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Are we so inured to the implementation of torture by the Bush administration that we no longer recognize what torture is? Torture, according to the UN Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person."
Under President Bush, however, John Yoo, an ideological puppet in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which is supposed to objectively interpret the law as it applies to the executive branch, purported to redefine torture, in two memos that have become known as the "torture memos," as the infliction of physical pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death," or the infliction of mental pain which "result[s] in significant psychological harm of significant duration e.g. lasting for months or even years."
I ask this question about torture - and our attitude to it - because of what took place last week, in pre-trial hearings at Guantánamo preceding the trial by Military Commission of the Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr, who was just 15 years old when he was seized after a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002. A number of witnesses revealed details of Khadr's mistreatment, in the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, which hinted at his inclusion in an abusive program that, before the 9/11 attacks, before Yoo's memos and before a general coarsening of attitudes towards abuse and the mistreatment of prisoners, would have led to calls for that mistreatment to be thoroughly investigated, and, very possibly, for it to be regarded as torture or as cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.
In Khadr's case, these questions should not even need raising, for a number of other compelling reasons. The first concerns his age. Under the terms of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, on the involvement of children in armed conflict, to which the US is also a signatory, juveniles - defined as those under the age of 18 when the crime they are accused of committing took place - "require special protection." The Optional Protocol specifically recognizes "the special needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities," and requires its signatories to promote "the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict."
Instead, however, the US government is attempting, for the third time, to prosecute Khadr for war crimes in a special trial system for foreign terror suspects - the Military Commissions - which were first ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in 2006, were then revived by Congress but abandoned by President Obama on his first day in office (after they had succeeded in delivering just three dubious results), and were then revived again by President Obama, with the support of Congress, last summer.
Compounding the dark absurdity of Khadr's proposed trial is an uncomfortable truth that has been particularly noted by Lt. Col. David Frakt, a former military defense attorney for the Commissions, who has regularly pointed out that the Military Commissions are fundamentally flawed because they contain "law of war offenses" invented by Congress, including "Providing Material Support to Terrorism" and "Murder in Violation of the Law of War." Lt. Col. Frakt has recently expressed even graver concerns about how the new Military Commissions Act includes a passage which claims that "a detainee may be convicted of murder in violation of the law of war even if they did not actually violate the law of war."
As I also explained in an article last week, "critics of Khadr's trial have, from the beginning, recognized that there is something horribly skewed about redefining the internationally accepted laws of war so that one side in an armed conflict - the US - can kill whoever it wants with impunity, whereas its opponents are viewed as terrorists, or, when brought to trial, as those who have committed 'Murder in Violation of the Law of War.'"
Nevertheless, as the Obama administration has decided to press ahead with Khadr's trial, pre-trial hearings were held over the last two weeks in an attempt to address concerns raised by Khadr's defense team. These largely skirted the issues discussed in the paragraphs above, but focused unerringly on Khadr's alleged mistreatment, through a "Motion to Suppress Statements Procured Using Torture, Coercion and Cruel, Inhumane and Degrading Treatment" (PDF), in which his lawyers argued that any self-incriminating statements that Khadr may have made should be ruled out because of the manner in which they were extracted.
The torture of Omar Khadr
Over the years, and in an affidavit submitted in February 2008 (PDF), Khadr has described his mistreatment in detail, explaining how he was unconscious for a week after his capture, when he was severely wounded, and how, in Bagram, where he was taken after just two weeks in a hospital, his interrogations began immediately, at the hands of an interrogator who manipulated his injuries (the exact details were redacted from his affidavit). Crucially, he also explained how, as soon as he regained consciousness, "the first soldier told me that I had killed an American with a grenade," and how, during his first interrogation at Bagram, "I figured out right away that I would simply tell them whatever I thought they wanted to hear in order to keep them from causing me [redacted]."
There is much more in the affidavit - casual cruelty, whereby guards made Khadr do hard manual labor when his wounds were not healed, and, significantly, threats "to have me raped, or sent to other countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan or Israel to be raped." He also noted, "I would always hear people screaming, both day and night," and explained that other prisoners were scared of his interrogator. "Most people would not talk about what had been done to them," he declared. "This made me afraid."
Khadr also described what happened to him in Guantánamo, where, as I explained last week, he "arrived around the time that a regime of humiliation, isolation and abuse, including extreme temperature manipulation, forced nudity and sexual humiliation, had just been introduced, by reverse-engineering torture techniques, used in a military program designed to train US personnel to resist interrogation if captured, in an attempt to increase the meager flow of 'actionable intelligence' from the prison."
At various points in 2003, while the use of these techniques was still widespread, Khadr stated that he was short-shackled in painful positions and left for up to ten hours in a freezing cold cell, threatened with rape and with being transferred to another country where he could be raped, and, on one particular occasion, when he had been left short-shackled in a painful position until he urinated on himself:
Military police poured pine oil on the floor and on me, and then, with me lying on my stomach and my hands and feet cuffed together behind me, the military police dragged me back and forth through the mixture of urine and pine oil on the floor. Later, I was put back in my cell, without being allowed a shower or a change of clothes. I was not given a change of clothes for two days. They did this to me again a few weeks later.
Crucially, when describing the interrogations that punctuated these experiences at Guantánamo, Khadr explained, "I did not want to expose myself to any more harm, so I always just told interrogators what I thought they wanted to hear. Having been asked the same questions so many times, I knew what answers made interrogators happy and would always tailor my answers based on what I thought would keep me from being harmed."
Until two weeks ago, these claims - though well-known to those who have followed Khadr's case - had, for the most part, not been aired in a courtroom. In response to the defense motion, however, the government attempted to refute Khadr's claims, calling a female interrogator who stated that Khadr had voluntarily admitted that he threw the grenade that killed US Sgt. Christopher Speer, during sessions after his arrival at Guantánamo in October 2002 that were perfectly amicable, and an FBI agent, Robert Fuller, who stated that his interrogations of Khadr at Bagram earlier in October 2002 were also "conversational" and "non-confrontational," and that Khadr had freely admitted to throwing the grenade that killed Sgt. Speer.
Whilst it was possible - if not probable - that both interrogators were telling the truth about interrogating Khadr non-coercively, the problem remains that Khadr has stated that, from the time of his very first interrogation, he regarded telling his interrogators what they wanted to hear as the best way of avoiding mistreatment, and so may not have been telling them the truth. As a result, last week's witnesses were more significant because they shed light on the early days after he recovered consciousness in US custody, and, in particular, on his first interrogation and his subsequent interaction with that interrogator. Along the way, further witnesses cast shadows on the government's otherwise clean picture of interrogations conducted in a non-coercive environment.
It would have remarkable had this not happened, as countless witnesses - including soldiers as well as current and former Guantánamo prisoners - have described the brutality at Bagram at the time Khadr was held there between August and October 2002, which led, just over a month after Khadr's departure for Guantánamo, to the murder of two prisoners - and, very possibly, to other murders at the time he was held.
The medic's testimony -- and "Palestinian hanging"
The first to reveal a glimpse of the regime at Bagram was, ironically, a medic called as a witness by the prosecution. "Mr. M," as he was identified, who testified by video link from Boston, countered Khadr's claims that, while he was at Bagram, "five people in civilian clothes would come and change my bandages," and that they "treated me very roughly and videotaped me while they did it," stating that he alone changed his bandages twice a day, and that no rough treatment was involved.
He did, however, note that, on one occasion, he found Khadr hooded and chained to a cage by his wrists with his arms "just above eye level," and that when he lifted the hood, Khadr was visibly upset. The medic added, as Carol Rosenberg described it in the Miami Herald, that "he didn't object to Khadr's treatment, because chaining was an approved form of punishment" at Bagram, "adding that he didn't know the reason for the punishment nor how long Khadr had been chained."
This rather nonchalant description of "chaining" may not have shocked the medic, especially as the chains were apparently "slack enough to allow Khadr's feet to touch the floor," but the only reason for this was because of the severity of his wounds, as Khadr explained in his affidavit, in which he also stated that he was chained up "several times." Otherwise, like numerous other prisoners, including Dilawar (the subject of "Taxi to the Dark Side") and Mullah Habibullah, the two prisoners who were killed at Bagram in December 2002, he would have been fully suspended by his wrists, in a torture technique more commonly known as the "strappado" technique or "Palestinian hanging."
Nevertheless, as Barry Coburn, Khadr's lead lawyer, explained, the medic's testimony provided "critically important validation" of statements in his client's affidavit, and another of his lawyers, Kobie Flowers, added, "Had this been an American soldier in North Korea, people would be outraged. Here we have a 15-year-old individual who was nearly killed with bullets in his back who was left up there to hang as punishment."
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"Interrogator No. 2" and Khadr's first interrogation -- on a stretcher
However, while this was significant in establishing some context for the general and well-chronicled brutality at Bagram, which will no doubt emerge in unprecedented detail should Khadr's trial proceed, it was not until Tuesday last week that previously unknown information emerged regarding Khadr's first interrogation on arrival at Bagram, which, according to a master sergeant in the US Army, identified as "Interrogator No. 2," who appeared in person, took place on the same day that Khadr was moved from the hospital to what Carol Rosenberg described as "the crude, putrid Bagram Air Base detention center."
The interrogator, who was an observer at Khadr's first interrogation on August 12, 2002, revealed that "the questioning took place while Khadr was on a stretcher - he couldn't remember if Khadr was shackled to it - and that his notes included this detail: 'Clarification was difficult due to the sedation and fatigue of the detainee.'" He also explained that no coercion was used on him, but just two approved techniques from the Army Field Manual: "fear down," which is designed to play down a prisoner's anxieties, and "fear of incarceration," which encourages prisoners to tell the truth by pointing out that otherwise they may face extended imprisonment.
It is hard to tell if this controlled line of questioning strictly reflects reality, but even so, as one of Khadr's military lawyers, Army Lt. Col. Jon Jackson noted, the testimony showed that Khadr "was first questioned within just 12 hours of his transfer from the US field hospital to the detention center." Kobie Flowers was more forceful in his criticism. "You got a guy who is 15, seriously wounded, who has had multiple surgeries, and that's the first time the United States government takes a statement from him to use in his prosecution," he said, adding, "Now whether it is torture, cruel, inhumane, degrading treatment or simply involuntary ... I don't think any federal judge in the United States would allow that type of conduct."
The testimony of Damien Corsetti
On Wednesday, a peripheral figure in Khadr's story - but one who has achieved a certain notoriety - testified by video link from Arlington, Virginia. Damien Corsetti, who was known as "Monster" at Bagram, based on a tattoo on his chest, and also as "The King of Torture," described himself as "a disabled veteran suffering post traumatic stress disorder as a result of his interrogation work in both Afghanistan and Iraq," and explained how, on seeing Khadr on July 29, 2002, just two days after his capture, he was struck by how he was an injured "child" detained in "one of the worst places on Earth." He added, "More than anything, he looked beat up. He was a 15 year-old kid with three holes in his body, a bunch of shrapnel in his face. That was what I remember. How horrible this 15 year-old child looked."
Corsetti, who was cleared in 2005 of abuse charges relating to his conduct in Bagram and, later, at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, explained, back in 2007, how he was still haunted by "the cries, the smells, the sounds" of those whose torture he witnessed, when he was called upon to attend sessions in the basement of Bagram in which "high-value detainees" were tortured. "[T]hey are with me all the time," he said.
Last Wednesday, Corsetti told the court that he was "not one of Khadr's interrogators" but had befriended him in Bagram. He explained that the guards and interrogators, who identified all the prisoners as "BOB" (which stood for "Bad Odor Boys"), named Khadr "Buckshot BOB," due to his injuries. He added that "there was the sound of screaming and yelling 'continuously," and also confirmed that threats were made to send prisoners to countries where they would be tortured, or raped. He specifically mentioned Israel and Egypt, but added, as Michelle Shephard explained in the Toronto Star, that he "did not know if Khadr had been told this." As Khadr stated in his affidavit that he was indeed threatened with being sent to Israel or Egypt (or Syria or Jordan), Corsetti's testimony therefore endorsed another of Khadr's claims.
"Interrogator No. 1" and the rape threat
If Corsetti's testimony, for the most part, did little more than add some more color to the story of Khadr's early months in US custody, Thursday's witness, Joshua Claus, provided potent testimony regarding the kind of threats to which Khadr was subjected, and also provided a disturbing link to the kind of violence in Bagram that led to the murders of Dilawar and Mullah Habibullah in December 2002. Claus, formerly a sergeant in the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion (of which Corsetti was also a member), was identified in court as "Interrogator No. 1," and was Khadr's main interrogator at Bagram, the "skinny blond" man with glasses (just 21 years old at the time) who also interrogated him while he was on a stretcher, on the day that he was moved to Bagram from the field hospital, and who, according to Khadr, mistreated him in an unknown manner (because the details are redacted) during his first interrogation.
Testifying by video link from Arizona, Claus recalled, in particular, using the technique described as "fear up harsh" in interrogations of Khadr, during which he would kick the furniture and scream at the young prisoner. He also admitted that he invented a rape story to scare him, explaining, as Spencer Ackerman described it in the Washington Independent:
"I told him a fictitious story we had invented when we were there," Interrogator #1 said. It was something "three or four" interrogators at Bagram came up with after learning that Afghans were "terrified of getting raped and general homosexuality, things of that nature." The story went like this:
Interrogator #1 would tell the detainee, "I know you're lying about something." And so, for an instruction about the consequences of lying, Khadr learned that lying "not so seriously" wouldn't land him in a place like "Cuba" - meaning, presumably, Guantánamo Bay - but in an American prison instead. And this one time, a "poor little 20-year-old kid" sent from Afghanistan ended up in an American prison for lying to an American. "A bunch of big black guys and big Nazis noticed the little Afghan didn't speak their language, and prayed five times a day - he's Muslim," Interrogator #1 said. Although the fictitious inmates were criminals, "they're still patriotic," and the guards "can't be everywhere at once."
"So this one unfortunate time, he's in the shower by himself, and these four big black guys show up - and it's terrible something would happen - but they caught him in the shower and raped him. And it's terrible that these things happen, the kid got hurt and ended up dying," Interrogator #1 said. "It's all a fictitious story."
Perhaps so, but as Ackerman also noted, every other interrogator who spoke to Khadr did so "after he heard a 'fictitious story' about a young Afghan who lied to US interrogators and as a result was raped and killed in jail."
In many ways, the events of the last two weeks were inconclusive, and it remains to be seen how the judge, Army Col. Patrick Parrish, will interpret them. Certainly, there was much worse abuse at Bagram and at Guantánamo than that experienced by Omar Khadr, but he was just a child during his time at Bagram and the early years of his abuse at Guantánamo, and it may well be that, as his lawyers assert, any self-incriminating statements that he made (especially regarding the throwing of a grenade that may have taken place when he was face down and unconscious under a pile of rubble) were produced because rape threats and physical violence based primarily on exploitation of his wounds was enough to terrify him into acquiescence with whatever his captors wanted.
The Pentagon shoots itself in the foot: four reporters banned
Ironically, the biggest story in Guantánamo last week was not the reports of Khadr's treatment but the banning of four reporters (including Michelle Shephard and Carol Rosenberg), after they revealed Claus' name in newspaper reports. The Pentagon alleged that this violated an order stipulating that Claus' real name was protected information, but this was patently ridiculous, because his name was already in the public domain, and, in 2008, he had even conducted an interview with Michelle Shephard.
Instead of protecting Claus, the Pentagon's heavy-handed response served only to make other reporters wonder if the Pentagon was trying to prevent anyone from working out that, unlike Damien Corsetti, Claus served five months in prison for pleading guilty in a court martial to the abuse of an unidentified prisoner at Bagram, who was made "to roll back and forth on the floor and kiss the boots of his interrogator," as Michelle Shephard described it, and for the assault of Dilawar. In Shephard's words, "He admitted to forcing water down the throat of Dilawar and twisting a hood over the Afghan's head." Moreover, as another soldier explained in a military report into Dilawar's death, "I had the impression that Josh was actually holding the detainee upright by pulling on the hood. I was furious at this point because I had seen Josh tighten the hood of another detainee the week before. This behavior seemed completely gratuitous and unrelated to intelligence collection."
In his interview in 2008, Claus insisted that he wanted to set the record straight. "They're trying to imply I'm beating or torturing everyone I ever talked to [at Bagram]," he said, adding that, with Khadr, "I spent a lot of time trying to understand who he was and what I could say to him or do for him, whether it be to bring him extra food or get a letter out to his family ... I needed to talk to him and get him to trust me."
Responding last Thursday to a question about his conviction posed by Barry Coburn, Claus insisted that he "lost control at a very slight moment. You're talking about two-and-a-half minutes of my life." This may not technically be correct, as there was clearly more than one incident, but it is obvious that his actions were part of an abusive program sanctioned at the highest level of the Bush administration, and moreover, as Damien Corsetti explained, "the pressure to get information from prisoner at Bagram was intense." He told Col. Parrish, "This was less than a year after 9/11 so we're all still pretty heated up about that. This was life and death stuff we were supposedly dealing with. There was just a ton of pressure on us to get information to save lives and generate reports."
By banning the four reporters, the Pentagon has only succeeded in drawing attention to something it presumably wanted to hide: that Omar Khadr's mistreatment in Bagram took place at time when the violence in the prison, sanctioned by the Bush administration, was so intense that prisoners died, and that his first interrogator was implicated in the murder of one of these men. It doesn't prove that Khadr wasn't coerced into making false confessions, but it doesn't augur well for claims that everything about his treatment was "conversational" and "non-confrontational."
The Obama administration has until July, when Khadr's trial is scheduled to start, to extricate itself from a public relations disaster of its own making, by formulating an acceptable plea deal for Khadr and arranging his return to Canada. Too much about this story - from the trumped-up war crimes charges, to the doubts about Khadr's guilt, to his age and the abuse to which, on occasion, he was undoubtedly subjected - makes proceeding with the trial an unpalatable and essentially pointless exercise. It is, I believe, time, after nearly eight years, for his punishment to come to an end, and for his long-delayed rehabilitation to begin.


