise
Praises due to Elijah Muhammad, peace be unto Farad Muhammad
Words of Minister Farrakhan
Been true, be loyal, know your roots, water your soil
Stop fightin amongst ourself from birth we royal
Who's king we fightin over a crown, while lifeguards
Watch the hopes and dreams of kids and young teens drown
More infants bein born with aids, more parents mournin graves
The plot thickens, somebody show us the way
Tears crackin the pavement, streets breakin up
The thrill is gone and it's a long walk home
So we might as well start runnin, if it's there gotta take it
'Member Jada said "We Gon' Make It"
And it shouldn't take 9/11 to bring our minds together
shit rough we'll grind together
Light a candle we can shine forever or I can pass
So I won't miss Aaliyah's concert in heaven
Live life while we listen to my old heads
So I glow like the memory of Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopez
Through a six-seven Brougham, ride with me through the hood mayne
Where street lights flicker and Chuck Taylors hang
And nobody know they neighbor's name 'less they sell weed or cocaine
A lot of black clouds on a block but no rain
And Game got a lot to say, so they wanna take me down
In my own front yard like Marvin Gaye
Can't do it by myself, people need help
Keep on tryin to live healthy 'til the end of my days
And when I die won't lead my daughter astray, lookin from heaven
Watch my people drive my coffin through the Compton parade
[Verse Two]
I'm in the city where it's strange where killers follow direction
And trail witness protection to get a shot at they brain
Where the babies carry semis and swallow pills for power
Count paper for polly'n, penny-pinch for hours
Take sacks from cowards when the streets is watchin
Tuck guns in trunks cause real G's is boxin
Ain't no other options if you stand on your own two
And if you came to battle you can stand in the phone booth
Cause we don't wear capes in this part of the land
Cause every youngster from my block has been a part of the plan
I've been trainin since eighty-seven and famous since eighty-nine
Teaching came from the Nation, my spirit is from divine
When I, pass the word through these raps on beats
It's fo'sho' that the Lord gon' make the whole track speak
To the streets, when I pass these beats
It's fo'sho' that the Lord gon' make the whole track speak
To the streets, y'knahmtalkinbout people?
Make the track speak, "Truth Rap," get it right
"Truth Rap" mayne, for the people, get it right, "Truth Rap"


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Table of Contents
Georgetown 'Hoya' Editorial Board Criticizes University Speech Codes
Last Friday, the editorial board of Georgetown University's student newspaper, The Hoya, sounded the alarm over Georgetown's restrictive speech codes. According to The Hoya, "[t]he Georgetown University Speech and Expression policy contains outdated and harmful sections regarding acceptable expression that deserve public notice, if not immediate revision."
The Hoya's editorial hit all the right notes. It not only criticized the university's overly broad and vague prohibition (PDF) on "expression that is indecent or is grossly obscene or grossly offensive on matters such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation" but also pointed out that the prohibition conflicts directly with a robust commitment to free speech found within the very same policy! In addition,The Hoya also noted Georgetown's continuing refusal to recognize the pro-choice student organization H*yas for Choice, an act of blatant viewpoint discrimination about which FIRE has written to Georgetown on three separate occasions.
Kudos to the editorial board of The Hoya for bringing these important issues to Georgetown students' attention. We hope that it prompts Georgetown students to press for greater free speech rights, and we stand ready to help in those efforts.
Check out The Hoya's full editorial, and click over to HuffPost Live to watch yesterday's segment on campus free speech with Georgetown senior Laura Narefsky and FIRE's Will Creeley.
Image: Healy Hall, Georgetown University - Wikipedia
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FIRE's award-winning Newsdesk covers the free speech news you need to stay informed.


text:
I will be building the kitchen cabinets in my new house, I'm thinking on the following steps:
- Brick base (about 10-15 cms);
- Wood structure for cabinets and coutertops screwed to the base and the drywall in the back;
- Installing the cabinets themselves;
- Installing the countertops (supported by the wood structure and not the cabinets).
I've never done kitchen cabinets before and I'm really unsure on how to plan it all. Especially since I want to use granite stone for countertops and they are quite heavy.
EDIT: In the editing I somehow removed the question.
Is a brick base the recomended pratice in my case (support cabinets, appliances, and heavy countertops)? Are the any other alternatives?
Also, I think of separating structure and cabinets, is that normal pratice or they should they be built as a unit?
EDIT: I live in Brazil, here construction of houses is made from only bricks and mortar, drywall is alien here (I will be using it and I'm having a hard time to explain it to engineers and general contractors) and so are many techniques associated with it. In Brazil people usually affix the counter-top IN the wall (using steel and concrete) and then make cabinets below it. I want to part with those construction methods, I find them colonial, dated and inpractical.


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HAVERHILL — At the front of Room 201 in the Moody School, a robot is holding court.
Classroom aide Bernadette Roy leads the activity, but it is the 2-foot-tall humanoid figure talking, gesticulating, and even dancing that has the rapt attention of the four preschoolers in attendance.
When the robot, named Chip by the school staff, asks students to touch its right hand, Zeeshan Etesham, a small boy in an oversize T-shirt that reads "Autism is my superpower," reaches out to do so. He taps the correct sensor and the robot claps its three-fingered hands in encouragement.
"It's incredibly exciting, because you can see the power of it on the student's face," said Sandra O'Connor, the school's evaluation team facilitator.
Chip is one of two robots — the second is named Connor — that Aldebaran Robotics recently donated to Moody School. The preschool is one of just three schools worldwide that are part of the Paris-based company's efforts to understand how this robot model, known as NAO, can best be used with autistic children in classrooms.
