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If you're in the market for a home in the desert, why not make it one with an oasis? Here are four pools that could be yours.
1301 Estancia Court
4 bedrooms | 4.5 bathroomss | 4,887 sq. ft.| $836,000
Must experience this gorgeous home with all the bells and whistles including a 4-car garage with RV parking, 57 Solar panels, mountain views throughout, gourmet kitchen, 12ft waterfall, 60ft heated covered pool with separate bathroom, pergola, newer roof, built in BBQ, sound system, steam room, weight room with weights, fireplace, wet bar, large pantry, extensive back patio, remote controlled blinds, and an amazing view of the City lights at night, and MORE! It even has a lift from the garage to the main house for convenience. The solar panels just about covers all the electrical needs of the home including the heated pool. The seller also owns the lot adjacent to this property on the East side also available for sale. The listing agent is related to the seller.
Allen Takeshita
5505 George Catlin
4 bedrooms | 3 bathrooms | 3,801 sq. ft. | $685,000
Surrender yourself to the luxury you deserve! This prestigious location offers privacy with scenic mountain & valley views. The nature setting on this lot comes inside from large windows throughout the home. With 3,801 Sq. ft. of living space, this home includes 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, a game room, 2 fireplaces & a 4-car garage. The living room features an adobe fireplace with carpet and tile floor. The kitchen is a chef's dream with granite counters, maple cabinets, an island, an eating area, plus a formal dining room. The owner's suite is a generous size and features a sitting area with an adobe fireplace, carpet floors, it includes an office with tile floors and a private bath. The private bath has a jet tub, shower stall, and double sinks, with a large walk-in closet. The second owner's suite is spacious with carpet floors and private bath. 2nd & 3rd bedrooms are split. The backyard includes pool, and a covered patio that makes great for entertaining.
Listing Agent:
The Bruder Team | 575.650.7224
Steinborn & Associates Real Estate | 575.522.3698
805 Roadrunner Cir.
4 bedrooms | 5 bathrooms | 4,767sq. ft. | $824,900
This home is an exquisite example of southwest design with warmth and sophistication under one roof. The living area includes a welcoming foyer, great room with massive wood burning fireplace, formal dining room, den with fireplace, library, kitchen with all the bells and whistles including sub zero fridge, double ovens, tons of counter space, large pantry and fireplace. The master suite boasts 2 walk in closets, a generous amount of built-in cabinets, new 6' under mount Jacuzzi and fireplace. Each of the 3 additional bedrooms are mini masters with separate tub and shower with walk in closets. Step outside to the large patio and entertaining area to marvel at the view of the Organ mountains while relaxing by the fireplace or taking a dip in the heated pool.
Vicki Martin
The post Happy Home: Pools We Love appeared first on Las Cruces Magazine.


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Shop New Toyota Vehicles in Dallas, Texas!If you're in the Dallas, TX, area and wondering who has the latest Toyota models in stock, then check us out here at South Toyota! We have a great selection of competitively priced new Toyota vehicles. Our highly trained sales team is fully equipped to provide you and your family with the car, truck or SUV of your dreams.
If you see a vehicle you like in our inventory, fill out our contact form or give us a call today!

subset: commoncrawl


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Property Taxes
Within the Counties of Leeds and Grenville the responsibility of setting tax policy has been done in a cooperative approach between the ten local municipal treasurers and Counties staff. Counties council, in turn, has been responsive to the recommendations made and has been proactive in the vision of creating a competitive economic environment in Leeds and Grenville for all property classes.
Insert video "How assessment and taxation work"
Once the Counties levy requirements have been determined for the current year, tax rates are calculated for each of the property tax classes (such as residential, industrial, commercial, etc.).
In addition to the Counties establishing tax rates for Counties purposes, the Province establishes school board tax rates and each of the local municipalities in Leeds and Grenville establish tax rates for their own purpose.
Paying Your Taxes
The United Counties of Leeds and Grenville does not issue property tax bills. This is done by your local municipality which can be located on your most recent tax bill. Click on your municipality's link below for their contact information.
Tax Relief Programs
The United Counties of Leeds and Grenville offers a tax deferral program for low income seniors and low income disabled persons. The By-Law and application form provides general information on the eligibility requirements and how the tax deferral works. Eligible persons must apply annually by June 30th of each taxation year for which the deferral is requested.
Contact Us


text: October 21, 2013 Cost Estimate As reported by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September 12, 2013 View Document27.33 KB Summary As reported by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September 12, 2013 S. 559 would establish a fund within the Department of the Treasury to make specified payments to Americans held hostage in Iran between November 3, 1979, and January 20, 1981, or to the estates of former hostages who are no longer living. The fund would be financed by a surcharge of 30 percent levied on certain monetary penalties assessed for undertaking prohibited activity with Iran. CBO estimates that enacting S. 559 would increase net revenues by $77 million over the 2014-2023 period and would increase direct spending by $102 million over the 2014-2023 period; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures apply. CBO estimates that implementing the bill would have discretionary costs of less than $500,000 over the 2014-2018 period, assuming the availability of appropriated funds. S. 559 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) and would impose no costs on state, local, or tribal governments. Legislative Information Available From Congress.gov


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Former WCW champion Sting was taken to a hospital right after his Night of Champions match against Seth Rollins and underwent a CAT scan and an MRI to assess damage to his neck after he took the turnbuckle powerbomb.
TMZ reports that no fractures were discovered but he was held overnight and was released from the hospital yesterday afternoon. "He's able to walk but is in significant pain," TMZ wrote. The wrestling legend was supposed to be part of last night's Raw broadcast but he went back home after he was released from the hospital. The website adds that doctors are not able to give a long-term prognosis yet.
Sting immediately fell after taking the powerbomb and couldn't hold on to the ropes. Not realizing the damage, Rollins went for the Irish whip and instead of ducking the clothesline, Sting – who barely ran the ropes – collapsed and the WWE doctor had to go in and check on him after the referee ordered him in the ring.
You can see a video of the incident below.


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Welcome to the Subscribers' Armour Gallery N – P
Each submission has a 'gallery' of thumbnails which you can click on to see an enlarged image along with some short text describing the model – enjoy!
Galleries: A | B | C-I | J-L | M | N-P | R-S | T-Z
Quad Gun Tractor and 25pdr Field Gun by Andrew Eaton
Regards, Andrew E.
Panther diorama by Pete Schneider
Resin turret with moulded in battle damage.
Chalk camo, rust and smoke over an oil washed base-coat with some oil rust streaks.
Pete S.
Objekt 268 by Dai Williams
The kit was easy to build though care was needed with the etched frames for the two smoke canisters on the rear of the hull. I replaced the etched brass retaining straps with self-adhesive foil which was easier than bending and attaching the kit parts.
The grab rails were replaced with 0.5mm brass rod. I also replaced the etched brush guard over the headlight with 0.5mm rod and thin plastic sheet.
I used Halford's Grey Metal Primer on the metal parts and Halford's Grey Plastic Primer sprayed over this to cover the rest of the model.
The base colour was Tamiya Dark Green (XF61). The tracks were sprayed with a 50:50 mixture of Matt Black (XF1) and Nato Brown (XF68). This was also used to shade the model reducing the need for washes. A light over-spray of Nato Green (XF67) was applied over this. Nato Green mixed with Yellow / Green (XF4) was applied sparingly and randomly over this to finish off the scheme.
I limited weathering to some general discolouration using pastel chalks and some mud spatters made by dragging a brush loaded with a slurry of earth coloured pigments across a piece of scrap sprue.
I applied random patches of earth coloured pigment to the tracks. Vandyke Brown and Lamp Black oil paints were mixed and heavily thinned as a wash to add depth to the recessed track detail. Powdered graphite was rubbed onto the outer surfaces of the tracks using my fingertip and onto the metal areas of the tools using a rubber oil painting brush.
Dai W.
North Africa vignette by Ian Ruscoe
This is in 1:35th scale with the figures coming from Dragon and the Flak from Tamiya with etch updates. The idea was to show a flak emplacement on the edge of an airfield in Tunisia. The groundwork was built from scratchbuilt using polystyrene to build up groundwork and then covered in Polyfiller etc. The sides of the emplacement were from corrugated plastic sheet.
Hope you like it… Ian R.
Hope you like it… Ian R.
Panther Ausf. A by Radek Pituch
Panther Ausf. A I./4.Pz.Reg, Anzio 1944
Here are pictures of my Panther made in 2009. The model is the older DML Panther Ausf. A early model (1:35th scale), updated with Fruil tracks, RB Model barrel and part fenders and side skirts. The zimmerit was made with Greenstuff and magic sculp putty. The model was painted with the use of color modulation (this was my first try, before I made the Soviet Pz IV E) with Tamiya acrylics. The weathering was done with oils and Vallejo pigments and still water.
Regards, Radek
Here are pictures of my Panther made in 2009. The model is the older DML Panther Ausf. A early model (1:35th scale), updated with Fruil tracks, RB Model barrel and part fenders and side skirts. The zimmerit was made with Greenstuff and magic sculp putty. The model was painted with the use of color modulation (this was my first try, before I made the Soviet Pz IV E) with Tamiya acrylics. The weathering was done with oils and Vallejo pigments and still water.
Regards, Radek
Panzer Collection by Robert McGuire
Here you have a tiny sample of the extraordinary Panzer Collection by Robert McGuire. He seems to mainly build scratchbuilt and kit conversions in 1:16 and 1:15 scale and I think you'll agree, he has some talent for it! You can find out and see a lot more by connecting with Robert on FB as well as from his link below.
Wow! Incredible stuff!
Wow! Incredible stuff!
Panzer III AusfG - Ive Had Enough - by Mike Tipping
Here's my Tamiya 1:35 Panzer II AusfG Tank "I've had enough". The kit goes together well and I wanted to create a scene that had some meaning and a story behind it – hope you like it?
Mike T.
Panzer 3 Ausf L by Andy Burton
Panzer 3 Ausf L. sPzAbt 502 1st Company, Russia, September 1942. This 1/35th Tamiya kit is quite an old one but has very good detail and is pretty accurate and builds into a nice model. I built it more or less from the box except for some minor details added such as: Lights and horn cable conduits + Grab handles and tool clamp handles made from fuse wire, Spare track pins from stretched sprue, etched brass Air intake screens from the spares box, drilled out the mg's, battle damaged the fenders and made the one piece rubber band type tracks sag over the return rollers using pins (a lot cheaper than £25 for a set of individual link tracks to get the same weight sag effect) I also added one or two small bolt heads etc here and there. The figure is included in the kit and though dated compared to today's figures it looks the part when painted up and installed in the Tank. Finally I placed some bits of stowage to the model just a few helmets, a gas mask container, some old wire, chain, pick axe head, mug and water bottles etc.
Paris Winter 1943 by Dave Barrette
The oil drums are from my spares box; I think they are Italeri as is the lamp post – the tools inside are either scratch built or Tamiya. These are painted darker as if they are in shadow inside the building, as in the floor it actually gets lighter as you go towards the door.
It has drawn some attention at a show, just because it has a couple of icicles on it, these are made from clear plastic sprue from a truck kit, coated with super glue and left to drip down, this gives the ice a sparkle and an uneven look – took about an hour to get the look right.
…and I even superglued my hand to the table top, doing it, placed my hand on a drip spot!
Dave B.
Per Olav Lund dioramas
Thanks Per OL.
Puma by Bill Curtis
The modifications were the armour texture and the engine deck grills replaced with plastic card items. Paint finish was done with Tamiya colours; light pin washes, subtle weathering and dry brushing. Another not-new kit but one which builds into a very nice representation of the real vehicle
Regards, Bill C.