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IHS weighs in on CES 2017 trends
LAS VEGAS—At this year's Consumer Electronics Show, the smart home became more refined, according to IHS, presenting more use cases to dealers and consumers.
Blake Kozak, IHS' principal analyst for smart home and security technology, told Security Systems News that this year's CES built off of previous years' announcements and technologies. "Maybe last year, and the year before, you'd see these providers coming out with thermostats and things like that. … But now, you're seeing those thermostats being integrated into more platforms and there's more use cases."
One innovation Kozak pointed out was enhanced light bulbs with infrared light to assist outdoor cameras, giving users a clear idea of where to incorporate the technology and why.
Kozak saw more voice integrations at CES 2017. The smart home "certainly is becoming more approachable," Kozak said. "I think voice is really playing a key role in that, and [voice controls are] a gateway to wider adoption."
A consumer may buy a product like Amazon Echo for convenience features, he said, but then start purchasing smart home products such as light switches to go with that offering.
"For the U.S. Market, I think we're going to see a lot more video," Kozak predicted. He said that consumers are becoming savvier on the topic of data and how their data is being used, which helps the market.
Eventually, wider camera adoption could begin to cannibalize the market for other sensors, Kozak noted. "One camera could potentially see an entire room, and maybe that room has three windows and two doors," he said, which would replace multiple contact or glass-break sensors.
Kozak was positive on the future of home automation. "I think that the consumer's going to be more immersed in the smart home in 2017 and 2018 and that's going to help the consumer better understand the values of the connected home."
Kozak predicted that a combined approach to the market, including a mix of professionally installed devices and DIY-installed devices, will become more prevalent in the future.
CES also exhibited drone and robot technologies, Kozak pointed out. "Right now we're trying to get consumers to really understand the value of having connected light bulbs and thermostats and these other types of connected devices … trying to convince somebody that they need to invest in a robot is a bit of a leap at the moment."