Both robots are roughly human-shaped and, with 25 joints, they move fluidly and expressively. When they speak, their gestures emphasize the words and when at rest, their torsos sway ever so slightly, as if they were breathing. They even say "ouch" when they stumble into obstacles.
The robots have so much personality that staffers refer to each of them as "him" or "our friend," and never as "it."
One of the goals is to teach autistic children social skills — such as eye contact, listening, and responding to others – that they can transfer to interactions with people, Roy said.
The science on that point is not yet clear, however, said Brian Scassellati, a Yale University professor of computer science who researches the use of robots with autistic children.
"Everything we're looking at right now in this field is very preliminary," he said. "Is it ready for large-scale adoption? Not at all."
In one activity at the Moody School, Chip asks students to pick a picture of a certain animal from cards Roy has laid in front of them. In another, the robot performs tai chi movements and the children are encouraged to follow along.
"They are learning visually from him; they'll mimic his movements," O'Connor said.
The robots can record data from sessions with individual students, allowing teachers and parents to track progress online.
Autism, a brain development disorder that generally involves difficulty with social interactions and communication, has become an increasingly common diagnosis. An estimated 1 in 88 children in the United States has some type of autism, such as autistic disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, and Asperger's syndrome. That's more than 10 times higher than the rate 40 years ago, according to research and advocacy organization Autism Speaks.
Understanding of how to best treat and educate children with some form of autism is still limited, but the use of robots is an emerging — and promising — approach.
"Every time we put a robot with a child with autism, we see the kids get very excited, very motivated, and very engaged," said Scassellati. "If it really does work, this is a great step forward for us."
A few years ago, Aldebaran decided to start investigating ways that NAO robots, now used mostly in robotics research and computer science education at the high school and university levels, could be programmed to work with children with various forms of autism, said Olivier Joubert, head of Aldebaran's autism program.
Chip and Connor came to Moody School after O'Connor watched a November segment on NBC's "Today Show" about the company's robots being used with autistic students at a school in England. She wrote to Aldebaran, and to her surprise, Joubert wrote back. The two communicated further, and in December, Joubert visited the school. The next month, O'Connor got an e-mail telling her two robots were on their way, free of charge, from Paris to Haverhill.
The robots are currently priced at about $16,000, though Aldebaran has not yet decided what it will charge for models programmed to work with autistic children, Joubert said.
He said he chose Moody School to be part of the testing phase partially because of its proximity to Aldebaran's Boston office and the opportunity to help a lower-income community. But mostly, he said, he picked Haverhill because the school and its staff just felt right.
Moody integrates students with disabilities and autistic disorders into classes with typically- developing students. The two robots have been used with, and enjoyed by, all the students for about three weeks, O'Connor said. But the impact on autistic students stands out, she said.
"We have seen changes in the children, in their ability to pay attention" she said. "There isn't another tool they have reacted to like that."
Jackie Gallagher's son, Caydan, was diagnosed as autistic when he was 20 months old. He responds well to visual cues, she said, and was immediately taken with the robot, which is more predictable and less impulsive than other children, or even adults.
"That's why he really embraces it — he knows what to expect," Gallagher said.
Staff at the Moody School are in frequent contact with Aldebaran and offer suggestions about how the robots could be improved. They would like them programmed to demonstrate yoga moves, for example, and wonder if some of the sensors can be made more touch-sensitive.
O'Connor said it's exciting for the school to be involved in such a pioneering project. And she's still amazed it came about because of one impulsive e-mail.
"It has just snowballed into something fantastic," she said.
Sarah Shemkus can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
Our mission is "charged with providing a ready standby force to assist the Uniform Division, or other Divisions as may be directed, in times of emergency, including such duties as may be necessary and determined by the Chief of Police or his designee and under authority of a Disaster Decree."The Taylor Auxiliary Police Civil Defense was organized as a volunteer position, in 1962. The Auxiliary Police shall handle the vacation house checks, business checks, school checks and holiday shopping center anti-theft programs and such other programs as deemed necessary to further the Crime Prevention Unit goals. The Auxiliary Police shall maintain a state of readiness in order to handle requests from sworn officers for assistance in the event of emergencies.
Taylor Auxiliary Police will begin training in Spring 2022. Download an application (DOC).
For more information about the Taylor Auxiliary Police, please visit our website.


text:
Tests say Americans becoming more intelligent over the generations. How could that be?
Old professors – and old non-professors, too – often complain about the younger generation's illiteracy and philistinism. They sure don't read newspapers as we did and they often can't tell the difference between the world wars as we can. One study calculated that vocabulary knowledge – highly correlated with intelligence test scores – has declined since peaking with the generation born in the 1940s. (My gang!)
Yet, there's much nostalgia and some bias here. (The vocabulary test was designed by people largely in that 1940s generation.) Considerable research on tests of all sorts suggests that, contrary to we geezer's complaints, Americans have been getting more "intelligent" over the generations. But those findings, in turn, require us to confront what we mean by "intelligent" and to ask whether Americans today are wiser than their great-grandparents.
Get Smart and Smarter
Researchers have compared scores on so-called "intelligence" tests, particularly tests that measure how well test-takers answer abstract problems, of Americans today to the scores of Americans of who took similar tests decades ago. In general, contemporary Americans – and westerners in general – score higher than did people in the early- and mid-twentieth century. (For why I say "so-called 'intelligence tests'," see Chs. 2 & 3 of this.) Indeed, there have been "massive gains" in scores over the twentieth century. This increase has been called the "Flynn Effect" after the scholar who first noted it. The upward surge appears to have leveled off more recently, but the long-term change is dramatic. (For a sample of readings, see James Flynn's book here, and these sources: here and here.) The score of the average American test-taker in 2000 would have qualified him or her as a "genius" a few generations earlier.