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Been following this company for a year or so and saw this video. I'm not generally a fan of swing gadgets but this look like it has a few good features. Has anyone else had any experience of it?
Reply : Mon 18th Feb 2013 14:20
Hopefully myself and/or Owen will be testing soon.
There is another similar post on affordable trackman which lists some of the other products, all due to be reviews on Golfshake very soon >>>>>
Reply : Mon 18th Feb 2013 20:22
Is that David Bowie?
Reply : Mon 18th Feb 2013 21:32
looks good. anyone know a price?
Reply : Tue 19th Feb 2013 08:24
Got to admit, this looks quite good. I'm sure it will never, ever replace a quality coach, but as long as they continue to update the software and the coaching drills it could be quite good
I hope its not stupid money though.
Reply : Tue 19th Feb 2013 08:42
I read on a blog somewhere that it was initially being priced at $199 + shipping in the states.
So maybe around the �150 mark over here when released?
Sadly no good for me as I don't have a smartphone
Reply : Tue 19th Feb 2013 08:45
Bloody hell, �150, that's stupid money. I could get nearly 10 lessons with my pro for that. I'd have paid about �50 for one.
Ah well, is there a cheaper alternative in the app store? I wonder.
Reply : Tue 19th Feb 2013 08:48
Its only a guess Chris based on $199 in the states if that is correct.
Reviews were mixed with some saying another type of product was better until the glitches on Skypro are dealt with.
Be interesting to see what Darren thinks when he gets to test it in the near future
Reply : Tue 19th Feb 2013 08:52
Found a link, that quotes the $199
Reply : Tue 19th Feb 2013 08:54
Darren will have to let me test it for him Thanks for the link.
Reply : Tue 19th Feb 2013 13:34
Just got the SwingSmart to test Chris. Currently charging up for a full test on the range tomorrow
Reply : Tue 19th Feb 2013 18:08
That looks fantastic. Let us know how you get on.


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SEAT Tarraco FR PHEV
SEAT's Tarraco becomes more interesting in PHEV plug-in hybrid form. Jonathan Crouch takes a look.
Ten Second Review
There aren't too many spacious family-sized SUVs with plug-in hybrid tech, but this is one of them, the SEAT Tarraco FR PHEV. You lose the 7-seat option with the electrified tech but you do get Volkswagen Group engineering, sharp styling, plenty of interior space and, the Iberian maker hopes, a dash of Spanish flair. Which this car will need to stand out in its segment.
You would have expected that the first non-premium Volkswagen Group brand to launch a plug-in hybrid SUV would have been Volkswagen. After all, that marque virtually pioneered plug-in tech for the volume market with the Golf GTE back in 2015. And in 2016 announced a Tiguan GTE concept model that looked set to extend that tech into crossover territory. But curiously, that Tiguan GTE concept never made it to production. And it was left to SEAT to be the first maker from the Volkswagen conglomerate to introduce SUV buyers to plug-in motoring with this Tarraco FR PHEV model, launched in early 2020.
This is one of six electric and plug-in SEAT and CUPRA models the Spanish group has developed using technology from its Wolfsburg parent company, this Tarraco also sharing its PHEV powerplant with a plug-in version of SEAT's Leon family hatch.
Driving Experience
The powertrain here is a 1.4-litre TSI 150PS petrol engine mated to an 85kW electric motor powered by a 13kWh lithium-ion battery. Total output is 245PS with 400Nm of torque, which gives this substantial 'D'-segment SUV a decent turn of speed, with 62mph from rest occupying just 7.4s en route to 135mph. More significant is the WLTP-rated all-electric driving range of 31 miles.
Various driving settings allow best use of the PHEV tech. There's a pure-electric option but 'Hybrid' mode is the one you'll most commonly default to, a setting that sees the battery and the engine working together, seamlessly cutting in and out. Throughout, the characteristics of an electric motor mean that the full power is available instantly, unlike in an internal combustion unit where the maximum output is only available when it reaches a certain engine speed. There's also a 'Battery Hold' option (so you can save battery charge for later in your trip - say urban driving you might have to do at the end of a lengthy journey). And a 'Battery Charge' option (which allows you to charge the battery via the TSI engine - though it's much more efficient to charge the battery from a plug point).
Design and Build
There's very little visual differentiation to set this PHEV model apart from its more conventionally-engined Tarraco showroom stablemates, but this plug-in variant will still stand out from most other volume versions of this SUV model line. That's because SEAT has chosen to launch it with sporty 'FR' trim, which gives the looks of this family crossover quite a lift. The exterior design is enhanced with wider wheel arches, a sporty rear spoiler and FR-specific 19-inch alloy wheels. At the back, the 'coast-to-coast' full-width rear tail lamp treatment further highlights the FR look.
That and the 2.8m wheelbase facilitate a roomy cabin. And quite a sophisticated-looking one, thanks primarily to a 10.25-inch digital instrument binnacle and the placement of a 'floating' 9.2-inch infotainment screen on top of the dashboard. The 10.25-inch digital instrument display you'll view through the steering wheel allows drivers to access everything from classic information found on analogue dials through to full-colour maps and navigation. Controlling the information provided is simple and requires the driver to merely press the steering wheel-mounted 'View' control button to scroll through the three different available main displays. Out back, there's 700-litre of luggage space, which increases to 1,775-litres when all the seats are folded.
Market and Model
You'll need a premium budget for this PHEV Tarraco - think around £40,000, which is probably more than you might ever have thought to be paying for any sort of SEAT. A key extra for likely buyers is the option to upgrade to larger 20-inch wheels. A fresh colour option - 'Fura Grey' - is also available.
The 'FR' trim package offered with this plug-in model delivers quite a lot. As well as the body styling items, there's black roof rails, Adaptive Cruise Control, keyless entry, a 'Park assist' auto parking system. Plus there's cloth and alcantara-trimmed front sports seats, with the driver's chair being electrically-adjustable. The Tarraco claims to be extremely well connected too, thanks to its brand's 'Full Link' technology built into its centre-dash infotainment screen, which incorporates 'Android Auto' and 'Apple CarPlay' smartphone-mirroring. Access to calls, messages, music and voice recognition as well as a bespoke 'SEAT Drive' App, means that the Tarraco allows you to network wherever and whenever. In addition, Amazon Alexa is also available to help you manage your personal schedule, play music, navigate to points of interest, request personalised news or find the nearest SEAT dealership.
Safety-wise, 'Front assist with bicycle detection', 'Lane assist', 'Pre-Crash Assist', 'Rollover Assist' and Emergency Call are all standard. And SEAT offers a plethora of additional systems too, including 'Emergency Assist', 'Blind Spot Detection and 'Exit Assist', 'Traffic Sign Recognition', 'Traffic Jam Assist' and 'Light Assist' as options.
Cost of Ownership
One of the main reasons you might want this PHEV model is to reduce your Benefit-in-Kind taxation exposure. Well this Tarraco plug-in variant's WLTP-rated CO2 return of well below 50g/km should manage that for you all right. Obviously, another big draw is the 31 mile WLTP-rated all-electric driving range, which means that if the vehicle is only used for short commutes and re-charged regularly overnight, it's conceivable that this Tarraco PHEV could be run almost entirely on off-peak electricity, costing pennies rather than pounds to consume.
The extent to which you can charge this car up from the mains is also obviously going to make quite a difference to your overall running costs. Doing so inevitably takes a lot less time than it would in a comparable full-electric car. That's because the batteries of a Plug-in hybrid car like this one are much smaller. Powering this SEAT up from a domestic socket would take around five hours, but most owners will want to find an extra few hundred pounds to install a wallbox charger in their garages, so you'll be able to reduce your charging time period from empty to around three hours and thirty minutes.
There's an awful lot to like about this Tarraco PHEV. It's arguably the most spacious plug-in hybrid model on the market for less than £50,000, which ought to be a draw for family folk. And it's quiet, well equipped and (in FR form) actually quite good looking too. Plus of course, as with any PHEV, there's the appeal of low BiK taxation and the prospect of virtually fuel-free commuting mileage too. In short, it's a logical extension of the brand's 'enjoyneering' philosophy.
CAR: SEAT Tarraco FR PHEV
PRICE: £40,000 [est]
CO2 EMISSIONS: sub-50g/km [est]
PERFORMANCE: Max speed 135mph / 0-62mph 7.4s [est]
BOOT CAPACITY: [litres] TBC
WLTP ELECTRIC DRIVING RANGE: 31 miles
WILL IT FIT IN YOUR GARAGE?: length/width/height mm 4,735/1,839/1,674 mm