subset: commoncrawl


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Extraordinary Alum Xiaoling Ang
Xiaoling Ang (BS '05, MS '05), PhD, works as an economist in Washington, DC.
Why economics? • In high school I was interested in public policy, and I was really interested in math, but I didn't know how they could come together. Then, my junior year, I took an economics class.
Number cruncher • Before my freshman year, Professor (David) Mirza gave me great advice—he said that top economics programs recruit heavily on math ability. Anyone who wants to be an economist working in public policy should major or minor in math. That's what I ended up doing at Loyola, although I took classes in economics as well.
The day-to-day • It's all over the place. I read a lot of research articles and white papers; I do data analysis. If a policy is implemented I may use theory to figure out what possible outcomes are, using supporting evidence from similar policies. I quantify the results of actions. I dedicate time to work on independent research. I'm never short on questions, and I'm never short on data. A lot of my research has focused on student loans, mortgages, and disclosures. I've taught classes as an applied microeconomist.
Unlike the rest of us • I use calculus and statistics every single day.
Solid foundation • Really, what I do is a lot of writing and analysis as well as working in interdisciplinary teams where everyone's an expert. Loyola's Jesuit education has helped a lot in my role—it prepared me to speak to people with different worldviews and vocabularies.
Off the clock • I'm fairly involved in yoga, I hang out with friends and family, and I entertain at home a lot. This is probably overanalyzing it, but entertaining at home is a relic of dinners I had with friends at Loyola.
Back in the fold • When I came back to campus [to speak on students loans], I didn't realize it would be such a big deal. What I really liked is a lot of students came up afterwards and asked questions. I couldn't believe how warm the reception was.


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Cameraman: Ramakrishnan
Local Coordinator: Thailand Tewan Ten
Script: Radha
Editor: RK
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Language: English
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We are responsible for managing considerable public funds and we place a high value on accountability. We account for the provision of our services to Irish citizens, Ireland's foreign policy and our spending. We are accountable to a number of public bodies and institutions. We have also established a number of internal oversight mechanisms through which we account for our work.
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text:
Clue: ___ spell on
We have 1 answer for the clue ___ spell on. See the results below.
Possible Answers:
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- Words before spell, shadow or wide net
- Words before spell or shadow
- ___ spell over
- Words before "spell" or "wide net"
- ___ wide net
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Found an answer for the clue ___ spell on that we don't have? Then please submit it to us so we can make the clue database even better!


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A beautiful old southern home, sitting on the banks of cypress covered waters. Dining room tables covered in white linen. Residents walking around the grounds of their new home. The Notebook, written by Nicholas Sparks, paints a beautiful story about young love and its progression into old love. While the storyline revolves around this, the depth of the movie sinks much deeper, to the autonomy of a person suffering from the Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's has taken over the lives of an estimated 5.5 million Americans, according to the Alzheimer's Association. When caring for a person living with the disease, it is easy to forget that they are just that, a person. A son, daughter, mother, father, brother or sister. A point in time of their life still remains. It is just lost in the entanglement of paths that venture all throughout the brain. "When we think of dementia, we need to think about what remains," Vicky Noland Fitch said.
Vicky Noland Fitch is a Certified Dementia Practitioner and Social Worker. She was born in raised in Carrollton Alabama, just a few miles from the nursing home. "Vicky is a wonderful teacher and has a huge heart and passion for educating others and assisting facilities to care for residents with dementia," RN, LNHA and Administrator Ashley McGee said. "She has been instrumental in the success and care of our residents on the unit." Fitch was also the brains behind the unique details of the Memory Care Unit at Aliceville Manor Nursing Home.
Aliceville Manor is located up the road from a small town in Pickens County, Alabama. While it may not paint the same picture Nicholas Sparks does of love's growth, the Memory Care Unit paints a realistically beautiful picture of dementia care. In November 2015, AMNH welcomed the "Countryside Garden" Memory Care Unit to the facility. They are one of the only homes to offer care dedicated specifically to those suffering from Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia in the county. Murals are painted on the walls of the unit to evoke familiarity with the individual's memories.
"The walls of the Memory Care Unit are full of scenes from life. A clothesline, an old country store, a hay field. These murals help in a multitude of ways. They facilitate reminiscing. They engage residents who wander back and forth down the hallways. Also, each doorway is a different color. For residents who no longer recognize a number, we can say, 'you live in the yellow house'. In that way, it helps maintain their dignity and independence. Everything on the unit is designed with a purpose," Fitch said.
Aliceville Manor acknowledges that "we know the disease and take care of the disease but we also take care of the individual" said Fitch. The secure unit allows these individuals to live a life without fear of danger or loss of self-help."It is really a unit of yes. They are able to wander down the halls all day long," she said.
Specially trained caregivers are on the floor twenty-four hours a day. The residents are provided with recreational activities set to a continuous schedule. According to The Alzheimer's Association, 18.2 billion are the estimated hours caregivers spend helping those affected by the disease. Of these 18.2 billion are the handful working the Memory Care Unit at AMNH.
"The Memory Care unit at Aliceville Manor was designed to meet the needs of our residents with some form of dementia in the middle stages of the disease process. From the murals on the walls that evoke a pleasant, welcoming environment to the specifically developed activity program, Countryside Garden is a unit where residents with memory loss are supported so that they function at their highest level." Fitch said. "We know that although much is lost to dementia, there is much that remains. Our goal is to maximize the strengths of each resident to ensure that they are living their best life."
Aliceville Manor welcomes the public to attend the Memory Care Support Group. Led by Vicky Noland Fitch, the group meets the third Thursday of every month. It is both educational and helpful for those who have a loved one who suffers from the disease. For more information please contact the front office at (205) 373-6307 or visit www.alicevillemanornursinghome.com to request more information. Aliceville Manor is located at 703 17th St NW, Aliceville Alabama.


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Wilf Day sent me a link on a proposal to change the MMP system in Wales.
Alan Renwick, in a feed I get on electoral reform, says there are plans to change Hungary's system as well. Apparently to remove the partial compensation linkage between the tiers, change to FPTP for the nominal tier, and reduce the size of the (overly large) assembly. (Link in Hungarian, in case someone can read or translate it).


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Crossroads' mission is to make acupuncture accessible to everyone. By becoming a member, you help make this possible. Membership allows you free acupuncture during your membership period. At the same time your fees help others to receive care at an affordable price.
Making healthcare affordable
Since opening two years ago, we have seen that even with our sliding scale rates at $16 – $41, many patients have not been able to afford acupuncture for lack of funds. This prompted us to develop a new, more accessible payment option. So far, our new membership option has allowed our patients to receive acupuncture at a much lower cost.
Your investment goes beyond your own health
The border region is one of the poorest areas in the US, and many people lack access to healthcare here right here in Dona Ana and El Paso County. Across the border in Mexico, human rights issues, violence and economic downturn have left a deep impact on the health of communities. We work to use acupuncture to address some of these border health disparities. Here are 3 ways your membership fees help us do this:
1. Social enterprise. As a social enterprise, a portion of our profits goes to support other projects in our region. So far we have helped provide 23,000+ treatments since 2011, primarily in poor communities for people who have no access to health care.
2. Community involvement. Being a member at Crossroads is a simple and direct way to help your community, and support our work of bringing people back to downtown Las Cruces, where our clinic is located. In this way, your membership helps us to build social capital in the downtown area.
3. Providing low-cost care for people who need it the most. Our members include people of all income levels, many of whom are very sick and low-income. Your membership fee helps all of our members to be able to access our clinic when they need it.
Our commitment to you as a member
When you become a member, we commit to providing consistent and high-quality services throughout your treatment plan. We'll be here to provide acupuncture when you need help. We also commit to making it more affordable for you to follow through with your treatment plan.
Refer a new member to our clinic: get 1 free treatment coupon!
If you have any further questions or concerns about your membership at Crossroads, or how you can volunteer around our clinic, talk to our staff the next time you're at the clinic (130 S. Main in Downtown Las Cruces), or call us at 575-312 6569.
– The Crossroads Staff
* Crossroads Acupuncture would like to recognize Mateo Bernal for his contributions to developing our membership option.