The rise in scores shows up most in the most abstract tests of cognition, such as the one illustrated below. The task is to choose the pattern that logically belongs in the last box, given the sequence of the patterns before it. Why do more recent cohorts do so much better than earlier ones on such cognitive tests?
One explanation that I like is this one: Over the years, more Americans have become more extensively "trained" – knowingly or not – in the cognitive skills these tests measure, such as reading and decoding visual abstractions. Consider how modern children learn to "get" the alternating perspectives and visual meanings in television, video games, commercial logos, traffic signals, and the like. They can also manipulate numbers at a complexity beyond the educated adults of earlier generations. And modern children encounter far more writing, from schoolbooks to billboards to Facebook entries, than their ancestors did. Americans today are in this sense "smarter," because much more complex environments have exercised and molded their brains to perform such abstract tasks.
Another sort of explanation stresses improved health and nutrition, particularly in the womb and early in life. Not just sufficient calories, but sufficient nutrients like iodine and Vitamin C, are critical to growing minds (see, e.g., here.) Similarly, exposure to toxins, notably to lead in old paint and gasoline, reduces children's cognitive skills. Thus, improved nutrition and health over the 20th century could explain some or all of the increase.
Certainly important, too, is the vast increase in schooling that Americans got over the 20th century – an explanation Flynn himself stresses. Going to school does many things – including keeping kids off the streets and teaching them self-control – but it also trains young minds to decipher abstract symbols (like the letters in "symbol") and make logical connections (like connecting the ideas linked by "and"). In 1900, about one-fifth of Americans had graduated high school; in 2000, more than four-fifths had. However much we may grumble about schools "these days," public education clearly multiplied Americans' capacity for abstract thinking.
But did all these developments make modern Americans wiser?
Here is a question raised by University of Virginia psychologist Tim Salthouse: Since young people are so much "smarter" than old people (scores on standard "intelligence" tests keep sinking after one's twenties), why do we entrust our institutions – courts, corporations, the military, universities, and so on – to 50-, 60- and 70-year-olds rather than to 20-somethings? Perhaps we should defer to the youngsters (my kids might say so), but people apparently assume that mature, even elderly, adults make better decisions on fateful matters. For example, the Constitution says that Thomas Jefferson would have been too young to be president in the same year that he was assigned to draft the Declaration of Independence. The "wisdom" of the Founding Fathers presumably was to not trust anyone under 35 to run the country.
What has happened to the wisdom – not just the "smarts" – of Americans over the generations? I may have missed it, but I don't think there is any research on historical trends in wisdom – even over just recent decades (although there is a growing literature on psychology of wisdom – e.g., here). We do not seem to have stable indicators of wisdom that can be tracked over time.
Still, it might be worth a thought experiment: What if we time-transported a random sample of, say, 18th- or 19th-century Americans to compare to contemporary Americans ? (No fair cherry-picking the ancestors. You can't choose Jefferson, Franklin, and company to face off against a random draw of today's Americans.) What if we gave them psychological tests of wisdom, questions which ask people how to solve real-world problems like family disputes, hurt feelings among friends, or economic crises? Who would do better? And, what if we could – this is a thought experiment, after all – give them the levels of education, the access to accumulated knowledge in advice books and the like, perhaps even access to the Internet that Americans today have? Who would do better, yesterday's Americans or today's – or neither?
I'm not wise enough to guess.
Cross-posted from Claude Fischer's blog, Made in America: Notes on American life from American history.


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Sunday, November 19, 2006
The PEAR Has Finally Rotted
Don't be fooled by the fancy name. "Engineering Anomalies" is just a fancy name for good-old-fashioned parapsychology. PEAR's director, Robert Jahn, has been trying to show psychic phenomena are real ever since I was an undergraduate. But with funding reportedly drying up on his unsuccessful efforts, PEAR could no longer be sustained.
PEAR has been an embarrassment to Princeton alumni since day one. Jahn and colleagues never succeeded in demonstrating any significant effect; one of the strongest results they claimed was an 0.02% advantage in coin flipping. Other claimed results, such as the ones dealing with "remote viewing", have been criticized for sloppy experiment design. And to my knowledge no one has succeeded in replicating their results. Jahn claims "it has been the most personally stimulating and rewarding intellectual activity I've ever been involved in". Pitiful.
15 comments:
'So much for the PEAR, too many inpurities for it to actually exist in our plane.
- 6:21 AM, November 20, 2006
This is a terribly sloppy posting.
Anyone objectively interested in this subject, who considers themselves of scientific mind, should review Dean Radin's book "Entangled Minds".
Mr. Radin is one of the foremost researchers in this field, and himself has held appointments at Princeton and a variety of respected institutions. He holds a Ph.D.
The book provides an exhaustive meta-analysis of thousands of experiments, scientifically conducted, and uses modern analytical methods to evaluate the findings.
The findings almost conclusively prove that psi does exist, and is measurable. In some cases odds against chance are more then 10,000,000 to 1.
Furthermore, Mr. Radin was part of the CIA Stargate project, and can provide elaborate walk throughs of the careful and detailed experiments that were conducted, and the means by which they avoided the "sloppiness" so often used by those too lazy to do the proper level of analysis as a way to discount the studies in this field.