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The AAC and Yama Studio Present: Rocky Mountain Highball
by Dana Richardson
When: Apr 27, 2009
Where: Boulder Theater, Boulder, CO
Rocky Mountain Highball" is a new climbing film that presents an in depth look into why some climbers push themselves to boulder at the vertical limit. The film documents the many facets of bouldering by interweaving numerous classic climbs in Colorado with interview footage from the leading figures of the climbing world. Director,/Filmmaker Scott Neel, and Yama Studio have brought in a huge cast of world renowned climbers, like Paul Robinson, Kevin Jorgeson, Lynn Hill, Daniel Woods, and Jason Kehl. Having filmed more than 70 climbs with more than 35 athletes, this film proves to be an exciting journey through the world of highball bouldering.
Doors: 7:00 pm Show: 8:00 pm Immediately followed by
The RMH After-party presented by The AAC
Tickets include free admission to the after- party with live music The B-Side Lounge 2017 13th Street Boulder, Colorado 80302. Tickets, $14, are available now at www.bouldertheater.com, and the box office. Advance Tickets, $12, are available at The Boulder Rock Club and The Spot Gym.
A percentage of the evenings profits will go towards The AAC conservation partnership. We hope to see you there!


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To create the cups, they first had to make an array of silicon molds using a process called photolithography. Each large array can create about 2,000 cups, which are then filled with doses of vaccination using a custom-made dispensing system. Finally, they put a lid over each cup and apply heat until they fuse together and form a tightly sealed container.
The team's microscopic cups can deliver doses at different times, because PLGA can be designed to break down at different rates if you manipulate its molecules. They tested their system by injecting mice with cups created to deteriorate at 9, 20 and 41 days after injection. It was a success — the containers remained leak-proof until the days they were supposed to break down.
The engineers believe their system will be especially useful in the developing world and could have many potential applications other than drug delivery. Team leader Robert Langer explained:
"We are very excited about this work because, for the first time, we can create a library of tiny, encased vaccine particles, each programmed to release at a precise, predictable time, so that people could potentially receive a single injection that, in effect, would have multiple boosters already built into it. This could have a significant impact on patients everywhere, especially in the developing world where patient compliance is particularly poor."
However, they still have a long way to go to make sure their little containers can remain intact at body temperature for as long as a few months to a couple of years. They're now conducting several more tests using a variety of drugs, including vaccines still in development.


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Back to news
Merton CCG is looking for patient representatives who are passionate about health and would like to make a difference to patient experience at local health services. Our Patient Engagement Group is a forum that provides an opportunity for patients, local people and carers to inform and influence the planning, designing and delivery of local health services.
Being a patient representativeAs a patient representative, you will play a vital role in improving local NHS health services, patient care and experience and have the opportunity to represent the interests of patients or carers.
There are volunteering opportunities within Merton Clinical Commissioning Group for patients and carers to become involved in local health services and influence decision making.
You can get involved by:
What will it involve?The group meet monthly and you can be involved as little or as much as you want. You could share your experience by:
If you would like to get involved and join the Patient Engagement Group, please contact email@example.com to find out more
You can read more in our Patient Engagement information booklet here