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Click HERE for a full list of current and future Rental Rates
KC $30/night/person or $75/night/family $750/night minimum fee applies
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Cabins $150/cabin/night maximum 10 people must be booked with KC or DL
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Wilderness Camp Site $16/night/person plus program facilitator ($75/night)
+30% will be added to rates June to September
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Large group fees are also available to eligible groups.
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In high season, weekend bookings must be 2 nights or longer
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Charges apply for any portion of the site and facilities that are not cleaned properly. Click HERE for list.
Note: Kuriakos expects that groups will not use disposable dishes while at camp. Dishes are provided along with all other kitchen requirements. A $250 charge will be applied if your group uses disposable dishes.


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Vim Outliner
I've just discovered a very useful outliner for Vim. I'd never really been happy with the todo list management programs I'd tried before — well, now I can use my favorite text editor to track to-do lists and other miscellaneous items for Getting Things Done. I may have to write a longer post about it once I've used it for a little while.


text: When Alias Hire moved to Hackney Wick we had a feeling that the area, as a whole, would eventually be something different from the time we moved in. Something more. Something better. We knew there was a migration of self expressing people to Hackney Wick. We knew that the area had seen better times in the not-too distant past and we always believed that better times were on the way. We felt that that there is not only a belief that things were turning for the better, but a whole new mindset with a drive to change the area whilst respecting the people, the buildings and the positive way of life that were here beforehand.


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I met Daren in January 1985. I was on my way home to Sydney from a trip up North, an overnight train journey on an old rattler of a train. It's a journey I've done many times, travelling back and forth from my grandparents' place when I was a kid, and from my brother's place as an adult.
After finding my seat, I noticed this handsome man sitting across the aisle from me. We exchanged a couple of glances, then I settled in to read my book. In front of me I had my travelling bag, with the various necessities of a well-seasoned traveller — snacks, a walkman, reading material, and a chess set sticking out the top. After a while, handsome man came over and asked me if I'd like to play some chess — of course I agreed.
So I set up the pieces and we drew for sides — he drew white and so had to make the opening move. He studied the board for a few moments then looked me in the eye. "Um, actually, I don't really know how to play — I thought maybe you could teach me?" he said.
That was the beginning of a relationship that lasted almost 10 years until Daren died from AIDS in 1994. Somewhere along the line we came to realise that we were lovers.
Daren was clever, unconventional, enthusiastic, brave, funny, sexy, beautiful, loving, inspiring and strong. He had an incredible determination and vision — he always seemed to be hatching some scheme to achieve some bold objective, usually to go and live in some foreign country.
Daren loved to travel, even more than me. He was always eager to meet people, usually charming them off their feet in the process, and get to know his way around some exotic place or other. He spoke a bit of Spanish and was never backward in trying it out — even if he wasn't in a Spanish-speaking country, he'd speak Spanish rather than English.
We never lived together, in fact we never really even lived in the same city — this was a long-distance relationship. That meant that when we did get together — usually for a week or so at a time every month or two — it was an incredibly intense, loving time.
Daren taught me a lot about life and love. His motto was "Live, Love, Lust, Life" and he lived his short life to the fullest. He taught me how to love unreservedly, he showed me the futility of monogamy, he opened my heart and my soul.
And Daren loved to party. He was one of the first people I knew who was involved in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, marching in the parade, dancing all night at the parties, thinking up incredible costume ideas. In 1994, at the end of his life, his last wish was to make it to one more party. Against his doctors' advice and his family's wishes, he travelled up from Melbourne to Sydney in October 1994 to get to Sleaze Ball. He spent the night at the party, in a wheelchair, grooving to the music and seeing all his friends one last time — I think he had a great night and once more demonstrated the power of his indomitable spirit to overcome adversity. He died a few weeks later, back in Melbourne.
I've been deeply blessed to have known this man, and to have been loved so well by him. He'll always remain the greatest love of my life, and I know I'll always miss him.


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Monday March 12
Friday's indices finished on a high (ie EOD=HOD), so it was no surprise that the rally continued into Monday's Asian session and briefly into the European day. However, some markets faltered in the US session, and SPX and DJIA closed slightly down as tariff concerns caused money to flow into the tech sector. NDX briefly hit a new all-time high (remember those?) breaching 7,600 for the first time, and closed at 7,588. FTSE and NKY (up in the cash session, reflecting Friday's US NFP blowout) were down on stronger GBP and JPY respectively. Only DAX managed to hold its own, after some positive changes in the German utilities market. It finished the day roughly flat.
Other than the aforementioned pound and yen, the currency and Gold position was generally flat, after a brief dollar rally faded. After a new US 10-year bond auction, which was at a yield of 2.889% (and 2.5:1 oversubscribed), the highest for four years, yields eased to close at 2.87%. Oil gave up Friday's gains and closed at $61.33.
Tuesday March 13
The big news of the day was the dismissal of US SecState Tillerson by the President and markets did not like it, nor were they impressed by US inflation only matching the estimate of 2.1%, and the 'core' figure of 1.8% remaining stubbornly below the Fed's 2% target. All indices were down, in particular NDX (which was retracing the Monday spike) and DAX (which had not reacted the day before).
Currencies were very mixed, EUR and GBP were materially up on the Tillerson news, but JPY and CAD were similarly down, although the former recovered somewhat into the close, and then fell 30 points on the BoJ MPC minutes we mentioned last week. GBP was helped by an upbeat Spring statement from UK Chancellor (Finance Minister) Hammond. CAD was hampered by dovish remarks from BoC Governor Poloz at 1415. AUD fell slightly. Clearly not all countries are favoured equally in Trump foreign policy. Gold and bonds (inverse to yields) were slightly on the uncertainty. Oil was very volatile at the US open, rising 1.5% to then fall 2.5% all in a space of 90 minutes. It ended the day down.
Wednesday March 14
We said last week that Tuesday's US CPI was more important than today's US Retail Sales, but as CPI unusually came in neither a beat nor a miss, the miss today further depressed a market already digesting the Tillerson departure. SPX and NKY were down again (as JPY rose), however DAX and FTSE managed to post a green candle, the former being helped by a retreating euro. Notably MICEX was down nearly 2% following the international condemnation of Russia's alleged spy assassination with a banned chemical weapon.
Currencies continued to follow their own patterns. In general USD was down on the Retail Sales print. JPY was comfortably up, where AUD and CAD recovered only slightly. GBP (and Gold) were flat on the day, holding onto the previous gains whereas EUR did not, after dovish remarks from ECB President Draghi at 0800. Oil reacted logically to the EIA stock miss at 1430, fading 1.3% in an hour, but fully recovering this by the pit close at 1830 and actually closing up. The reaction was not instantaneous, and so was quite tradable.
Thursday March 15
The game of musical chairs continued at 1600 Penn, with Larry Kudlow replacing Gary Cohn as Trump's economic advisor. Ex-CIA boss Mike Pompeo has been pencilled in as Tillerson's replacement. Both these are considered to be closer to Trump on policy than their predecessors. US markets were mixed, SPX was more or less flat (down 0.1%), NDX was down 0.2%, whereas DJIA actually rose 0.5%, which was probably a reversion to mean of the flow we mentioned on Monday, as top-weight aluminium consumer BA still fell. In Europe DAX and FTSE were up as EUR and GBP faded.
Despite their elevated levels, bond yields reversed and put on 1bp. This was read as anticipation of next week's near certain rate hike, and USD started to react, and advanced again all major currencies. Gold fell in line. Only, notably, NOK was up on clear pointers to a rate rise soon from NB (after the 0.5% rate was held this time). Oil was slightly up on the day.
Friday March 16
Friday was monthly Open day. The unsettling US political news continued with rumours that Trump is considering replacing NatSec advisor McMaster, and that special counsel Mueller had subpoenaed the Trump Organisation for documents in his Russia probe. Nevertheless, the equities decline was arrested, as often happens after four days down, and indices were generally flat across the board, with beats on US Capacity Utilisation (1315), JOLTS job openings (1400), and Michigan Consumer Sentiment (1400) balancing the political uncertainty.
Yields were up again today, and USD advanced after the solid economic data. Although DXY only put on 0.1%, it finished at a one-week high of 90.20. USD was mixed again. GBP and JPY advanced whereas other currencies and Gold gave up ground. Oil spiked up around 2% during the early US session. In the absence of news, this probably related to traders exiting contracts ahead of the April expiration next week.
Please note all figures and percentages given for daily movement on indices cover the entire cash and futures period in that day.
Another mixed week for USD, retreating against GBP and JPY but advancing elsewhere. The best forex trade would have been CADJPY, netting you 3.1%. The indices were relatively quieter, the best trade being to short SPX. Gold and Oil had flat weeks again.
Crypto-currencies continued their hard downward trajectory. Bitcoin continued to fall into the weekend, and looks increasingly like it will revisit the Feb 2nd $6,000 low. (Our prices are given as at 0000GMT Saturday, three hours after the other markets close.)
NEXT WEEK (all times are GMT)
As we go into the penultimate week of the quarter, with the second week of the US/Europe disconnect on Daylight Saving Time, markets are focused on the Fed rate decision. The weekend sees the first round of the Russian Presidential Election. Putin is assured of victory.
Monday March 19
The G20 meeting starts in Argentina. US TreasSec Steve Mnuchin is attending. On the agenda inter alia is the regulation of cryptocurrencies. UK Brexit Secretary Davis commences two days of Brexit talks in Brussels. ECB Member Mersch speaks at 1800.
Tuesday March 20
The main economic release of the day is UK CPI. The April oil contract (CLJ18) expires. In the absence of any US news, price/action during the US session is likely to reflect positioning prior to the FOMC decision the next day.
Wednesday March 21
All eyes will be on the Fed rate decision. A hike of 25bp to 1.75% is 94.4% priced in according to CME Fedwatch, so as always, the focus will be on the 'dot-plot', the projections of each of the 16 members of the Fed regarding the range of future rate hikes. The UK average earnings print is important, because as we have said many times, the failure of wage growth has been the sticking point, both in the US and UK, that tempers rate increases. In Australia, RBA Boge speaks at 'FX Week, Australia' at 0230.
Thursday March 22
The EU leaders summit opens in Brussels, with the Brexit transition agreement to the fore. Also from Europe, ECB members Lautenschlaueger (0830) and Nouy (1000) are scheduled to speak. Together with UK Retail Sales, all this might cause some interesting positioning for the day's main event, the BoE UK rate decision. A hold is expected, but watch out for a non-unanimous vote, and anything that can be gleaned from Governor Carney's remarks. BoC Deputy Gov Wilkins speaks later in the day.
Friday March 23
The second day of the EU summit may produce some Brexit guidance. The Fed blackout is over now, and we have Bostic (centrist, voter) and Kashkari (dove, non-voter) speaking. CBR is expected to cut RUB rates today. Finally, the day marks the end of Trump's tariff 'waiting period'. The principal news print is Canadian CPI. Retail Sales is concurrent, but less important as it is only used as a CPI proxy anyway, and the release is only the MoM figure.
CALENDAR (all times are GMT). High volatility items are in bold
Sun Mar 18
23:50 JPY Japan Imports/Exports/Trade Balance
Mon Mar 19
00:00 EUR G20 Meeting
21:00 NZD Westpac consumer survey
Tue Mar 20
00:00 EUR G20 Meeting continues
00:30 AUD Australia House Price Index
01:30 AUD RBA Meeting's Minutes
04:15 AUD RBA Assistant Governor Bullock Speech
05:00 JPY Japan Coincident/Leading Economic Indices
10:00 EUR Germany ZEW Sentiment Survey
14:00 NZD GDT Milk (time approx)
20:30 WTI API Stock
Wed Mar 21
08:00 EUR ECB non-MPC minutes
09:30 GBP UK Unemployment/Average Earnings
09:30 GBP UK Public Sector Net Borrowing
10:00 EUR DE10 Bond Auction (time approx)
14:00 USD US Existing Home Sales (MoM)
14:30 WTI EIA Stock
18:00 USD Fed Rate Decision and Press Conference (1.75% est, 1.50% prev)
20:00 NZD RBNZ Rate Decision and Statement
Thu Mar 22
00:00 EUR European Council meeting
01:30 AUD Australia Payrolls/Unemployment
04:30 JPY Japan All Industry Activity Index (MoM)
08:55 EUR Germany Markit PMIs
09:00 EUR Germany IFO Business Climate/Expectations
09:00 EUR Eurozone Economic Bulletin
09:00 EUR Eurozone PMIs
09:30 GBP UK Retail Sales
12:00 GBP Rate Decision/Statement
12:30 USD US Jobless Claims
13:00 USD US Housing Price Index (MoM)
14:45 USD US Markit Services/Composite PMI
18:45 CAD BoC Wilkins Speech
23:30 JPY Japan CPI
23:50 JPY Japan FDI
Fri Mar 23
00:00 EUR European Council meeting
12:10 USD FOMC Member Bostic speech
12:30 CAD Canada Retail Sales (MoM)
12:30 CAD Canada CPI
12:30 USD Durable Goods
14:30 USD FOMC Member Kashkari Speech
15:00 USD New Home Sales (MoM)
17:00 WTI Baker Hughes US Oil Rig Count
This report is published every week as an email by MatrixTrade.com - you can sign up to receive it here.