The folks who like to jump on these bandwagons of arrogance and "assumptive belief justification" rarely do their homework, so I don't expect anyone will go much further then to mumble profanities at my comment. And I am not interested in changing this bloggers mind.
But if the reader does possess an open mind, and is generally interested in the subject, and has some basic training or apprecoation for scientific methodology and statistical analysis, perhaps this book will offer a clue as to a road toward furthering your exploration of the subject.
The findings are quite fascinating.
All the Best - 12:49 PM, November 20, 2006
- Jeffrey Shallit said...
Dear Hoju:
Having a Ph. D. doesn't prevent one from saying silly things. Radin thinks he has established psi, but he has yet to convince the rest of the scientific community.
If psi is real, why is the effect so terribly weak? Why have others failed to replicate PEAR's claims?
You call my post "sloppy", but you don't say what about it merits that charge. - 1:09 PM, November 20, 2006
In an essay for DISCOVER magazine, Nobel Laureate and wacky guy Kary B. Mullis has good things to say about Dean Radin. He also has good things to say about Peter Duesberg. I hope I never receive a recommendation from Mullis.
- 2:29 PM, November 20, 2006
- Aaron Kinney said...
Hey Hoju,
Can psi-energy be contained in a physical device or container, like a battery? Or can it be contained like kinetic energy in a bound spring?
Perhaps you can provide a method of quantifying the amount of psi-energy that I release when I curse President Bush's name?
How is psi-energy measured anyway? Is it like joules, or watts, or ohms? Or maybe pounds of force? Huh?
Did some psi-equivalent of a reichter scale have a spike when all those poor people died in the recent tsunami? Got a chart to confirm it?
Sheesh. - 5:13 PM, November 20, 2006
I agree totally, a Ph.D. is in itself nothing more then a few letters. My father holds one, I have friends who hold them... I find it really guarantees little.
But that works both ways.
I think if you take the time to review the material in Radins book (or in Rupert Sheldrake's numerous explorations on the material, such as "The Sense of Being Stared At") you will find that, in fact, there is much evidence to support and justify continued exploration of the phenomena.
Rupert Sheldrake also holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry, but as we have agreed, this means nothing, but is it fair to "assume" he is a nut simply because he has explored something you discount without proper review of the material?
Sadly, you speak in such generalities. "The Scientific Community" does not feel this, or that. How can one debate on the basis of such blanket statements. Are we debating specific studies? Or are we talking merely of "conventional wisdom"? And when has that ever been at a point of stasis?
There was a time when the "scientific community" thought the heart was a heater, and the brain a cooler. The fellow that proposed the heart was a pump was laughed out of the medical profession, and ridiculed so completely he ended up in an insane assylum.
Were Einstein's radical proposals well recieved initially? How many years did it take for them to become accepted? How much ridicule?
Anyone who has studied this history of mankinds quest for knowledge knows all to well not to put his faith merely in "the accepted theories of the day".
When scientists who have invested their lives in a materialist perspective of consciouness are confronted with the possibility that they have completely missed the target, they get defensive. Livelyhoods are on the line. If you have spent any time in academia, then you know just how hard it is to shatter old paradigms with new ones.
I promise you if you at least review the material, rather then prejudging it, you will find enough to warrant a thoughtful re-exploration of your assessment on the field of study. I can't possibly type into this little box excerpts of any real merit... but I can only assure that an open minded review of the material is a more scientific approach then to jump to assumptions based on belief and prejudice.
Have you reviewed the ganzfeld studies? Did you review Ray Hymans skeptical critiques, his attempts to refine the studies to rule out error, his repeated refinements as he could not accept the fact that chance should show a 25% hit rate and repeated experiments showed a 37% hit rate (on average from recently compiled data from 2001).
The data is there in the books I have cited.
Any scientist worth his salt reviews the data first, and then makes his judgements... anything else is just religion disguised as science.
Again, all the best. - 11:19 PM, November 21, 2006
Hey aaron,
Those are good questions.
From your comment you seem to think I am some sort of right wing christian? Do you think I support Bush? You could not be farther from the mark with your assumptions.
Not everyone who questions the dogma of the "spoon fed science" of our day is an evangelical you know. My interest is merely in EXPLORING all information available with an open mind. I am not afraid to review material, whether the "scientific community" presently accepts it, or not.
Actually, it's funny, but the answer to your questions is close to "yes".
If you actually review Radin's work, instead of making blanket assumptions, you will find that they have started something called the Global Consciousness Project (part of PEAR), where they attempted to measure such spikes. And they did notice anomalies beyond chance during both 9/11 and the Tsunami. I don't think anyone says this proves anything, merely that it is curious, and does warrant further exploration:
I do enjoy this mental jousting with you folks, but I wish you were not so quick to make assumptions. The exploration of a topic does not require a black and white, immediate pronouncement of "absolute truth" or "absolute falsehood" at every turn.
Is the backbone of science not the antithesis of jumping to conclusions?
Why not review the material before taking a such a definitive position?
I am dismayed to see so many closed minds in my generation using the name of science to engage in predjudice and assumption.
Einstein would must be so dismayed to see what the quest for knowledge has become.
I suspect PEAR was shut down due for political reasons, because there are those who are violently opposed to exploring these matters. There are some way-out-there fields of study in the scientific sphere, and they go on fully funded (like the multi-dimensional universes of string theorists) - rarely is a field of study cancelled because they can't prove something - but in the world of academic politics, there are many cases when people have been stifled because they can!
All the best aaron! - 11:34 PM, November 21, 2006
Hi Jeffery,
You mentioned on what merit did I call the post sloppy, and I did fail to address this.