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1. Introduction
IoT is an umbrella term that includes multiple different categories:
- Wireless sensor/actuator networks
- Internet-connected wearables
- Low power embedded systems
- RFID enabled tracking
- Use of mobile phones to interact with the real world (e.g. sensing)
- Devices that connect via Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones to the Internet
- Smart homes
- Connected cars
And many more
The result is that no single architecture will suit all these areas and the requirements each area brings. However, a modular scalable architecture that supports adding or subtracting capabilities, as well as supporting many requirements across a wide variety of these use cases is inherently useful and valuable. It provides a starting point for architects looking to create IoT solutions as well as a strong basis for further development. This paper proposes such a reference architecture. The reference architecture must cover multiple aspects including the cloud or server-side architecture that allows us to monitor, manage, interact with and process the data from the IoT devices; the networking model to communicate with the devices; and the agents and code on the devices themselves, as well as the requirements on what sort of device can support this reference architecture.
The reference architecture we propose is inherently vendor neutral and not specific to a set of technologies, although it is highly influenced by best-of-breed open-source projects and technology. In addition, we provide a mapping of this reference architecture to WSO2's open source products and projects and we have demonstrated an implementation of this reference architecture on the WSO2 platform.
We also explore areas where this reference architecture can be extended further and as well as areas where we expect to see further work.
The Internet of Things, or IoT, refers to the set of devices and systems that interconnect real-world sensors and actuators to the Internet. This includes many different systems, including
- Internet connected cars
- wearable devices including health and fitness monitoring devices, watches, and even human implanted devices;
- smart meters and smart objects;
- home automation systems and lighting controls;
- smartphones that are increasingly being used to measure the world around them; and
- wireless sensor networks that measure weather, flood defenses, tides and more.
The growth of the number and variety of devices that are collecting data is incredibly rapid.A study by Cisco1 estimates that the number of Internet-connected devices overtook the human population in 2010, and that there will be 50 billion Internet-connected devices by 2020.
There are of course two key aspects to the IoT: the devices themselves and the server-side architecture that supports them. In fact there is often a third-category as well; in many cases there may be a low power gateway that performs aggregation, event processing, bridging, etc. that might sit between the device and the wider Internet.
In both cases, the devices probably have intermittent connections based on factors such as GPRS connectivity, battery discharging, radio interference, or simply being switched off.
There are effectively three classes of devices:
- The smallest devices have embedded 8-bit System-On-Chip (SOC) controllers. A good example of this is the open source hardware platform Arduino: e.g the Arduino Uno platform and other 8-bit Arduinos. These typically have no operating system.
- The next level up are the systems based on Atheros and ARM chips that have a very limited 32-bit architecture. These often include small home routers and derivatives of those devices. Commonly, these run a cut-down or embedded Linux platform, such as OpenWRT, or dedicated embedded operating systems. In some cases they may not use an OS, e.g. the Arduino Zero, or the Arduino Yun.
- The most capable IoT platforms are full 32-bit or 64-bit computing platforms. These systems, such as the Raspberry Pi or the BeagleBone, may run a full Linux OS or another suitable Operating System, such as Android. In many cases these are either mobile phones or based on mobile-phone technology. These devices may also act as gateways or bridges for smaller devices, e.g. if a wearable connects via Bluetooth Low Energy to a mobile phone or Raspberry Pi, which then bridges that onto the wider Internet.
The communication between devices and the Internet or to a gateway includes many different models:
- Direct Ethernet or Wi-Fi connectivity using TCP or UDP (we will look at protocols for this later)
- Bluetooth Low Energy
- Near Field Communication (NFC)
- Zigbee or other mesh radio networks
- SRF and point-to-point radio links
- UART or serial lines
- SPI or I2C wired buses
Figure 1 below illustrates the two major modes of connectivity.
Figure 01
This section has provided a short overview of IoT devices and systems. It is not designed to be comprehensive or even extensive, but simply to provide enough background to support the discussion of requirements and capabilities below. There are many further resources available, which are too numerous to list. However, we can point readers to an academic survey, which is available here2.
There are several reasons why a reference architecture for IoT is a good thing:
- IoT devices are inherently connected – we need a way of interacting with them, often with firewalls, network address translation (NAT) and other obstacles in the way.
- There are billions of these devices already and the number is growing quickly; we need an architecture for scalability. In addition, these devices are typically interacting 24x7, so we need a highly-available (HA) approach that supports deployment across data centers to allow disaster recovery (DR).
- The devices may not have UIs and certainly are designed to be "everyday" usage, so we need to support automatic and managed updates, as well as being able to remotely manage these devices.
- IoT devices are very commonly used for collecting and analyzing personal data. A model for managing the identity and access control for IoT devices and the data they publish and consume is a key requirement.
Our aim is to provide an architecture that supports integration between systems and devices.
In the next section, we will dig into these requirements deeper and outline the specific requirements we are looking for in a range of categories.
There are some specific requirements for IoT that are unique to IoT devices and the environments that support them, e.g. many requirements emerge from the limited formfactors and power available to IoT devices. Other requirements come from the way in which IoT devices are manufactured and used. The approaches are much more like traditional consumer product designs than existing Internet approaches. Of course there are a number of existing best practices for the server-side and Internet connectivity that need to be remembered and factored in.
We can summarize the overall requirements into some key categories:
- Connectivity and communications
- Device management
- Data collection, analysis, and actuation
- Scalability
- Security
- Predictive analysis
- Integration
Existing protocols, such as HTTP, have a very important place for many devices. Even an 8-bit controller can create simple GET and POST requests and HTTP provides an important unified (and uniform) connectivity. However, the overhead of HTTP and some other traditional Internet protocols can be an issue for two main reasons. Firstly, the memory size of the program can be an issue on small devices. However, the bigger issue is the power requirements. In order to meet these requirements, we need a simple, small and binary protocol. We will look at this in more detail below. We also require the ability to cross firewalls.
In addition, there are devices that connect directly and those that connect via gateways. The devices that connect via a gateway potentially require two protocols: one to connect to the gateway, and then another from the gateway to the cloud.
Finally, there is obviously a requirement for our architecture to support transport and protocol bridging, e.g. we may wish to offer a binary protocol to the device, but allow an HTTP-based API to control the device that we expose to third parties.
While many IoT devices are not actively managed, this is not necessarily ideal. We have seen active management of PCs, mobile phones, and other devices become increasingly important, and the same trajectory is both likely and desirable for IoT devices. What are the requirements for IoT device management? The following list covers some widely desirable requirements:
- The ability to disconnect a rogue or stolen device
- The ability to update the software on a device
- Updating security credentials
- Remotely enabling or disabling certain hardware capabilities
- Locating a lost device
- Wiping secure data from a stolen device
- Remotely re-configuring Wi-Fi, GPRS, or network parameters
The list is not exhaustive, and conversely covers aspects that may not be required or possible for certain devices.
A few IoT devices have some form of UI, but in general IoT devices are focused on offering one or more sensors, one or more actuators, or a combination of both. The requirements of the system are that we can collect data from very large numbers of devices, store it, analyze it, and then act upon it.
The reference architecture is designed to manage very large numbers of devices. If these devices are creating constant streams of data, then this creates a significant amount of data. The requirement is for a highly scalable storage system, which can handle diverse data and high volumes.
The action may happen in near real time, so there is a strong requirement for real-time analytics. In addition, the device needs to be able to analyze and act on data. In some cases this will be simple, embedded logic. On more powerful devices we can also utilize more powerful engines for event processing and action.
Any server-side architecture would ideally be highly scalable, and be able to support millions of devices all constantly sending, receiving, and acting on data. However, many "high-scalability architectures" have come with an equally high price – both in hardware, software, and in complexity. An important requirement for this architecture is to support scaling from a small deployment to a very large number of devices. Elastic scalability and the ability to deploy in a cloud infrastructure are essential. The ability to scale the serverside out on small cheap servers is an important requirement to make this an affordable architecture for small deployments as well as large ones.
Security is one of the most important aspects for IoT. IoT devices are often collecting highly personal data, and by their nature are bringing the real world onto the Internet (and viceversa). This brings three categories of risks:
- Risks that are inherent in any Internet system, but that product/IoT designers may not be aware of
- Specific risks that are unique to IoT devices
- Safety to ensure no harm is caused by, for instance, misusing actuators
The first category includes simple things such as locking down open ports on devices (like the Internet-attached fridge that had an unsecured SMTP server and was being used to send spam).
The second category includes issues specifically related to IoT hardware, e.g. the device may have its secure information read. For example, many IoT devices are too small to support proper asymmetric encryption. Another specific example is the ability for someone to attack the hardware to understand security. Another example - university security researchers who famously reverse-engineered and broke the Mifare Classic RFID card solution3. These sort of reverse engineering attacks are an issue compared with pure web solutions where there is often no available code to attack (i.e. completely server-side implementation).
Two very important specific issues for IoT security are the concerns about identity and access management. Identity is an issue where there are often poor practices implemented. For example, the use of clear text/ Base64 encoded user IDs/passwords with devices and machine-to-machine (M2M) is a common mistake. Ideally these should be replaced with managed tokens such as those provided by OAuth/OAuth24.
Another common issue is to hard-code access management rules into either client- or server-side code. A much more flexible and powerful approach is to utilize models such as "Attribute Based Access Control" and "Policy Based Access Control". The most well known of these approaches is that provided by the XACML standard5. Such approaches remove access control decisions from hard-coded logic and externalize them into policies, which enabled the following:
- More powerful and appropriate decisions;
- Can potentially be based on contexts such as location, or which network is being used, or the time of day;
- Access control can be analyzed and audited; and
- Policies can be updated and changed, even dynamically, without recoding or modifying devices.
Our security requirements therefore should support
- Encryption on devices that are powerful enough;
- A modern identity model based on tokens and not userids/passwords;
- The management of keys and tokens as smoothly/remotely as possible; and
- Policy-based and user-managed access control for the system based on XACML.
This concludes the set of requirements that we have identified for the reference architecture. Of course, any given architecture may add further requirements. Some of those may already be met by the architecture, and some may require further components to be added. However, our design is for a modular architecture that supports extensions, which copes with this demand.
In the next section we introduce the architecture and approach.
The reference architecture consists of a set of components. Layers can be realized by means of specific technologies, and we will discuss options for realizing each component. There are also some cross-cutting/vertical layers such as access/identity management.
Figure 02: Reference architecture for IoT
The layers are
- Client/external communications - Web/Portal, Dashboard, APIs
- Event processing and analytics (including data storage)
- Aggregation/bus layer – ESB and message broker
- Relevant transports - MQTT/HTTP/XMPP/CoAP/AMQP, etc.
- Devices
The cross-cutting layers are
- Device manager
- Identity and access management
The bottom layer of the architecture is the device layer. Devices can be of various types, but in order to be considered as IoT devices, they must have some communications that either indirectly or directly attaches to the Internet. Examples of direct connections are
- Arduino with Arduino Ethernet connection
- Arduino Yun with a Wi-Fi connection
- Raspberry Pi connected via Ethernet or Wi-Fi
- Intel Galileo connected via Ethernet or Wi-Fi Examples of indirectly connected device include
- ZigBee devices connected via a ZigBee gateway
- Bluetooth or Bluetooth Low Energy devices connecting via a mobile phone
- Devices communicating via low power radios to a Raspberry Pi
There are many more such examples of each type.
Each device typically needs an identity. The identity may be one of the following:
- A unique identifier (UUID) burnt into the device (typically part of the System-on-Chip, or provided by a secondary chip)
- A UUID provided by the radio subsystem (e.g. Bluetooth identifier, Wi-Fi MAC address)
- An OAuth2 Refresh/Bearer Token (this may be in addition to one of the above)
- An identifier stored in nonvolatile memory such as EEPROM
For the reference architecture we recommend that every device has a UUID (preferably an unchangeable ID provided by the core hardware) as well as an OAuth2 Refresh and Bearer token stored in EEPROM.
The specification is based on HTTP; however, (as we will discuss in the communications section) the reference architecture also supports these flows over MQTT.
The communication layer supports the connectivity of the devices. There are multiple potential protocols for communication between the devices and the cloud. The most wellknown three potential protocols are
- HTTP/HTTPS (and RESTful approaches on those)
- Constrained application protocol (CoAP)
Let's take a quick look at each of these protocols in turn.
HTTP is well known, and there are many libraries that support it. Because it is a simple textbased protocol, many small devices such as 8-bit controllers can only partially support the protocol – for example enough code to POST or GET a resource. The larger 32-bit based devices can utilize full HTTP client libraries that properly implement the whole protocol.
There are several protocols optimized for IoT use. The two best known are MQTT6 and CoAP7. MQTT was invented in 1999 to solve issues in embedded systems and SCADA. It has been through some iterations and the current version (3.1.1) is undergoing standardization in the OASIS MQTT Technical Committee8. MQTT is a publish-subscribe messaging system based on a broker model. The protocol has a very small overhead (as little as 2 bytes per message), and was designed to support lossy and intermittently connected networks. MQTT was designed to flow over TCP. In addition there is an associated specification designed for ZigBee-style networks called MQTT-SN (Sensor Networks).
CoAP is a protocol from the IETF that is designed to provide a RESTful application protocol modeled on HTTP semantics, but with a much smaller footprint and a binary rather than a text-based approach. CoAP is a more traditional client-server approach rather than a brokered approach. CoAP is designed to be used over UDP.
For the reference architecture we have opted to select MQTT as the preferred device communication protocol, with HTTP as an alternative option.
The reasons to select MQTT and not CoAP at this stage are
- Better adoption and wider library support for MQTT;
- Simplified bridging into existing event collection and event processing systems; and
- Simpler connectivity over firewalls and NAT networks
However, both protocols have specific strengths (and weaknesses) and so there will be some situations where CoAP may be preferable and could be swapped in.
In order to support MQTT we need to have an MQTT broker in the architecture as well as device libraries. We will discuss this with regard to security and scalability later.
One important aspect with IoT devices is not just for the device to send data to the cloud/ server, but also the reverse. This is one of the benefits of the MQTT specification: because it is a brokered model, clients connect an outbound connection to the broker, whether or not the device is acting as a publisher or subscriber. This usually avoids firewall problems because this approach works even behind firewalls or via NAT.
In the case where the main communication is based on HTTP, the traditional approach for sending data to the device would be to use HTTP Polling. This is very inefficient and costly, both in terms of network traffic as well as power requirements. The modern replacement for this is the WebSocket protocol9 that allows an HTTP connection to be upgraded into a full two-way connection. This then acts as a socket channel (similar to a pure TCP channel) between the server and client. Once that has been established, it is up to the system to choose an ongoing protocol to tunnel over the connection.
Note that while there is some support for WebSockets on small controllers, such as Arduino, the combination of network code, HTTP and WebSockets would utilize most of the available code space on a typical Arduino 8-bit device. Therefore, we only recommend the use of WebSockets on the larger 32-bit devices.
An important layer of the architecture is the layer that aggregates and brokers communications. This is an important layer for three reasons:
- The ability to support an HTTP server and/or an MQTT broker to talk to the devices;
- The ability to aggregate and combine communications from different devices and to route communications to a specific device (possibly via a gateway)
- The ability to bridge and transform between different protocols, e.g. to offer HTTPbased APIs that are mediated into an MQTT message going to the device.
The aggregation/bus layer provides these capabilities as well as adapting into legacy protocols. The bus layer may also provide some simple correlation and mapping from different correlation models (e.g. mapping a device ID into an owner's ID or vice-versa).
Finally the aggregation/bus layer needs to perform two key security roles. It must be able to act as an OAuth2 Resource Server (validating Bearer Tokens and associated resource access scopes). It must also be able to act as a policy enforcement point (PEP) for policy-based access. In this model, the bus makes requests to the identity and access management layer to validate access requests. The identity and access management layer acts as a policy decision point (PDP) in this process. The bus layer then implements the results of these calls to the PDP to either allow or disallow resource access.
This layer takes the events from the bus and provides the ability to process and act upon these events. A core capability here is the requirement to store the data into a database. This may happen in three forms. The traditional model here would be to write a serverside application, e.g. this could be a JAX-RS application backed by a database. However, there are many approaches where we can support more agile approaches. The first of these is to use a big data analytics platform. This is a cloud-scalable platform that supports technologies such as Apache Hadoop to provide highly scalable mapreduce analytics on the data coming from the devices. The second approach is to support complex event processing to initiate near real-time activities and actions based on data from the devices and from the rest of the system.
Our recommended approach in this space is to use the following approaches:
- Highly scalable, column-based data storage for storing events
- Map-reduce for long-running batch-oriented processing of data
- Complex event processing for fast in-memory processing and near real-time reaction and autonomic actions based on the data and activity of devices and other systems
- In addition, this layer may support traditional application processing platforms, such as Java Beans, JAX-RS logic, message-driven beans, or alternatives, such as node.js, PHP, Ruby or Python.
The reference architecture needs to provide a way for these devices to communicate outside of the device-oriented system. This includes three main approaches. Firstly, we need the ability to create web-based front-ends and portals that interact with devices and with the event-processing layer. Secondly, we need the ability to create dashboards that offer views into analytics and event processing. Finally, we need to be able to interact with systems outside this network using machine-to-machine communications (APIs). These APIs need to be managed and controlled and this happens in an API management system.
The recommended approach to building the web front end is to utilize a modular front-end architecture, such as a portal, which allows simple fast composition of useful UIs. Of course the architecture also supports existing Web server-side technology, such as Java Servlets/ JSP, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc. Our recommended approach is based on the Java framework and the most popular Java-based web server, Apache Tomcat.
The dashboard is a re-usable system focused on creating graphs and other visualizations of data coming from the devices and the event processing layer.
The API management layer provides three main functions:
- The first is that it provides a developer-focused portal (as opposed to the userfocused portal previously mentioned), where developers can find, explore, and subscribe to APIs from the system. There is also support for publishers to create, version, and manage the available and published APIs;
- The second is a gateway that manages access to the APIs, performing access control checks (for external requests) as well as throttling usage based on policies. It also performs routing and load-balancing;
- The final aspect is that the gateway publishes data into the analytics layer where it is stored as well as processed to provide insights into how the APIs are used.
Device management (DM) is handled by two components. A server-side system (the device manager) communicates with devices via various protocols and provides both individual and bulk control of devices. It also remotely manages software and applications deployed on the device. It can lock and/or wipe the device if necessary. The device manager works in conjunction with the device management agents. There are multiple different agents for different platforms and device types.
The device manager also needs to maintain the list of device identities and map these into owners. It must also work with the identity and access management layer to manage access controls over devices (e.g. who else can manage the device apart from the owner, how much control does the owner have vs. the administrator, etc.)
There are three levels of device: non-managed, semi-managed and fully managed (NM, SM,FM).
Fully managed devices are those that run a full DM agent. A full DM agent supports:
- Managing the software on the device
- Enabling/disabling features of the device (e.g. camera, hardware, etc.)
- Management of security controls and identifiers
- Monitoring the availability of the device
- Maintaining a record of the device's location if available
- Locking or wiping the device remotely if the device is compromised, etc.
Non-managed devices can communicate with the rest of the network, but have no agent involved. These may include 8-bit devices where the constraints are too small to support the agent. The device manager may still maintain information on the availability and location of the device if this is available.
Semi-managed devices are those that implement some parts of the DM (e.g. feature control, but not software management).
The final layer is the identity and access management layer. This layer needs to provide the following services:
- OAuth2 token issuing and validation
- Other identity services including SAML2 SSO and OpenID Connect support for identifying inbound requests from the Web layer
- Directory of users (e.g. LDAP)
- Policy management for access control (policy control point)
The identity layer may of course have other requirements specific to the other identity and access management for a given instantiation of the reference architecture. In this section we have outlined the major components of the reference architecture as well as specific decisions we have taken around technologies. These decisions are motivated by the specific requirements of IoT architectures as well as best practices for building agile, evolvable, scalable Internet architectures. Of course there are other options, but this reference architecture utilizes proven approaches that are known to be successful in real-life IoT projects we have worked on.
A reference architecture is useful as-is. However, it is even more useful if there is a real instantiation. In this section we provide a mapping into products and capabilities of the WSO2 platform to show how the reference architecture can be implemented.
The WSO2 platform is a completely modular, open-source enterprise platform that provides all the capabilities needed for the server-side of this architecture. In addition, we also provide some reference components for the device layer – it is an intractable problem to provide components for all possible devices, but we do provide either sample code and/or supported code for certain popular device types.
An important aspect of the WSO2 platform is that it is inherently multi-tenant. This means that it can support multiple organizations on a single deployment with isolation between organizations (tenants). This is a key capability for deploying this reference architecture as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering. It is also used by some organizations on-premise to support different divisions or departments within a group.
The WSO2 platform supports deployment on three different targets:
- Traditional on-premise servers including Linux, Windows, Solaris, and AIX
- Public cloud deployment including Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, and Google Compute Engine
- Hybrid or private cloud deployment on platforms including OpenStack, Suse Cloud, Eucalyptus, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, and Apache Stratos.
The WSO2 platform is based on a technology called WSO2 Carbon, which is in turn based on OSGi. Each product in the platform shares the same kernel based on Carbon. In addition, each product is made from features that are composed to provide the required functionality. Features can be added and subtracted as needed. All the products work together using standard interoperable protocols, such as HTTP, MQTT and AMQP10. All the WSO2 products are available under the Apache Software License v2.0 which is a businessfriendly, non-viral Open Source License11. Figure 3 shows the IoT reference architecture layered with the corresponding WSO2 product capabilities.
Figure 03: IoT reference architecture mapped to WSO2 platform components
The Device Layer
We support any device. We have a reference device management capability on any Linuxbased or Android-based device, which can be ported to other 32-bit platforms.
WSO2 also can help with MQTT client code for many device platforms ranging from Arduino to Android.
The Aggregation/Bus Layer
We provide two core products that implement this layer:
- WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), which provides HTTP, MQTT, AMQP and other protocol support, protocol mediation and bridging, data transformation, OAuth2 Resource Server support, XACML Policy Enforcement Point (PEP) support and many other capabilities. WSO2 ESB is highly scalable providing linear scalability and elastic scalability. In one deployment it handles more than 2bn requests/day. Please note that WSO2 ESB does not currently support WebSockets but this is on the roadmap.
- WSO2 Message Broker (MB), which provides the ability to act as an MQTT broker. WSO2 MB also provides AMQP capabilities and can provide both persistent and nonpersistent messaging. WSO2 MB is highly scalable and supports elastic scalability. Please note that the WSO2 MB MQTT support is currently in beta.
The Analytics and Event Processing Layer
WSO2 offers a complete platform for data analytics with WSO2 Data Analytics Server (WSO2 DAS, available in Q4 2015), an industry first that combines the ability to analyze the same data at rest and in motion with predictive analysis. WSO2 DAS replaces WSO2 Business Activity Monitor and WSO2 Complex Event Processor. WSO2's analytics platform offers the flexibility to scale to millions of events per second, whether running on-premises and in the cloud.
The External Communications Layer
Our mapping provides the capabilities of this layer with the following products:
- WSO2 User Engagement Server (UES)
- This product supports creating and managing portal-based and traditional Web UIs including supporting full personalization.
- It is also used by the DAS to manage and host analytics dashboards.
- WSO2 API Manager which
- Manages the lifecycle of the APIs and supports API publishers;
- Offers a developer-focused portal for developers to find, explore and subscribe to APIs;
- Issues and manages OAuth2 tokens to external developers (note that when WSO2 Identity Server is also available – see below – then this function is delegated to that system);
- Gateways external requests and provides throttling and PEP capabilities;
- Publishes usage, version and other data into the DAS; and
- Integrates with WSO2 ESB
The Device Management Layer
WSO2 Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) provides
- Mobile device management for iOS, Android, and IoT devices
- A full appstore for managing applications and provisioning applications on to managed devices
- Integration with the identity layer as well as DAS for mobile analytics
The Identity and Access Management Layer
WSO2 Identity Server supports this aspect, and provides the following capabilities:
- OAuth2 identity provider, issuing, revoking and managing tokens;
- Single sign-on support including SAML2 SSO and OpenID Connect support;
- Support for other identity protocols including WS-Federation (Passive), OpenID 2.0, Kerberos, Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA), and others
- Full support for XACML (including versions 2.0 and 3.0), acting as a PDP, PIP, and PAP;
- The ability to integrate between different identity providers and service providers including identity brokering
- Support for identity provisioning including SPML and SCIM support.
The WSO2 platform is the only modular, open source platform to provide all these capabilities (and more). As such it is the ideal basis for creating and deploying this IoT reference architecture.
One further aspect that is highly worth considering is the use of a platform-as-a-service (PaaS). WSO2 provides the WSO2 Private PaaS product that's based on the Apache Stratos project. This provides a managed, elastically scalable, HA deployment of the products mentioned above and also manages tenancy, self-service subscription, and many other aspects. It also supports managing many other useful server-side capabilities including PHP, MySQL, MongoDB and others. We have not shown the PaaS layer on the IoT reference architecture as some deployments may not need this capability.
In this paper we have outlined the following:
- What our definition of the IoT is
- Why a reference architecture is valuable
- The requirements on the reference architecture
- The instantiation of the reference architecture and how it meets those requirements
- A mapping of that reference architecture into the WSO2 platform
The IoT space is evolving rapidly and we expect this paper – and the associated technologies – to evolve in sync. However, despite the emerging nature of this space, this paper and the reference architecture are based on real-world projects that we have deployed with customers to support IoT capabilities. As such, we have great confidence this is a useful, deployable, and effective reference architecture. WSO2 is due to release WSO2 IoT Server in 2016 featuring platform support for IoT.
[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138912861000156
[3] http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~garciaf/publications/Attack.MIFARE.pdf
[4] http://oauth.net/
[5] https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=xacml
[6] http://mqtt.org/
[7] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-core-coap-18
[8] https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/mqtt/
[9] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6455
[10]AMQP is an enterprise messaging protocol that supports pub/sub as well as queuing. It provides considerably higher qualities of service than MQTT including transactions. See http://amqp.org[11] http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html