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FG agrees to pay PHCN workers' full severance package
The Federal Government has finally agreed to settle the severance entitlements of workers of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, bringing to an end about 16 months of negotiations between both parties.
The government on Tuesday inaugurated an implementation committee for the settlement of the workers' benefits, stressing that it had sufficient funds to offset their severance package.
Labour unions in the power sector had last week doubted the government's ability to pay the workers' entitlements. They had shunned a meeting with the government because of the inauguration of multiple committees.
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony on Tuesday in Abuja, the Minister of State for Power, Mrs. Zainab Kuchi, said the government, labour and other stakeholders engaged in the process of negotiations with a view to ensuring that decisions taken were bought into by all.
She said, 'It was that detailed process that resulted in the agreement signed on Tuesday, December 11, 2012. That agreement outlined, in broad terms, the benefits and entitlements to be paid to the employees.
'It is in recognition of this fact that the need arose to form a committee that brings together all stakeholders to discuss in a frank and transparent manner various issues related to the fair and proper resolution of human resource oriented matters.'
She said the committee would enable full participation by all players as to how the various issues such as determination of procedures for the settlement of all due benefits to all concerned, taking into cognizance existing laws.
Kuchi stated that the committee was expected to complete its assignment within three weeks, adding that it would work with the offices of the Accountant-General of the Federation and the Auditor-General of the Federation.
'The Federal Government, in line with its previous commitments, has sufficient funds to make full and complete payments to all that are due. Let none; therefore, entertain any fear that government will relent in its commitments to the affected employees,' she said.
The committee members are the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Power, representatives of the Ministry of Finance and Labour, Bureau of Public Enterprise, Accountant-General of the Federation, Auditor-General of the Federation, National Pension Commission, PHCN, National Union of Electricity Employees, Senior Staff Association of Electricity and Allied Companies, Nigeria Electricity Liability Management Company, and Alexandra Forbes Consulting.
Earlier in his remarks, the Minister of Labour, Mr. Emeka Wogu, said, 'Today, every agreement has been settled. The presence of senior government representatives here underscores the importance, which government attaches to this particular event and I want to assure workers that they will not be short-changed in anyway.'
Responding on behalf of the unions, the President-General, SSAEAC, Mr. Bede Okpara, said, 'Please, we don't want to fight again to see this promises work. We will give you all the cooperation you need based on the presentation you have made, but if government plans to short-change us, we will resist it with everything in us.'


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The stock market doesn't fear a Trump presidency, and neither should you.
We finished a campaign in which both sides used weapons-grade persuasion to convince supporters that their opponent's victory would bring apocalypse, and now many Clinton backers understandably fear doom.
But if you voted for Clinton, don't fret for our nation's future, because things almost certainly won't be any worse for you than if the more right-wing Rubio, Romney, or Cruz had just captured the presidency.
Many on the left think that Trump's campaign rhetoric showed him to be too stupid and reckless to be president. But Trump's triumph should convince even Clinton backers that the president-elect is a master persuader rather than a lucky idiot.
Early during the Republican primary, Dilbert creator Scott Adams (here is my podcast interview with him) said Trump's comments might appear crazy but are actually based on the science of persuasion.
Imagine that you see a tennis player with a seemingly horrible swing win game after game. Although you don't understand this guy's playing style, you shouldn't conclude that he is too stupid to handle a racket. And even if you overhear this player make crude sexual remarks, you still shouldn't believe him to be an awful tennis player.
Similarly, you saw Trump win the Republican primary and the general election despite the hostility of much of the media and elite Republican party and the release of that nasty Access Hollywood recording. This strongly indicates that although Trump's statements might have appeared to you to be unhinged bluster, they were in fact well-crafted tools to convince enough voters to support him so that he would win the Electoral College.
During the final debate Trump infamously called Clinton a "nasty woman."
Nasty is a short, awful-sounding, easy-to-remember word with strong negative connotations. By associating the word with Clinton, Trump caused many people's brain to automatically downgrade their opinion of the Democratic nominee.
Part of the rhetorical genius of this nasty comment was Trump's anticipating that the media would endlessly repeat the phrase, thus (irrationally) strengthening its connection with Hillary. Yes, it was unfair for Trump to use this tactic, but don't think that Trump calling Clinton a "nasty woman" evidences Trump being a mentally disturbed debater who, when president, might similarly insult a female head of state during sensitive negotiations.
Some minorities, including several of my Facebook friends, believe that America rejected them. But remember, Trump won because many citizens who voted to reelect an African American president either backed Trump or decided that the election wasn't important enough to participate in.
America did not suddenly become more racist, sexist and homophobic in the last four years. Many of Trump's opponents think that the man is evil, but even if you hate Trump, don't assume that his supporters have the same view of the person as you do.
Most Americans think that racists are villains, and very few of us would willingly vote for a bad guy as president. If you can't imagine how a non-racist could support Trump, please accept that this is a limitation of your imagination, not evidence that most Trump voters, including twenty-nine percent of Latino voters, are racists.
Yes, Trump was endorsed by self-proclaimed KKK leaders. But reversed stupidity isn't intelligence.
The fact that Hitler was a vegetarian in no way morally discredits vegetarianism, and the KKK's endorsement of a candidate should have zero impact on your opinion of a candidate's character. If a group of a few thousand pro-ISIS Americans endorsed Hillary, would you really have considered this to be a justifiable reason to fear a Clinton presidency?
And if Hillary had wished to ignore this group to deprive the conservative media of a chance to link her name with the organization and to deny the group any publicity, would you have taken this failure to denounce as proof that she and most people who would go on to vote for her were ISIS supporters?
Trump will probably build his promised wall, and this will harm Mexicans who would like to enter the United States in violation of our immigration laws.
But the wall will have a "bigly" upside for Mexico. The United States does enormous harm to Mexico by buying illegal drugs that pass through our southern neighbor. If a wall significantly reduces the amount of money Americans pay to Mexican drug cartels, it could well make the average Mexican better off, although of course many individual Mexicans would still on net suffer from the wall.
Some fear that Trump has questioned American's commitment to protect NATO countries.
But regardless of what pieces of paper say, it's uncertain under any presidency whether the United States' security guarantee to Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia is credible. The only possible way we could stop a Russian invasion of these countries would be by using atomic weapons, and I very much doubt a President Obama, Clinton, or even Cruz would care enough about Baltic freedom to put at risk millions of American lives.
Trump is merely telling an unpleasant truth that, I strongly suspect, most foreign policy professionals and certainly Putin already know.
France and the U.K. got atomic weapons in part because they didn't believe that the U.S. would be willing to start a nuclear war to protect them from a Soviet invasion. The reason that the U.S. needed to have so many conventional forces in West Germany in the Cold War was that our threat to use atomic weapons to protect West Germany wasn't credible.
Trump won't significantly set back efforts to reduce climate change, at least not relative to Clinton, because Clinton would have lacked the political will to meaningfully mitigate the problem. The only way for an American president to significantly reduce global warming emissions would be to impose a huge carbon tax and either blow up the international trading system by putting massive tariffs on any nation that doesn't implement such a tax themselves or pay hundreds of billions of dollars to induce other nations to enact such a tax.
As I doubt Clinton would have taken these steps, Clinton's actions on climate change would have probably been largely symbolic. True, Trump will probably allocate fewer resources to promoting technological development in solar and wind power than a president Clinton would have, but this will probably be balanced, carbon emissions-wise, by his greater openness to atomic power.
If the left's worst fears about Trump's intentions are true and our next president hopes to destroy American democracy, be reassured that America's founding fathers wrote checks and balances into our constitution in anticipation of future Julius Caesars.
Although the Republicans control the House and Senate, the Republican leadership didn't defer to candidate Trump, and certainly wouldn't to a President Trump that threatens their branches' powers. If nothing else, count on the self-interest of House and Senate Republicans to protect democracy as a means of preserving their own privileges. Also, most of the media still hates Trump and will surely keep a careful watch on him.
Finally, no president could possibly launch a successful coup without having carefully chosen generals that have more loyalty to him than to the constitution, and Trump will likely never have enough time to do this. And Trump's sudden replacement of most of the generals would set off alarm bells, and certainly cause the Senate to not approve any promotion of military officers whose primary qualification seemed to be personal loyalty to Trump.
James D. Miller is Associate Professor of Economics at Smith College, the host of the Future Strategist podcast, and the author of Singularity Rising.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Insider.