First, I thought you made some assumption about "why" PEAR closed. Can you substantiate the this with any evidence?
All I could find was that they could no longer secure funding, but this does not correlate directly to the assertion that it was because they "failed to prove" anything.
This is the only new story I saw beyond pure blogging conjecture:
And secondly, the matter of the findings is actively debated, true it is not without critics, but few "active" fields of study can claim that. You suggest a figure of 0.02%, and I find that almost a random number. Can you cite your source for this?
From what I have read, their experiments stand up well to the critics if you review them in detail. Just having critics means nothing - have you reviewed the actual mechanisms and experimental protocols of the various studies conducted in the past 100 years?
If not, once again, I refer you to the books cited.
All the best. - 11:52 PM, November 21, 2006
Good stuff RBH!
That was indeed substantive, and I thank you.
I must put forward though that although your "stopping rule" example is valid point, I think if you take a broader look at the measurements and varied experiments, it would not "explain" as much as you suggest. Testing PSI via card decks and sequences is among the weakest of the experiments that have been conducted over the years, although it was among the many presented by Mr. Radin (and OTHERS!), he was the first to suggest this.
In particular, the tests conducted on remote viewing (CIA stargate), or the german ganzfeld experiments, or the randomized light "intentional" experiments were far more compelling. There are in fact thousands of people who have engaged in repeating and validating numerous experiments - there is no need to pick on the poor PEAR folks exclusively :)
You seem to be very negative on Mr. Radin, have you also reviewed Mr. Sheldrake's work? You mentioned you reviewed numerous papers, did you prepare a detailed analysis? Would you be prepared to share it by posting it somewhere?
I sincerely believe this would be most helpful and a good contribution.
You said "riddled" with errors, apart from the stopping error, which I would suggest is a rather minor flaw that at best could be grouped into the "file drawer" problem, can you provide some additional substantive examples? Surely this is not the most grevious error you found if they were "riddled" with error?
Mr. Radin has incorporated "file drawer" analysis into his statistical measures, and I am not sure I am quite as comfortable as you that this "stopping rule", resolves to fraud. That in itself is an assumption that is untested. But I would be very interested, and most grateful, if you could provide some additional examples of flaw, from your first hand analysis.
It is obviously a subject that interests me a great deal.
Thanks again, and all the best! - 10:59 AM, November 22, 2006
- Jeffrey Shallit said...
The .02% figure is right there in the hyperlink I provided in the original post. I can't help it if you don't bother to read the links.
The ganzfield experiments of Honorton et al. are interesting and puzzling, but they are not above criticism -- such as poor randomization and lack of blinding. It could be that there is something there, but for the moment my judgment is that these experiments fall short, however, of a convincing demonstration of psi. This is also the conclusion of psi researchers such as Susan Blackmore. And they don't have much to do with PEAR, which was the topic of my posting.
If PEAR had been doing good work, I suspect there would have been no problem obtaining continuing funding. It is a reasonable deduction that the lack of funding is due to the lack of acceptance by the scientific community. By "lack of acceptance" I mean that PEAR researchers do not publish in mainstream journals such as Nature and Science; much of their output has appeared in fringe journals. - 9:05 AM, November 23, 2006
I don't recall Radin having anything to do with the Stargate Project. Nor PEAR's remote viewing program.
RBH, do you remember which paper you took issue with? I'm interested in learning more about that. - 3:31 AM, January 08, 2007
- waffletower said...
Which Princeton alumni are embarrassed by PEAR exactly? I am not, I am instead embarrassed by this highly reductive and closed minded assessment of 30 years of research.
- 2:08 PM, March 24, 2009
- Jeffrey Shallit said...
I am embarrassed by PEAR. But if you want to defend them, be my guest. What do you think their most impressive achievements are?
- 2:47 PM, March 24, 2009
- new mexican bird said...
Great article .The public finally realized P.E.A.R. is not as sweet as a Pyrus Communis . And it was about time . Thanks for uploading .
- 1:45 PM, June 19, 2020
- new mexican bird said...
Thanks for daring to have a different opinion .
- 1:49 PM, June 19, 2020


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When the B.C. NDP government quietly announced its registration system for the new "speculation and vacancy tax" last week, it took a minute for me to realize that every homeowner in affected urban areas is required to register, every year.
If they don't, they will be billed on their property taxes, not at the lower rate for Canadians, but at the full two per cent of 2018 assessed value. That's the rate reserved for foreign buyers and "satellite families," those Asian high rollers who are supposed to be driving our housing prices through the roof with their dirty money.
I called it "negative-option billing," a term that jogged memories. Readers started asking me, isn't that illegal?
It is indeed, but only for businesses. A federal law was passed in 1999 after an outcry over a cable company's move to charge customers for a new service unless they contacted the company to decline it.
In this case, 1.6 million residential property owners in designated B.C. urban areas are to receive a letter, starting this week, instructing them to fill out a form declaring they are not real estate speculators. If you have a house or suite that isn't occupied by a relative or rented out at least six months of the year, you get dinged, annually.
Premier John Horgan shrugged off the complicated form and negative-option billing, comparing it to the homeowner grant introduced by W.A.C. Bennett in 1957.
Horgan made a couple of obviously false statements. The B.C. Liberals didn't raise concerns in the legislature, he said. Okay, so the tax revolt led by mayors of Kelowna and Horgan's home town of Langford, and the fall legislature session with objections from the B.C. Greens as well as the B.C. Liberals, never happened?