text:
Why would a big bank with so much at stake not care about the risks that they were taking?
Well, at that point, they'd all been bailed out. I mean, my feeling at that point was, well, of course they don't care, because they're government-backed. They just simply don't care. And that brings us to this "too big to fail" problem.
I mean, we have to make it a situation where banks actually, like hedge funds, care about losing money. And, you know, it's strange to say that we want to make banks more like hedge funds, because I don't really want to make banks more like hedge funds in a larger sense, but I do want them to care. I want there to be people who take responsibility for those things. That's another thing is I feel like, you know, in a larger sense, the people at the risk groups -- and this is true not just at banks; it's also been true at hedge funds -- people in the risk groups are kind of second-class citizens within Wall Street.
And often the people in charge of risk are not given enough power to actually implement. Even if they see risky trends going on that shouldn't be going on, they're not given enough power to actually stop them. I mean, great example -- in fact, a recent example -- is the chief risk officer from MF Global who was, you know, warned about [CEO Jon] Corzine's big bet on Italian bonds, and he was ignored and left. And I'm not sure if he was fired or he just resigned.
But he clearly was being ignored. And that's standard issue for risk officers. And there's lots of examples of that that were going on during the credit crisis. What's sad about MF Global is that they're still going on right now.
They're bankrupt.
MF Global.
They're not just bankrupt. They've lost money; they've lost track of money that was their customers' money, not investors'. Investors know going in that they might lose money, and those investors certainly have lost money.
What we're talking about is the customers of this -- it's in a futures exchange, so the customers are farmers who, like, are trying to hedge their crops, and they put money in these accounts that are not supposed to be touched but somehow were not only touched but ransacked. And nobody knows where the money -- it's been two months; nobody knows where the money is.
Somebody knows where the money is.
Yeah. Nobody's saying where the money is. And the farmers have recently sued MF Global. And, you know, it's something to keep an eye on. It's really quite amazing that this kind of thing is still happening.
Moral hazard.
Moral hazard. And what the FDIC did by bailing out everyone kept increasing moral hazard. Big mistake. What should happen in any bank failure is that everybody except the insured depositor takes a haircut to solve the problem between the liquidation of the bank and what the net worth is. Whatever issue remains between the value of the assets, the liabilities should be distributed among the investors, all taking a haircut, so that the FDIC fund, and certainly even the taxpayer, doesn't have to pay a dime.
And if we were to start doing that, and if we had done it years ago, I don't think we would have the failures today, because there would be a lot more market discipline.
So that's why the failures were in the investment banks that were more focused on a narrow line of business?
Yes. But you can go back, again, before interstate banking, and I don't know if you remember, but Texas banks all failed in the late '80s, early '90s. They, before their failure, the Texas banks were considered to be some of the most successful banks in the entire United States. But because they were confined to Texas, they were basically confined to commercial real estate, because Texas was booming at that time because of energy, because of the embargo. And when both the commercial real estate and the energy industries collapsed, then the Texas economy collapsed, and all the big Texas banks failed.
You remember the S&L crisis. And there's no single S&L that was that big, but they were all in commercial and residential real estate. And when that hit nationally as a problem, remember, we had to spend $150 billion to bail out the S&Ls. They weren't big.
So there's many examples of relatively small institutions that have failed in this. Even in this crisis, the originators of mortgages, there was two big originators. There was Washington Mutual and Countrywide. The rest were all very small. There was IndyMac, New Century Financial, First Franklin, WMC Mortgage, Option One, Fremont. You didn't even hear of those names. All relatively small, but they were the very significant portion of the subprime exotic mortgages that were originated. And they all failed, and they caused the problem more than any of the big institutions in terms of origination. Now, their brethren, the investment banks, were the ones who distributed that.
So I think there's lots of evidence that there is no general relationship between bank failure[s].
The second issue relative to too big to fail, however, is that I think the FDIC [Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.], which is the agency that handles bank failures, insured bank failures, had made a great mistake in the past. They had basically bailed out everybody, not just insured depositors, when a bank fails, and I think therefore there was very little due diligence being done by other investors because they were always bailed out before. I think that's a huge mistake. We have to get to market discipline.
You're watching all [the Troubled Asset Relief Program negotiations] from the sidelines?
Pretty much. We were not really involved in their first attempt to get TARP passed. We got brought in later because they couldn't get the votes, and so one of the things they decided to do to get the votes was to increase the deposit insurance limit to $250,000. ...
So you had to agree to that?
Right. We had to buy in. They needed us to get the votes, so we got brought in at that point.
And that was throwing something out to Main Street?
That was the Main Street benefit. ...
I was summoned to a meeting. ... It was at Hank Paulson's office. I kept asking him what it was about. Nobody would tell me what it was about. I thought it was about TARP and how to spend the TARP money. ...
I go into the room, and there's Hank sitting there, Ben [Bernanke] sitting there, and Tim Geithner's on the phone. And they basically hand me a piece of paper that would have the FDIC announcing that they're going to guarantee pretty much all of the liabilities in the financial sector. So all the debt we're going to guarantee for banks and bank holding companies.
That was quite a thing, and I didn't want to do that. ... So I told them that I would have to think about that.
On the one hand, it's hard for the chairman of the FDIC to go in a meeting and be pointedly asked by the secretary of the Treasury and the chairman of the Fed to do something and to say no. But I bought for time. I played for time. ...
Was that a tense meeting?
I don't know if it was tense. I was so flabbergasted. At that point I didn't even have the wherewithal to fight back. I just played for time. I said, "I have to go talk to my board about it." ...
So anyway, I went back, talked to the board, my internal directors. They had the same reaction I did. They were incredulous.
What is that they're asking you to do?
... I didn't bring the text with me, but it basically said the FDIC would guarantee all the creditors of banks and bank holding companies, including the investment banks.
So they want your budget?
They want my budget. They wanted my legal authority ... to guarantee debt, guarantee bondholders. It's all about the bondholders.
Where was that money going to come from?
... That what was one of my questions.
One of the criticisms I got during the crisis was that all I cared about was the FDIC, and I didn't care about broader financial stability.
Well the FDIC was holding things together. … If people had lost confidence in the FDIC and started pulling their money out of banks, we would have been back in the Stone Ages. It would have been cataclysmic. I don't even want to think about what would have happened.
So this idea that by caring about the FDIC I wasn't caring about system stability I thought was ludicrous. I was very concerned about the credibility of the FDIC doing what it was supposed to do, which was insure deposits.
Now if I go out and insure all the debt and $13 trillion financial system, what kind of credibility was I going to have? Insured depositors are going to be saying, "They can't do all that."
So I told them that, and that was one of the many arguments I used subsequently to tell them we weren't going to do that. ...
So you're insuring, at the FDIC, Main Street?
But you're being asked by these three guys to insure Wall Street?
Pretty much. To insure the bondholders, and these are big Wall Street firms, pension funds, big bondholders, mutual funds.
Which props up Wall Street, but this is not your mandate?
... It's not anywhere close to our mandate. It was a real stretch in terms of legal authority, and it was a huge stretch in terms of our financial capability to make good on this. ...
So did you say no?
... We entered into a negotiation. Throughout the crisis ... another criticism was that I wasn't a team player, I was always difficult. I tried very hard to meet these folks halfway, even though I didn't agree with a lot of what was going on. ...
The markets were freezing up. Nobody wanted to lend to anybody after the Lehman failure, and I agreed there was a problem with the ability of financial institutions to roll expiring debt. ...
So ... we said we'll guarantee new debt. We will not guarantee the existing debt. That's there for loss absorption if these institutions go down. And then we're also going to charge money for it."
You wanted some moral hazard?
Yeah. Actually our original proposal was we'd only guarantee 90 percent of it. We wanted them to take 10 percent, and that was just a non-starter with both the Fed and the Treasury. They said that wouldn't work. They just refused. ...
So you signed?
We did. I think at the peak of the program it was about $330 billion worth of debt. Have not taken any losses on it so far. I don't think we will. And we did make money off of it.
I don't think that justifies that. There's so much of this, "Oh, we made money off of the bailout." I'm not sure overall we did make money off the bailouts because you have to look at Fannie and Freddie and AIG and GM and some of the other places where the government's still in pretty deep.
We also printed a lot of money, which could come back to bite us.
That's true. This could have tremendous inflationary pressures down the road. ...
... You feel that Lehman was mishandled. ... Should they not have let it fail? What else could have been done in that situation?
The issue of what to do with banks, financial institutions that owe more money than they can repay is obviously a vexing one, and we're supposed to prevent the problem occurring by having tight regulation, by close supervision. ...
When those two things that are supposed to protect us fail, in most democratic societies when you have large institutions what you do is you have to save the institution. But that doesn't mean that you save bondholders and you save shareholders. ...
The preservation of the institution is important, but not of those shareholders and bondholders. They didn't do their job of managing, monitoring, and they have to pay the price. They get the returns when things are well, and they have to pay the price when things go badly.
That's what we should have done in the case of Lehman Brothers, especially given that we didn't know what would happen if it fully failed. In that cloud of uncertainty, if the supervisors had done their job and our regulators had done their job and we knew the consequences, then you might say maybe we can have an orderly failure. But they didn't know, and that was irresponsible. ...
That was the fundamental mistake that was made by both Bush and Obama. They repeatedly saved the shareholders and the bondholders, and that's what causes moral hazard. Not only did we save the shareholders and the bondholders, we also saved the bankers. Many of these people still got their bonuses.
That's where there's such anger on the part of the American people, because they see their taxpayer money in effect protecting bonuses while they face the problem of unemployment and losing their home.
What led them to make the decisions that they did about Bear, to get so involved? Was fear of systemic risk the thing that motivated them? ...
... I think the overwhelming motivation was concern about systemic risk. This would have been the first major financial institution to collapse since Continental Illinois in the '80s.
No one knew. It again comes back to this lack of information. What would be the ramifications? Which other institutions were exposed? Which other institutions would suffer runs? I think it was the unknown that motivated this more than anything else.
... We've talked to a lot of people ... who say [the deal to rescue Bear] was the mistake of all the mistakes. What are your thoughts on that?
I would disagree that it was a mistake. ... The consequences of a failure at that point in time could have been catastrophic. You weigh those consequences against the consequences of the government assisting, which are not material, but on a risk/reward analysis it was clearly, in my view, the right thing to do.
Some will say what it did was take away the tool of threatening the moral hazard card from [Treasury Secretary Hank] Paulson.
When we talk about moral hazard, it's really important to separate it into what I think are its two components.
One is moral hazard of the type usually discussed, which involves the actions of a CEO and the board. I think after seeing what happened to Bear, no management, no board that had any degree of sense would have been encouraged that they could do whatever they would want to do and be saved by the government. Because from a stockholder perspective, from a personal wealth perspective, from a reputational perspective, Bear could not have been more damaging. ...
That leads to the second level of moral hazard, and that is the holders of liabilities. In that sense, the rescue of Bear might have given a false sense of confidence that the government would always be there. But again, it comes back to the risk/reward. Had you shattered the confidence of the liability holders at that time, one can't tell what the consequences could have been, but they could have been catastrophic.
[When Lehman was in trouble, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was concerned about moral hazard. What did you think?]
… The issue of moral hazard is an ongoing issue, and you never want to give people an artificial sense of security when they are not deserving of security. …
Is that what we did?
Well, again, you had to act under the circumstances at the time. What my concern is now is making sure that we don't provide this going forward. And you have to differentiate, as I said earlier, between tactics in battle and a broader strategy. And the key is to make sure the strategy long-term is such that we don't put ourselves in a position like this again.
We had gone through 25 years of tranquility, relatively speaking, and people got lazy, people got lax. And I do believe, incidentally, that the supervisory powers, including at the Federal Reserve, you know, sort of were lulled into sleep by the stability that we had enjoyed for so long. Trust me, we are not sleeping but fitfully, presently, and we will be on guard going forward.
At the time, Citibank and Bank of America were considered adequately capitalized under the regulatory standards. Winston Churchill had a great term: "terminological inexactitude." We have to be very, very careful. We've gone through several iterations of what the proper capital standards are. The Fed's working extremely hard at the Board of Governors, presently under the leadership of one of the governors, Daniel Tarullo, to make sure that we are very tough on new capital standards, we put them through stress tests and so on, and making sure that there is no longer the risk of terminological inexactitude. …
... Overall, how do you rate the decisions by the administration, by Geithner's Treasury Department and Bernanke's Fed?
If you judge the bailout by the fact that the banking system has survived, most of it, and that it's back paying bonuses, then you'd say it was a success.
If you judge the bailout on the criteria of has the banking system returned to lending, has the American economy been returned to health, has the problem of "too big to fail" banks been resolved, has the problem of non-transparency been resolved, you have to say we failed.
If you ask the question is the problem of moral hazard worse, you have to say we failed even more. Has the problem of the undermining of our democratic processes [been rescued]? You have to say we failed. ...
You're not worried about systemic risk when the ripples from the large bank failure with lots of haircuts from lots of investors occurs?
Well, I think it is a risk. But I think there's a greater risk, that if you don't start this process -- what you should do, at least in my opinion, is that you don't bail out anybody. Systemic risk occurs after two or three of the liquidations. Then you might have to do something. But again, there was a lot of people concerned that when Continental Bank failed, oh, we're going to have -- the interconnectedness is going to be a big problem. It worked out.
Drexel Burnham failed. We got through that...
We're going to have crises; we've had them forever. We had [them] with the robber barons. We had them during the Michael Milken days and insider trading. We had it with the Internet and the equity crisis. And they can lead to what I would call minor recessions that you have problems with.
But they're worked out. They don't become as massive as this one did. And I think that what happened here is, in the effort to bail everybody out, we not only didn't solve this problem, I think we made it worse. But even more problematic is you're setting it up for even a bigger problem next time, because of moral hazard and everyone believes that everyone's going to get bailed out.
You've got to bite the bullet.
So the role of moral hazard, how did that come into play?
I think when that was said, it was a bit of a surreal moment for everyone. Now, all of a sudden, we are all working together. My guess, the last time I recall working together with the group was Long-Term Capital [Management], which I knew the group well, one, because I was from Salomon Brothers, but also UBS was one of the big equity holders in Long-Term Capital. But since then there's been very few opportunities where the group -- on a positive note -- very few opportunities where the group has come together to say, "OK, we have to work in a crisis mode together and do what's best for the industry and the country."
And we started. We would get some information on Lehman, the balance sheet, their risks. And then there were a few possible bids at that point, which made us realize that we have a lot of work to do, because I think one bid was like, "I'll pay --" and these were soft bids, but -- "I'll pay a billion or $3 billion, but I won't take $70 billion of their assets." So then, all of a sudden, "OK, well, if we have that bid, how do we fund the $70 billion gap?" And the $70 billion was Lehman had $40 billion of commercial real estate; they had I think $20 billion of nonconforming mortgages and about $10 billion of private equity. I'm roughing it, but that's kind of where you got the $70 billion.
And then there was another bid that came in maybe a day later that, "I'll pay $3 billion and won't take $50 billion of assets." So at the end of the day, [what] we needed to figure out from a group is if there's a bid and there's a gap, how do we engage in filling that gap? Is there something we could or couldn't do? And we were working together on ideas with the regulators in the room, with the regulators outside the room.
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Park West Gallery art appraisals off by 90%
The company, which does a brisk business selling art on cruise lines including Carnival and Royal Caribbean, has been the subject of numerous lawsuits chronicled by the New York Times back in 2008 and more recently has been embroiled in litigation with Fine Art Registry, a private company that Park West has accused of defamation for a series of online articles and videos that accuse the company of misleading sales tactics.
90%+ off appraised prices on eBay
One concern with Park West Gallery's sale of art on cruise ships is the appraisal certificates that it offers to buyers of its art. A WalletPop investigation of secondary market prices realized for Park West Gallery-appraised art found sales prices that routinely fall well below the appraisal values:
- An Itzchak Tarkay watercolor was appraised at $14,000 by Park West on Feb. 2, 2010. On March 11, 2010, the piece sold on eBay for $1,250 with one bid -- with free shipping. That's a discount of more than 90% from the appraised value of just over a month prior to the sale.
- A watercolor by Mark Newman titled "Explosion" was appraised at $2,195 by Park West Gallery on Feb. 10, 2010. The piece sold on eBay for $178.48 with four bids -- also a discount of more than 90% six weeks after the date of the appraisal.
- A Susan Andreasen seriolithograph was appraised at $360 by Park West Gallery in 2007, according to the auction listing. The piece was listed with a minimum bid of $29.99 and failed to attract any bidders.
The appraisal certificates read "The current Park West Gallery retail replacement price for this work, including its frame, is. . . " [emphasis added]. In other words, the certificate, which is marked "Appraisal" in large, bold type-face at the top, does not make any representation as to the secondary market or insurance value for the work. It is only a certificate provided by Park West saying what Park West would sell the work for at retail.
For this service, according to the FAQ page on the company's Web site, Park West charges "$35 USD for the first appraisal and $15 USD for each additional work appraised at the same time." The company specifically notes that it offers the appraisal with artwork purchased from Park West, and includes the appraisal along with a certificate of authenticity with delivery.
Park West Gallery director of marketing communication Robin Danek did not respond to repeated e-mail and phone requests for comment on the company's appraisal policies and practices, instead referring us to the company's customer service blog and information on its philanthropic efforts.
The language used on the appraisal certificate combined with the disconnect between realized secondary market prices and appraised values raises questions about the value and validity of the appraisals, according to industry experts.
Attorney Kelly Phillips Erb of TaxGirl.com says that the appraisal certificates provided by Park West are not really appraisals -- "at least not for tax purposes." According to the Internal Revenue Code (section 170(f)(11)(E)(ii)), an appraisal for tax purposes may not be provided by a party to the transaction -- art dealers are referred to specifically in the tax code.
"An appraisal is only worth the background of the person who gave it to you", says Matthew Quinn of Quinn's Auction Galleries in Falls Church, VA. "In a Park West situation, we know that they're a discredited organization. There's been a consistency that the secondary market does not live up to what their appraisals say."
That raises the question: What good are the appraisals if they aren't indicative of a piece's secondary market value or useful in establishing a value for tax purposes? What exactly are consumers getting for their $35?