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Luxury LooseLay stone tiles 610mm x 500mm x 4.5mm
Now $53/m2 Supply only (installation additional)
For pricing information or a quote on this product, give us a call on (07) 3855 8107 or contact us via our contact page.Enquiry
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Nevada and Pennsylvania offer a twist to traditional tile looks with their textile option.
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With Karndean LooseLay you get all the design and details you expect from Karndean, but in a unique format that can be installed quickly and easily in any room. Featuring an award-winning friction grip backing, Karndean Looselay secures firmly to any smooth, clean, dry floor. It's also durable, easy to clean, warmer and quieter underfoot.
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Brand: Karndean


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- This event has passed.
8:30am- Virtual Contemplative Prayer Group
Monday, October 19, 2020 AT 8:30 am - 9:30 am
|Recurring Event (See all)
An event every week that begins at 8:30 am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, repeating until Saturday, October 31, 2020
The Contemplative Prayer Group continues to meet via ZOOM on Saturdays at 9 am & on Mon., Wed. & Fri. at 8:30 am. They hold the intentions of the St. Joseph Parish community in prayer. All are welcome to join. For details, email the parish at: email@example.com.


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Seduction of Nrararn and Osoth (Day 37)
This morning I was flomped on the mountain I had melted, writing about yesterday. Nrararn and Osoth circled overhead twice side by side, and flew down to land on either side of me.
I was instantly suspicious of them.
Always when drakes are together on a mating flight, they're contesting with each other at least a little bit. (Me and Arilash too, in principle, but see Day 32 about how that is going.) So, usually they'll be racing a bit, each one trying to get there first. Or maybe each one trying to fly higher than the other, in case there's an excuse to have a fight. Or whatever.
Nrararn and Osoth were just, well, flying side by side, without any of that.
I lifted my chin off the frozen lava and peered at them. "You're looking inordinately peaceful today."
"In matters of love and marriage, our contest is as bitter and dire as any that this dragonless world has ever seen! Yet, somehow, there is an entire world beneath our wings, to observe, to explore, to sift for secrets," said Osoth.
"What oblique, obscure, occult Osoth isn't saying is, we've found the stars here, or some of them anyways. Want to see them with us?" said Nrararn.
"The stars? Were they missing? … This is a Typical Toroid. There aren't supposed to be any stars," I said. "There's no sky that isn't Hove for them to be in."
"Right, but we found some anyways. Come see!" said Nrararn, as if that explained everything.
I puffed sparks of lightning at Nrararn. "You're just trying to get me to spread my claspers for you again."
"The effects of the celestial realm may be mirrored in the terrestrial in divers ways. The fecundity and humidity that lie at the heart of the natural world may, perhaps, be among them."
"He said 'yes'. In a truly beautiful place, if our stolen hoven tourist guidebooks are any indication," said Nrararn "Got any better plans for the day?"
I didn't.
They were acting quite odd on the way.
"How much further are these stars?" I asked. "We've been flying a while." The while was well over an hour by that point, and we were still over wild and apparently star-free lands.
"We could fly all the way across the sky to the land on the other side!" said Nrararn. "There's air all the way."
"Wise, wise sky-mage, to answer the question only with praises of his chosen domain!" said Osoth. Then he blinked. "Which is to say, rather, that though we could fly across the sky, in this instance there is no need to. Another third of an hour will bring us there."
"Are your wings tired?" asked Nrararn, with a pointed look at Osoth.
"For if they are, Nrararn could surely conjure a comfortable wind, fast as a tempest, gentle as a breeze, letting us fly there with only a moderate delay and much less effort," said Osoth. "Such are the powers of sky magic."
So strange, hearing one of my fiancés praise another one. Very suspicious!
Originally published at Mating Flight. You can comment here or there.


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I love when screen time can be entertaining AND educational. Branchild on Netflix checks both boxes and is also interesting for kids of all ages and adults. Each show explores different scientific theories and ideas. There are exciting experiments that the audience can participate in and it's fast-paced enough to keep the attention of the entire family.
Minute to Win It
Even though we've played Minute to Win It games in the past, my kids just discovered the show and have been loving it. It's clean, entertaining, and gives use some great new ideas for Minute to Win It games to play on our own!
This documentary on Africa is visually stunning, incredibly well made, educational, and keeps the interest of our whole family. We love seeing the different animals and I am always in awe at how camera crews got all of the footage they did.
Planet Earth
This was the series that completely changed the way I see animals and the earth. It's truly breathtaking and intriguing to watch each episode and learn about parts of the earth I didn't even know existed. I love that our entire family is learning about the amazing earth we live on and the increased appreciation have of life and the ecosystem.
Planet Earth 2
Just as stunning as the original series, this second season introduces even more things on planet earth to appreciate and respect. We love this series just as much as the first!