RELATED: Mayor says Langford threatened over speculation tax
RELATED: Opposition battles 'fake' speculation tax in legislature
How about Finance Minister Carole James' two humiliating retreats on this tax, the first on its overreach into rural vacation properties, and the second on applying the foreigner rate to Albertans and Ontarians? Did those un-happen too?
"The biggest challenge for B.C. Liberals is we're trying to do something about speculation in the housing market, and they did nothing," Horgan said.
It was Aug. 1, 2016 when the former government revealed its foreign buyer tax, applying only to non-Canadian purchasers in Metro Vancouver's then-soaring real estate market. At 15 per cent of value, it actually worked. Foreign purchases went from 10 per cent of the Metro market to less than two per cent in two months.
The foreign buyer tax is still in effect, and the statistics B.C. began to collect showed how few foreign-buyers there were. In Greater Victoria, it was about 3.5 per cent.
Now the NDP version extends beyond Metro Vancouver to Victoria, Kelowna, West Kelowna, Nanaimo, Lantzville, Chilliwack, Abbotsford and Mission.
A fact-challenged government ad started running last week too. The speculation tax "makes sure everyone who uses services like hospitals, schools and transit pays their fair share," the ad states. So, how many empty apartments go to hospital and school, or ride transit?
James merely stretches the truth. After caving in to B.C. Green Party leader's final demand last fall to charge all Canadian owners the same rate, James lowered her estimate of what the tax will bring in to about $185 million a year.
But when asked how many vacant homes are expected to shift into the rental market to avoid the tax, Horgan, James and finance officials admit they don't know.
Tom Fletcher is B.C. legislature reporter and columnist for Black Press Media. Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
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text:
- The
economy will shrink by 0.8% this year, followed by growth of 0.5% next,
"accelerating" to 1.1% in 2015
- The
unemployment rate will rise sharply, reaching a peak point at 7.2% of the
labour force midway through 2014.
- The
budget deficit will increase from 3.5% this year to 3.9% next.
Tuesday 11 June 2013
Does the Dutch central bank employ any macroeconomists?
34 comments:
Re: "...austerity during a recession is the complete opposite of what you should be doing in a country without its own monetary policy."
Am I missing something? Surely austerity during a recession is always a complete no-no.
I was under the impression that it was precisely because Eurozone countries didn't have their own monetary policy that they were being forced to undertake austerity.
There may be "no market pressure forcing policymakers' hands in the Netherlands (yet)" but there is plenty of pressure from elsewhere: ECB, Germany, EU Commission to name a few.
Maybe all these institutions should instead hire Sue Marsh's parruchiere to run their economic policy?
He couldn't do any worse, and he clearly understands the real problem with the Eurozone.Replies- Anonymous12 June 2013 at 08:52
If your central bank targets inflation for your whole country, like the UK, then the fiscal stance is, to first order, irrelevant. Since fiscal deficits generate inflation, an inflation targeting central bank will raise rates in response.
In the EU, the staggering failure of the ECB to but a floor under aggregate demand (NGDP) has meant that fiscal authorities have to do it.
Monetary dominance is pretty well established theoretically and empirically - check out the US job growth largely unaffected by the sequester, or Japan's massive deficit's (2000-2010) complete failure to stimulate the economy when the BOJ was determined to maintain the price level (zero percent inflation targeting effectively), although in practice austerity has small negative effects anyway, as some demand is lost due to having more people "between jobs" as it were.
Some policy makers believe we are in a Liquidity trap, but I think Scot Sumner is right about that. The idea that a central bank cannot put NGDP on any path that it wants is misguided. Japan has also pretty much destroyed that idea, as it is providing evidence that you can exit a liquidity trap pretty much as soon as your central bank wants you to. You don't seem to grasp that the ECB has only one mandate, price stability, something it takes very seriously and has delivered excellent results on.
It has no interest in putting a floor, or a ceiling around aggregate demand, why would it, it's just a currency issuer.
Watch and admire the steadfast approach to currency stability, allowing economies to adjust naturally to the real world.
It's an approach that you may find frightening, but best get used to it, it's here to stay.- Anonymous12 June 2013 at 15:48
The price level in teh EUrozone is now some 10% below where it should be if the ECB targeted 2% inflation. How is that stability?
1/NGDP is the proper measure of the value of money, in which case the ECB has presided over a devastating deflationary shock. That is not "price stability". - Anonymous12 June 2013 at 15:52
"It's an approach that you may find frightening, but best get used to it, it's here to stay."
I think this is unlikely in countries that have elections. The idea that economies "adjust" to the real world, and are not OF the real world is, to be kind, anti-empirical. The ECB did a lousy job on inflation since for 12 years it allow an inflation in Germany close to 1% and in the South around 2.8%. That is the only reason for the difference in competitive power in Germany and the South. That it achieved an average 2% as agreed in the Maastricht treaty has no meaning, since it is a meaningless average. If you sitting on a hot stove with your feet in ice water your average temperature might also be good, but you feel lousy.
DeleteI think what Cantab83 is getting at is the "without" part of the quoted sentence.
The Netherlands is a country WITH it's own monetary policy. That's why it's inexcusable to resort to austerity. (It's still a bad idea in the Eurozone, but national governments can be somewhat forgiven since they have no choice). I think this may just have been a typo on Wren-Lewis's part.Ok - my bad. I took the term "Dutch Central Bank" to imply that if the Netherlands had its own Central Bank, then it had not joined the Euro.
So I guess this raises the question, if the Dutch Central Bank isn't actually in charge of the currency, to what extent is it a real central bank? It seems that once you're part of the Eurozone there's really only one central bank, the ECB, and everyone else is just there for support.