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The Africa Railway Workers Union (ARWU) on Monday advised the Federal Government to stop the planned concession of Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) to General Electric (GE), an American company.
Raphael Okoro, ARWU President, said in Lagos that the concession would not bring positive change to the sector but would rather lead to job losses.
He urged government to invest adequately in the NRC to enable it render effective services, adding that the corporation can function effectively without concession, if well managed.
"GE only supplies locomotives; they are not running train services anywhere in the world.
"NRC can operate effectively without concession, going by its experienced workers.
"Government should invest more in the railway sector because it is the only transport sector in Nigeria where the demand is higher than supply.
"We appeal to government to look inward and stop the arrangement of selling NRC to the private sector, because it will affect both the economy and the personnel," Okoro said.
The union leader also advised the government to prioritise the revival of the rail system by importing more new locomotives and wagons for the comfort of passengers.
He said that government should establish a monitoring team to ensure its investment delivered commensurate services and set a goal for it to meet international standard.
The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, had on May 8 said that GE was ready to bring about 20 locomotives to the country if the concession agreement was finalised.
Amaechi, who spoke while inspecting the ongoing Lagos-Ibadan Standard Gauge rail in Lagos, added that the concession would bring development and effective service delivery to the NRC.
He assured that the concession would not put railway workers out of the job but rather create more jobs for the teeming populace.
A consortium led by GE has submitted the only bid for the Nigerian railway concession project worth $2 billion for two lines connecting northern cities to those in the south.
The concession would cover about 3,500 km (2,200 miles) of existing narrow-gauge lines from the south western commercial capital, Lagos, to Kano in the north.
It would also cover the South – Eastern oil hub as well as Port Harcourt to Maiduguri in the North-East.