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GF: 3 reception rooms, kitchen/breakfast room, conservatory, utility, boot room, 3 x WC's.
F & SF: Master bedroom with en-suite bath & dressing room, 5 further bedrooms, family bathroom & shower room.
Ground floor offices with self-contained 2 bed flat above. Attractive mature gardens, raised seed beds, greenhouse.
Superb eq. facilities & outbuildings offer tremendous scope for a range of equine use.
10 brick stables, 5 young stock pens, tack & feed rooms, wash bay & heated rug room.
60m x 20m floodlit outdoor arena; sand turn out pen.Multiple versatile outbuildings, 2 kennels, 80m rifle range.
Uttoxeter 5m | Stafford 11m | Stone 13m| M6 J14 15m | Birmingham Airport 28m | Birmingham 34m | Manchester 64m |
Wanfield Hall stands in a rural but easily accessible location close to the village of Kingstone with its church, village hall, primary school and popular pub, the Shrewsbury Arms. Within 5 miles is the
town of Uttoxeter with its Waitrose, further shops and amenities including its famous race course
and golf course. The county town of Stafford is 14miles from where there is a regular main line train
service to London (Euston 1hr 20 mins).
Wanfield Hall is well placed for road, train and air travel with the M6 junction14 being 15 miles, the
A50 just 5 miles and regional International airports at Birmingham (28 miles) and East Midlands and
Manchester airports both are within an hour's drive.
For equestrian enthusiasts there are a number of good equestrian attractions locally including Field House Equestrian Centre (approx. 7 miles), Eland Lodge Equestrian Centre (approx. 8 miles), Staffordshire County Showground (approx. 8 miles), Uttoxeter Racecourse (5m), local packs are the Meynell and South Staffordshire, North Staffordshire, Atherstone or Quorn.
Wanfield Hall is a fine south facing country house standing in the total privacy of its beautiful gardens and grounds. It is complemented by an excellent range of versatile outbuildings including stables and equestrian amenities, with well-maintained post and railed paddocks and fields extending to about 32.82 acres.
The house, which is Grade II listed, dates back to the 17th Century with a part timber frame and double gabled front façade. It enjoys well laid out accommodation ideal for both easy to manage everyday living and more formal entertaining. The front door opens to the hall off which is the drawing room with its impressive fireplace, connecting to a large conservatory for further entertaining space. The attractive dining room is conveniently located by the spacious living kitchen, bespoke fitted in a traditional style with an AGA range, and a breakfast area with views over the pretty gardens to the rear. A side hall gives access to the side of the house and the family sitting room with the back hall, utility, boot room and versatile office space beyond.
Upstairs, the master bedroom enjoys a well fitted dressing room and en suite bathroom, while there are two delightful bedrooms with far reaching views to the front of the house served by a family bathroom. To the second floor there are three further bedrooms and a shower room.
Self-contained Flat
The flat has a separate access to the side of the house with a staircase leading up to an open plan kitchen/sitting room. It has two double bedrooms with fitted wardrobes and a shower room and bathroom.
Equestrian Facilities & Outbuildings
To the rear of the house there is a range of versatile outbuildings and an attractive traditionally designed stable yard served by its own separate entrance and driveway with electric gates. These well planned equestrian facilities combined with ample turnout will appeal to professional or lifestyle equestrian users, alternatively the extensive barns provides excellent storage, garage and yard space for a host of other uses. The facilities / outbuildings in brief comprise:
• 10 loose boxes
• Tack room, feed room, heated rug room, hot water wash box
• 5 Bay open front young stock barn
• Outdoor arena, 60m x 20m, silica sand and rubber surface, with floodlights, post and rail perimeter fenced.
• Sand school /lunging ring; 2 kennels.
• L shaped open front vehicle machinery store barn
• Large general purpose central barn and further detached open front barn and tool store.
• Hardstanding track to the immediate paddocks.
Gardens and grounds
Wrought iron electric gates open to a driveway which leads between mature woodland to one side and post and railed paddocks to the other.
There is a wide gravel sweep to the side of the house and a circular drive to the front with ample parking.
The house stands in the complete privacy of its beautiful and well stocked gardens, sweeping lawns, woodland and well-maintained paddocks and meadowland extending to 32.82 acres.
There is grazing land with frontage to the River Blythe with fishing rights, some wildlife pools and woodland with an 80m shooting range.
Mains electricity & water. Private drainage via septic tank.
Council Tax: Band G
Local Authority: Staffordshire County Council.
Listing: Grade II listed.
From Stafford take the A518 towards Uttoxeter. Continue along this road for approximately 7 miles and upon reaching the junction, turn left signposted Stone. Proceed along this road, taking the first turning left to Uttoxeter. Follow this road for approximately 5 miles before taking the right hand turning shortly after the "Castlewood Café". At the T-junction turn right and continue for about 1.5miles before branching left. The entrance to Wanfield Hall can be found after a short distance on your left hand side.
Joint Selling Agents:
Strutt & Parker, Shrewsbury Office.
JACKSON PROPERTY for themselves and the vendors of the property, whose agents they are, give notice that these particulars, although believed to be correct, do not constitute any part of an offer of contract, that all statements contained in these particulars as to this property are made without responsibility and are not to be relied upon as statements or representations of fact and that they do not make or give any representation or warranty whatsoever in relation to this property. An intending purchaser must satisfy himself by inspection or otherwise as to the correctness of each of the statements contained in these particulars. The agent has not tested any apparatus, equipment, fixture, fittings or services and so cannot verify that they are in working order, or fit for their purpose, neither has the agent checked legal documents to verify the freehold/leasehold status of the property. The buyer is advised to obtain verification from their solicitor or surveyor.


text: Will Newton wrote: > > Is this expected behaviour? > 9> http:request(get, {"http://localhost/index.cgi?foo=%9F", []}, [], []). > {error,no_query} > > Is there a way to hex encode non 7-bit ASCII values in a path or query? I > haven't found a canonical source on what the correct way to do this, RFC 2396 > seems to leave it open, but I would expect to be able to do that. I do not know if it is the expected behavior! The uri-parsing is the one part of the http-client that has not at all been changed from the "prototype" (unsported version) that was contributed by Johan Blom. We will have to look into that. -- /Ingela - OTP team


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How can e-commerce continue to grow? This guest post by Jamie Murray Wells, founder and Executive Chairman of Glasses Direct, looks at the next wave coming round the corner.
Latest figures show UK ecommerce sales continue to buck the financial doom-and-gloom. There was an overall 14% increase in the year to April 2009. E-commerce certainly looks like the Noah's Ark of retail during the recession: those companies that have a strong online consumer proposition get a ticket to ride out the storm, and those that don't, may drown.
There is a lot of he growth in the clothing, footwear and accessories category in particular. According to Forrester, in those categories online sales represented 2-4% in 2003, and now represent over 10% and in some cases, over 15% of the total category.
Where the sale of more 'generic' products such as books, DVDs and travel can be seen as something of a first wave of ecommerce, understanding how consumers want to buy high-touch, cosmetic products online such as expensive jewellery, fitted garments and for us, eyewear, could represent something of a second wave of e-commerce.
For companies involved in this second wave of ecommerce, it is not as simple as relying on the old cornerstones of price, range, convenience to attract customers. Our peer group face significant consumer purchase barriers to do with try-on, fit, and product education, that one-by-one, need to be identified and addressed, through continued technological innovation and great customer service, in order to pursued customers to make purchase decisions in our favour over the high street.
A number of interesting businesses ride this new wave of e-commerce innovation shotgun with us:
Blue Nile, is an online jeweller that offers a completely new level of service online, changing diamond shoppers' habits. They offer enormous amounts of information on the diamonds that they sell, specialist experts on-call, and a massive focus on education to teach you about what you should think about when buying a diamond – far more than you could get in a high street store. The technology on their site allows you to see what different carat diamonds would look like on your finger. This matched with the traditional advantages of shopping online – a massive selection, reasonable pricing and convenience, has meant their business has been a runaway success.
Everyone knows ASOS, which has developed some really strong online celebrity and brand engagement. Suggestions for product ranges and tips from other consumers' purchases, beautifully shot imagery and the ability to zoom in to inspect every detail complete the picture for the ASOS shopper of high-touch products.
At Glasses Direct [interest declared] we help our customers find their ideal glasses with our Virtual Mirror, which allows people to virtually try on glasses while they're browsing. We want people to use the resulting images to get other people's opinions on their looks. 'Do I look good in this' becomes a question you can ask your community, not just one shopping companion or the store assistant. Retailers like us are looking at ground-breaking ways to visualise products online, especially when the products face higher than average barriers to sale.
And then there's Zappos, who use customer service to create a 'personal emotional connection' with their customers – something that helps it overcome barriers to buying shoes online, drives loyalty and therefore repeat purchase, and helps them sell over a $1b of shoes every year online.
The second wave of ecommerce isn't about necessarily unique or high technologies, but how we, as retailers of the fitted or fashion product, can fashion practical online solutions to each of our own consumer bases' needs. I believe that in years to come it is likely that every retailer will be able to offer price, range and convenience like Amazon, and so the real competition will be around the customer experience and the customer service. We're just ahead of the curve by prioritising these now. This is why, as I said in a blog post after a visit to the company, Zappos, who calls itself 'a service company that happens to sell shoes', it will probably in time, replace Amazon as the e-commerce 'gold standard'.
Now that the first group of second wave companies has proved that the public, investors and the city all buy in to the prospects of companies dealing thin the high-touch, entrepreneurs should be scrutinising the high street for possibilities. Most of the obvious e-commerce first wave opportunities may well have been seized, but there are many second wave opportunities still out there. Look around and anything that says 'tailor made' on, is not sacred to the high street anymore.


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Acer had an incredible number of tablets at Computex 2011, but one of the most riveting ones in attendance was their Iconia A500 Google Android 3.1 Tablet PC.
The new Acer Iconia A500 should be released in June to select markets and will shortly start to enjoy a little bit of availability on a worldwide scale. The tablet is a 10.1 inch capacitive multi-touchscreen display with a resolution of 1280×800 pixels. It has a great internal processor with the Nvidia Tegra 250 Dual Cortex A9 Processor and around 1 GB of Ram. Your internal memory is relegated to about 16 GB but you can further expand this via the Micro SD card for an additional 32 GB.
The A500 features two cameras in order to snap photos or shoot some video. The rear facing edition is a 5 MP model and has a LED flash. The front facing model is only 2 MP, but is perfect for video chatting or conferencing.
This tablet has most of the normal ports you would expect of a higher end device in order to plug in a keyboard or various peripherals. It has a Micro USB, USB 2.0, and a Micro HDMI, which is solid because it really allows you to virtually plug anything into it. Of course, it also has a built in microphone, stereo speakers, and a 3.5 mm head phone jack.
The Iconia A500 impressed me due to the fact that Acer was not relying on the stock Honeycomb experience in order to drive people to purchase it. They had lots of excellent sub menus that organized your applications into more palpable screens. It had things broken up into Multimedia, Game Zone, and Reading. The Acer Lumiread application was very exciting, and since we love our e-Reading at Good e-Reader, we dove into this application.
The Lumiread app allows for a ton of customization via the settings menu right off the bat. You can change your font size to about 6 default font sizes. It also has a neat nighttime reading function that put white text on a black background. This would be perfect because as you know reading on a white background at night ends up straining your eyes. One of the neat functions on this app is that you could pinch and zoom the text on a certain page. Although when you did that it did not retain your settings from page to page. You actually had to hit a dedicated button to offset the changes you made in order to skip to the next page. I see the pinch and zoom feature to be not that great with an ebook but would be quite excellent with a PDF file that you NEED to zoom in on specific areas. Speaking of such, the Lumiread app has categories to separate books by PDF and eBooks and also genres such as Mystery, Suspense, and Thrillers.
In all, this tablet was very slick and polished and I dig the fact that Acer, with their entire Iconia line of tablets, has a docking port on the bottom of the tablet. This will insure that people who like to type on physical keyboards will not be left out.
Finally lets get to connectivity! It is fully compliant with the Google Android Market and Adobe Flash so you will have no shortage of applications to download and install. It supports many 2G and 3G networks so you are not locked to specific carrier. If you are with Verizon you can take advantage of their LTE network and get accelerated speeds.
[cincopa AoLAel6JYjqD]
Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times.