In light of that, I'm not sure why austerity in such a country is especially unforgivable. True, a nation without control of its own monetary policy can't rely on the monetary authority to offset austerity measures. However, a country without its own monetary policy also can't rely on the central bank to bankroll its deficits. Basically, once you give up control of your currency, you're in a tight spot no matter what.
That said, maybe the Netherlands is different than the crisis countries. For one thing, the Netherlands has a current account balance. My guess would be this gives the Netherlands more room to run deficits, and makes internal devaluation less of a concern. Thus, maybe in the Netherlands case a burst of stimulus might be enough to get their economy and budget back into balance. Maybe.
In any case, it seems the main problem remains with the Eurozone is the ECB's reluctance to do anything about austerity. Still, I suppose the Dutch Central Bank isn't helping.
- Anonymous12 June 2013 at 07:06
Prime minister of Finland just said couple of days ago that additional budget cuts may be necessary because debt/GDP ratio keeps increasing. Now Finland's gov debt stands at 62% of GDP which is obviously not alarming.
The main argument was that economic policy needs to be "credible". Words can't describe anymore how depressing it's to hear this same nonsense after 3-4 years of completely failed policy. Why should the Dutch Central Bank employ macroeconomists? It's not a central bank.
And I think you might be misreading that last sentence. Suppose we amended it to read:
"Extra consolidation measures are therefore necessary to comply with the recommendations of the European Commission."
Good Europeans, after all, would think it unnecessary to add that last bit.
Next you'll be thinking about joining UKIP. ;-)But it gets even worse, I'm afraid. As you mention, the CPB was the last important institute withstanding the austerity mania. Unfortunately, it's director recently retired. He was replaced by someone from the finance ministry, in fact the same person that was most responsible for drafting the austerity budgets of the recent governments that brought The Netherlands into its downward trajectory since 2010. Already now, the CPB has since called for more austerity. Soon it will be even more clear how far they've moved to the dark side, when they have to present their next projections.
BTW, a funny thing happened yesterday in a (short) tv interview of Olli Rehn. The interviewer started to ask whether he wasn't just stupidly looking at numbers, without considering the people and the broader economic impact. Of course he answered no. But then for the rest of the interview, he just kept on mentioning numbers (like 3% and 6 billion of cuts), without any real underlying reasoning why that should happen (except the stability pact), and without acknowledging what impact that would have on the people, growing unemployment, or economy. Except of course the empty words about getting a stronger economy or something. So in his answers, he implicitly gave a strong "yes" to that first question. Unfortunately, the interviewer did not follow up on her first question. Anyway, Rehn made very clear that he is convinced the problems in the EU economy are all structural and require structural changes, even though he did not even say what structural problems that may be.Hello.
I note you're an economist, so your view that more government spending and debt are solutions to an economic contraction is understandable and entirely mainstream.
Sadly for you and your economics colleagues, the world is stuck with a huge debt bubble, and more debt won't help, it'll just prolong the bubble.
Allowing the economy to find its own natural level is what Europe now does, finally we have a shot at a free market economy, no pointless debt and spending by governments.
I love this approach, but I can understand why the collectivists would prefer government to distort matters once again. One day the whole world will be like the Eurozone, the sooner the better.Replies- Anonymous12 June 2013 at 14:49
A natural level of massive unemployment, misery and revolution. Sounds great
Delete Don't get me started on those filthy collectivists. With their elected officials, their laws, their justice systems, their ceaseless efforts to avoid violent revolution...
DeleteWell SugarLover I'd be all for an experiment in completely free markets if the wealth accumulated by the few was evenly redistributed to make sure this experiment in completely "free markets" is done in a way that ensures the accuracy of the results.
And secondly once all of the western democracies prohibit the influence of our elected leaders with money.
But if we can do that I would be interested in seeing if these vaunted "free market" solutions would solve all of the world's problems. Other than that doing what you are calling for now is just a massive advantage being given to the people who have the most...and isn't that what you free marketeers are all about?- Anonymous12 June 2013 at 15:53
I smell Austerian Economics.
Go to Somalia with its unregulated economy and leave the civilized world in peace. Now. - John Redmond12 June 2013 at 16:11
"One day the whole world will be like the Eurozone, the sooner the better."
You mean one day everyone will be using a currency with obvious flaws which hamper economic growth in its member states?
I doubt it. I'll keep my dollars, thank you. - Anonymous12 June 2013 at 20:59
Sugar Lover, for my own sense of faith in humanity, I hope you're a troll
Delete - Anonymous13 June 2013 at 07:58
Free markets: finally the freedom to sell slaves and have children working for you. You would love that would you? If not, please think some more about the concept of economic freedom.
Delete - UberDave13 June 2013 at 11:37
The world does have too much debt, which built up during the credit boom of 2003-2008. The debt is mainly owed by households and firms, who have too little income to service it, and must save over time.
Assuming no export boom, the natural thing to happen is for this private saving to be offset by government borrowing. It is not a solution to the contraction, but a natural stabilizer. The real recovery will only come when the private sector is done deleveraging, and growth returns. But to say that the government should do nothing, or actively cut those naturally occurring deficits... well, that self-immolation is arguably unnecessary and "artificial", in the sense that it moves the "natural level" of the bottom down, down, down, down.
Then the IMF and the EC will say: "Congratulations, you cut your deficit (all the way to Depression, 27% unemployment and economic collapse!)"