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I remember watching Oprah one day when she had kids on it who had accomplished extraordinary feats. A child who created a non-profit organization for the homeless and raised millions of dollars, another kid who managed to get thousands of backpacks and school supplies donated to other less fortunate families, and the list went on and on. There were 10-year-old's out there who had started their own successful businesses and foundations, and I was sitting on the couch staring lamely at the crumbs left strewn all over my shirt from mindlessly shoving cookies into my mouth while channel surfing. That moment sure put things into perspective.
Now, I am fully aware that it's not healthy to constantly compare yourself to others and their achievements. Especially in this day and age of multimillionaire tweens in the media, you could fall completely into a depression thinking about the house and trips you'll never be able to afford (if you're into that kind of thing…ok, but really…who isn't?)
However, those "what am I doing with my life?" moments can definitely motivate you to go for the things you really want to do. The things that may be a little scary and seem a bit impossible.
How about a little Faith, the Wonder Dog, to inspire you (or make you feel like a wimp for not believing in yourself)?
And if you think that's amazing, check this out:
What to take away from these videos:
1) We can learn from the perseverance of a disfigured, yet happy now-bipedal dog.
2) If you ever feel crappy about your life (we ALL do at times!!), you should find solace in knowing that at least you aren't a dog with a master who forces you to wear a frilly skirt and dance merengue with him in a slightly disturbing manner.
You have choices.