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Faction Fridays: Chaotic French
The first thing I recommend doing after downloading this faction is renaming the file "Chaotic French." I would have done it myself, but WordPress can be really obnoxious about uploading/replacing files.
PDF Download: 151008_faction_roster
I used the French name generator from Fantasy Name Generators.
This one took me about fifteen minutes to generate scores and alignments, and to assign classes. I'm actually really pleased with how this faction turned out because there's a great diversity of classes.
This faction is predominantly male, and there are a whopping ten (33%) Chaotic characters. Hence the silly nickname.
There are three Wizards, which is literally the first class I personally look for when I generate a new faction. There are even a couple Paladins, which I find remarkable. This could be a really fun group to develop.
I should say at this point that I'm pretty much rolling these and operating under certain "3e tendencies," which means if you're hoping for Warlocks, you'll probably be disappointed.
There were no natural 18s, and only one natural 3 — Manuel, the Chaotic Sorcerer has a Constitution of 3 at 1st level. Therefore, he has like . . . 1 hit point.
Guard him well.


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[Update: The slides for this meeting are now available here]
It's a bit short notice but the next ALM User Group meeting is tonight at 6:00 PM. Here are the details:
Life Outside of TFS – Ever wondered what ALM tools are out there besides TFS? Is it better to go best-of-suite or best-of-breed? This talk will be your chance to learn!
CSGi writes, builds, deploys, and maintains millions of lines of code across multiple languages and platforms. It has been undergoing an agile transformation for a number of years now. Early on in that process, they adopted the practice of Continuous Integration across the entire enterprise and put together a comprehensive ALM solution based on best-of-breed components (Jira, Confluence, Fisheye/Crucible, Jenkins, SVN, NAnt/MSBuild) and home grown tools to fill in the gaps. I'll give a broad overview of the entire ALM process and the tools we've adopted along the way.
Andy Ochsner – Andy Ochsner is a Systems Architect on the Infrastructure .NET team at CSG International. He's been doing Agile software development almost exclusively throughout his career and believes strongly in TDD and Continuous Integration/Delivery. He has applied these techniques using a variety of technologies, with C# and Java leading the way. In his free time, he enjoys brewing beer.
CSG International
18020 Burt Street
Omaha, NE 68022
NOTE: Parking in any spots available in the front of the building. If you park in back, you will have to walk around to the front to enter. Registration will take place at a table outside of the Release Room conference room, so visitors can pass the front entry desk and take their first right to get a name tag and sign in.
About the Omaha ALM User Group
Community-driven, technology-agnostic group focused on utilizing tools and automation to support the people and processes across the complete application lifecycle. We are always looking individuals to share their experience. Let us know if you are interested in talking at the group. No prior speaking experience in required.
>>> Click here to RSVP <<<


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phl700r | Graduate
Creative And Critical Thinking
- Overview
- Topics
- Costs
Course Description
This course challenges the learner to become a creative leader or problem-solver and to begin the process of personal transformation by questioning assumptions and conventional patterns of thinking. Throughout the course, students demonstrate characteristics of creative and critical thinking in individual and collaborative situations.
Course Competencies
- Actualize theory and practice to cultivate personal and group learning.
- Integrate critical and creative processes to initiate lifelong leadership development.
- Develop a scholar-practitioner-leader voice to communicate across boundaries.
- Review and apply models of ethical, inclusive, and compassionate behavior within the doctoral learning community.
- Apply research-based reflective processes to understand individual and shared epistemological and ontological positions.
This graduate-level course is 1 This course is available as part of a degree or certificate program. To enroll, speak with an Enrollment Representative.
Course details:
topic title goes here
Please ask about these special rates:
Teacher Rate: For some courses, special tuition rates are available for current, certified P-12 teachers and administrators. Please speak with an Enrollment Representative today for more details.
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The University of Phoenix reserves the right to modify courses.
While widely available, not all programs are available in all locations or in both online and on-campus formats. Please check with a University Enrollment Representative.
Transferability of credit is at the discretion of the receiving institution. It is the student's responsibility to confirm whether or not credits earned at University of Phoenix will be accepted by another institution of the student's choice.


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What do you use payee for?
I pretty much always leave the Payee field empty when entering transactions since I don't see any use for it, but I am sure there must be a reason it's there, I just don't know it yet. So what are some good reasons to start filling this field? What use do you get from it?
1. It helps me identify the transactions if there is ever a disparity between what my bank thinks I have and YNAB thinks I SHOULD have.
2. It speeds up my tracking...YNAB "remembers" your payees and will suggest budget categories based upon which payee you choose. If the payee is my landlord, I'm always assigning that transaction to the "rent" category.
3. It raises my awareness of what's happening to my money. Eating out has always been a problem area for me, but when I saw my payees in front of me, I realized my REAL problem is the work cafeteria. Over and over and over the same payee. So I need to address that by pre-planning and organization (packing snacks and a lunch) as opposed to if it were all late night trips to Taco Bell...which based upon my college years, would mean I'd need to drink less!
Uh? Let's say you have a category, as I do, called "Home Maintenance." I use the Payee field to record a visit to Home Depot for paint; maybe then I go to the Nursery for plants and then I make an order from Amazon for air filters. These all transactions in the same month for the same category.
I personally like to know this information.
Another example: Under my Master Category of "Personal Care, " I have a category called "Beauty." This could include a transaction to EJ Salon for my haircut/style; Luxe Nails for a pedicure and Spa for a massage. The payee describes who you are paying for the expense recorded in that category.
Wow, I have spent a lot of time on these boards today. That's what happens when you are living away from home and have nothing better to do, I guess. One more post and then I am leaving for work so I will actually have some money to budget!
I find it really interesting what seems like too much work to different people. It frankly would never have occurred to me not to enter my payees. But I grew up with a checkbook register, like bevocat.
Split transactions, though? I experimented with them when I would go to WalMart and buy groceries, paper goods, soap, and cat food. My conclusion...ain't nobody got time for that. 😊
I decided I was comfortable enough with what I spend on toilet paper and shampoo that I didn't need to track it separately. Right now I put everything from WalMart in Groceries/Toiletries/Pet Supplies and call it good.
Thanks everyone for suggestions! I am posting this reply here because I can't edit the main post anymore - my intention when making this thread was not to ask what you should put into payee, but what use you get from filling that information.
Got some interesting insight, my favorite is Voracious Reader 's suggestion to use it as a way to just better see where you're spending the money in a given category if you think you spend too much in it. Also props for mentioning reports-by-payee in Toolkit mentioned by Move Light Sound Life .
I am now on a quest to update all of my past transactions with payee because I guess I hate having free time? :D
But if you got any other novel ways to use it or want to share how it helps you with budgeting I am all
My spouse wants to put down every single different name. I myself care not that we bought fast food at 3 different food trucks last weekend, I just want to see Fast Food as payee, because then I can track that we spend $50 on fast food this month. I use Grocery for all grocery shopping except stores like Target and Costco because the possibility for, hmm, unnecessary budget-busting spending is much greater at Costco than Aldi. I tend to use the memo field for things like names of grocery stores. Or for Car master category transactions, I put down the vehicle in the memo, because I'd like to be able to, if I wanted to, to track gas purchase between the vehicles.
This is actually kinda funny to me, because you're like my boyfriend and I'm like everyone responding in this thread.
He wasn't inputting his payees and I got, basically, culture shock.
Sometimes I use a "generic" payee (like corner store) but for other things I don't.
It helps me tell where, specifically, I may be 'blowing' money, so as to brainstorm ways to cut back
Is there any possibility you've misunderstood what split transactions are for? For most people, they are on the rarer side—most of the time when I make a purchase somewhere, the entire purchase belongs in one category. If I go to the bar, the whole thing is Dining Out. If I go to the mechanic, the whole purchase is auto maintenance. I didn't even realize that screenshot was a split—that is a very (I would say excessively) detailed split.
The structure of a transaction comes from the days in which paper checks/cheques were used. You must fill out the date, the amount, and the payee. Then there was a memo field which occasionally gets used to remind yourself why you wrote that check, or to communicate information to the payee, like your account number. But it is the one that is least used.
In a split transaction, unless you need to make a transfer, the payee is always the same—the name of the shop or person who received the money. Then you split according to categories. So if I go to the mega shop and buy groceries, birthday gifts, and towels, I create a three way split, but all the groceries, all the gifts, and all the towels are under each split. It looks to me like you are creating a split for every single item on a receipt.
So no, you don't need a payee for each line of a split. But it looks like you are using splits where you should either be recording multiple transactions or at a minimum, grouping like categories together.
Maurycy Zarzycki said:
I had separate categories for veggies, dinner fillers, dinner meats, spreadables etc.
Thank you! I no longer feel like the most anal-retentive person in existence. 😎