- Anonymous12 June 2013 at 15:21
One thing to remember: the mandate/target of the Dutch central bank is not growth, but financial stability. Given that the Netherlands is one of the core EMU countries (and that Wim Duisenberg was one of the fathers of the ECB) they probably feel compelled to adhere to the Maastricht Treaty, even if some/most of their staff would agree that budget cuts lead to lower growth. What is surprising, however, is that DNB is giving (quite specific) economic policy advice to the government (which is not their job), especially in the same week in which the CPB releases their own forecast.
ReplyDelete - Anonymous12 June 2013 at 16:36
It's important to remember that bankers view austerity as moral payback for years of excessive credit, and that view is now entrenched. A banker suggested to me that "people are just going to have to get used to a lower standard of living". Except of course that "people" doesn't include those expounding all this nonsense. Their indifference to mass unemployment and poverty is frankly chilling. To the extent there is any intellectual justification for austerity's effects, the usual old tropes about voluntary or structural unemployment are wheeled out. It's all very depressing.
ReplyDelete - Anonymous12 June 2013 at 23:12
Tax increases have been the bulk of austerity and that is the mistake when the burden on the private sector is too large (Europe and many others). Austerity via spending cuts is what most of Europe needs as they are having a sovereign DEBT problem in economies with bloated government. When you have borrowed too much and your credit rating is at risk and/or been cut, you must reduce borrowing but don't do it by increasing taxes. Literally 80% of the austerity in Greece and Portugal was from the revenue side. It is no wonder why their economies tanked. A healthy private sector is the answer not more government spending. If you have borrowed too much, you are going to have pain and you can choose to take a little now or a lot later. Look at Latvia that went through a massive austerity with teacher wages cut as much as 40%; they have had credit upgrades and are growing. They have restored some of the wage cuts. Ireland leaned towards spending cuts and is doing better. Greece and Portugal increased taxes on the private sector and killed their economies.
ReplyDelete - Anonymous13 June 2013 at 08:03
Why is nobody addressing the weird rationale that making people jobless (which is the result of spending cuts) is an answer to a period of too much borrowing. If we owe too much, lets all work harder. I do not see where the rationale comes from for: We owe too much, lets work less.
ReplyDelete - Anonymous13 June 2013 at 21:01
Unfortunately you got these types of central bankers all over Europe. A while back I caught Erkki Liikanen, chief of Bank of Finland, giving some gobbledygook about debt levels. It would have been bad enough if he was merely harping on about how the government should balance the budget, but he then went on to display his total lack macroeconomic knowledge by worrying about the general debt levels. He wanted all sectors of society to reduce their debts. Which is impossible without export growth (is Nokia off the sickbed yet? No? Well, Finland's f'd then). Next he got too clever by half when he tried to bamboozle us with some great counter intuitive truth by pointing out that after WW2 the overall global debt levels were lower. Golly gee, now why would that be so? Perhaps because governments essentially moved most of private sector and household debts onto its balance sheet, an incidental Keynesian boon from funding the war?
ReplyDelete Have a look at the Rabo Bank's research of roughly a week ago on this.
They make a 'product' of their solution. Probably the first decent piece of research I have seen from them, usually it is utterly poor.
You should have noticed by now that just the idea of spending more simply doesnot catch with anybody (except the people that directly benifit from it).- Anonymous14 June 2013 at 08:12
This is class warfare, that's it. The minority in power like the feeling of being relatively more reacher than the majority of the population. Let us start to think that elites want to maximize status, not utility.
ReplyDelete - Anonymous14 June 2013 at 10:36
The Dutch Central Bank is just giving the government advice that its forecast suggests that the Netherlands will be in violation of its obligations under EU's excessive deficit procedure.
It is only requesting that the Netherlands take action to comply with EU laws that it has signed. I see absolutely nothing unusual in this, there are only two possible course of action it could recommend deficit reduction measures or withdrawal from the Euro -as members of the Eurozone are legally obliged to have deficits under 3%. Of the two options the Central Bank's economists are clearly correct in arguing that additional deficit reduction measures are less disruptive and therefore preferable to a change of currency.Replies- Anonymous14 June 2013 at 23:09
Members have routinely violated and continue to violate that 3% obligation. There are no procedures in place to expel offending countries. Continued membership is a decision solely within the purview of Dutch politicians.
As for clearly correct, it's not clear at all. In this situation any attempt at balancing the budget will only depress the economy, reduce taxes collected, cause more spending to handle unemployment and might even trigger the need for costly bank bailouts (which would really blow a hole in the deficit). Letting things be could well be the superior way to handle deficits, and so the central bank can in clear conscience agree no cuts and new taxes need to be implemented.
Demand draft (DD) fraud typically involves one or more corrupt bank employees. Firstly, such employees remove a few DD leaves or DD books from stock and write them like a regular DD. Since they are insiders, they know the coding, punching of a demand draft. Such fraudulent demand drafts are usually drawn payable at a distant city without debiting an account. The draft is cashed at the payable branch. The fraud is discovered only when the bank's head office does the branch-wise reconciliation, which normally take six months, by which time the money is irrecoverable.
order bank checks
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Giant Meteor Hits Greenland?
News story originally written on December 22, 1997
A flash of light was seen in the night sky over Greenland on December 9th. It is thought that a meteor may have plunged through the atmosphere and landed on the southern part of the island. It was said that the "flashes observed in conjunction with the meteorite were so bright as to turn night into daylight at a distance of 100 kilometers and can be compared to the light af a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere." (Niels Bohr Institute). This bright of a flash suggests a giant meteor!
A search by plane has been started to find this meteor. Heavy snowfall which has buried the meteor is slowing the search process down, but the search goes on...!


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