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At our showroom in Horsforth we have a large selection of beds and mattresses on display, including vacuum packed mattresses and our team are specially trained to get advice on the best product for your individual requirements. Also available in any size including single, three quarters, double beds and king size. If we do not have the bed in you require we can easily order from many of our suppliers and when we deliver we can take your old bed away.
At Simply Carpets and Beds we work with the following suppliers: Silent Night. Rest Assured, Kozee Sleep, Highgrove Beds, Limelight Beds, Timeliving and Kaydian.
In our showroom we do not only have beds and mattresses but have on display such things as headboards and bedroom furniture. Feel free to call in and have a look around our premises in Horsforth or if you know what you are looking for give us a call speak to one of our team, who can easily order what you are looking for.


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There's all kinds of uproar, particularly among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (and among non-LGBT people who watch reality television) about the word "tranny" lately. Thus far I've read the 101 Facebook threads and opinion articles with interest, but I've avoided sharing my own opinion.
And then today, I read an article that I found really compelling, but I disagreed with why the person posted it. And I've decided to have my say on the subject.
First, a disclaimer: this all started with some controversy over the television show RuPaul's Drag Race, which features (primarily) men who create costumes and personas to perform as drag queens. Many of them do pretty remarkable work, and that's coming from someone who's not particularly fond of most drag queens or most drag performances. I rarely watch the show, though I usually find it entertaining when I do.
The word "tranny" has historically been used as a slur, just like lots of other words used derisively against minority groups. It's short for transsexual, or transgender, or transvestite… I don't claim to be a linguistic authority on the exact word that it was originally derived from, but you get the idea. Those words refer to someone who was born of one sex but identify as (and often outwardly live as) the other. More recently, "trans" is a more common and preferred alternative.
Like many of slurs, there has also been an effort to "reclaim" the word by the very people it's often used against. In the same way that many gay men — particularly younger gay men — have taken to calling each other "faggot" and "queer" as a way of reclaiming the word from their detractors, some trans people will refer to themselves and to each other as "tranny", sometimes playfully or affectionately.
I'm all for people describing themselves however they are comfortable, and if people refer to each other that way without malice and with no hurt feelings on the receiving end, then that's their business. However, some of the language in RuPaul's Drag Race (and in the ongoing and very public controversy over the language in the show) has offended a whole bunch of people, in the show and not, trans and not, gay and not, and so on. The debate has gone far beyond the show or its contestants.
The detailed history of what was said, by whom, and to whom isn't crucial to this post. If you're unfamiliar with the debate, Google it and you'll get brought up to speed very quickly. Where I have heartburn isn't so much about the words used in and about the show, but more the general concept of slurs.
In general I try to take a stance of "if someone asks you not to call them a slur, it's polite not to" approach. Similarly, if someone is genuinely offended by language, whether you meant offense or not, in many (most?) cases I'd suggest that you simply find a different word unless you truly believe the person is deliberately just being difficult for the sake of it. (I think genuine offense is fairly easy to distinguish from manufactured outrage, but in general I'd still err on the side of politely changing your language if asked.)
I've been on the receiving end of slurs that I didn't like. A dear friend used to call opponents "faggots" when we were playing video games together… He clearly had no ill will toward gay men (I've been "out" to him for more than a decade) but it was language he was accustomed to using when angry at someone, and I had to ask him to stop. Whether it's used against me, or just around me, I'm going to be uncomfortable and I'm going to ask you to stop. Similarly, if you use "the n-word" around me, I'm going to get heated pretty quickly.
(Side-note: the fact that I'll say "tranny" and "faggot" but restrict myself to "the n-word" is telling, I think… Brief self-reflection leads me to conclude that it's because of near-universal societal condemnation of the last one, but not the first two yet… but I suppose that's a subject for another post.)
These are the kind of words that people hear seconds before they get beaten up, thrown out of the family or church (in the case of the anti-LGBT slurs), or killed. They're words used out of malice and hate. I don't think they belong in civil conversation, and I'll tell you so if I hear you use them.
So why, then, the vehement defense by so many people (RuPaul included) of the appropriateness of saying "tranny"? Why not simply choose a different word, if it's offensive to many? From most of the dialogue I've seen online on the subject, it seems the defense mostly falls into one of three camps:
- I'm a gay man, or a drag queen, or trans, and it doesn't bother me… so I should be able to say it
- Stop being so sensitive, toughen up, quit whining (this being the primary argument from RuPaul)
- RuPaul says it and I like RuPaul so anyone who doesn't like it should shut the hell up (not in so many words, perhaps, but the protectiveness toward RuPaul is apparent)
Frankly, I just don't agree that any of those are valid reasons for using offensive language in the media with an audience of millions. If you don't mind being called "tranny", then fine, don't object to people calling you that. If you think people are being too sensitive, ask yourself what's offensive to you and reflect on why (and if you're about to claim that absolutely nothing offends you, you're either delusional or sociopathic, so don't). And if you can't think beyond an emotional reaction to someone daring to question a celebrity that you adore, then that's just sad.
I could rant on this for many more pages, but my point is this: it's a word that is unquestionably offensive to many, many people. True, many people who aren't trans (including some male-identified drag queens) think it's perfectly fine to use, but they're not trans, so they don't get to approve the word for everyone else. And yes, many trans people don't mind the word or even embrace it, and that's fine for them… But their approval shouldn't mean the rest of the world has to hear it either, any more than some black people regularly using "the n-word" means that it's okay for everyone else to.
Slurs are hurtful, and if you're politely asked not to use them, there's rarely any justifiable reason for continuing. "Freedom of speech" doesn't mean "freedom to be an asshole without being thought rude for it".
Find a less objectionable word and move on.


text: Icelom 3,402 Posted September 24, 2018 (edited) 7 minutes ago, hawk32 said: You can't ignore something that didn't happen. Words have meaning. If you're going to try and play some ridiculous semantics game you should open up a dictionary. "ignore verb (used with object), ig·nored,ig·nor·ing. to refrain from noticing or recognizing" - dictionary.com So dash never noticed or recognized that the rock existed or that he moved through it. And outriders second part does not work. Edited September 24, 2018 by Icelom Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites