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G820, Reviewed October 1993
Family farms have been revered in America since the days of Thomas Jefferson. But as more complex technology and commercial management enter farming, and as the national economy becomes more urban-industrial, the question arises whether old values in agriculture can — and should — survive. To put it squarely: Does the family farm really matter?
Does it matter whether the agriculture of the future is composed of family farms — or of big corporation farms, franchised or contract farming, tenant farming for absentee owners, or even new arrangements such as cooperative farms?
Does it matter to farmers, to consumers, to rural communities, to the nation?
Does it matter with regard to productivity, food supplies, conservation of natural resources, and protection of the environment?
Finally, does the kind of agriculture matter enough to affect public policy? National policy is involved in present trends away from family farming. Policy will have a bearing on whether family farming survives in the future.
The farming our founding fathers had in mind was seen as a welcome change from the feudal system that had prevailed in medieval Europe. That system was class stratified. The landowner was lord and workers were serfs. Plowing fields and tending herds was the lowest form of employment.
By pleasant contrast, in the big and fertile new continent the farmer could hope to enjoy the exalted status of freeholder. He could own and manage the land of his labors and receive its product.
That dream has never been expressed better than by the late John Brewster:
In permitting the hitherto separate roles of lords and serfs to be recombined within the same skin, the virgin continent gave working people the chance to (become) free-holders. The emerging agriculture of family farms generated within everyday people an envisioned realm of equal dignity and worth, which all America soon enshrined within her national self-image.
The family farmer still plays a multiple role. He is owner, worker, and manager. Moreover, he is a marketer — and markets are open to him.
Family farms are implicitly of modest size, but size is defined in terms of what family labor can care for. Acreage, investment or volume of sales figures are less applicable. Most labor on a family farm is provided by the family. Thus, hired labor cannot exceed labor provided by the farmer and family. The maximum amount of hired labor is often put at either 1-1/2 or 2 man years. The key feature is that family labor dominates.
All land need not be owned by the farm operator, but most family farmers will own at least part of the land they farm. A few may temporarily be full tenants, but neither widespread nor life-long tenancy is considered to be family farming.
Management may be vested in individual proprietors or family partnerships, but the right to make independent production and marketing decisions is crucial. Family farmers can freely buy supplies and sell the commodities they produce. If they must have production contracts, they are not truly family farmers.
Even though family farms are not defined here by volume of sales or assets, a system dominated by a relative handful of very large farms would not be considered a family farming system, regardless of who owns, works on, or manages individual farms.
On the other hand, a family farm does not mean an unprofitable small farm. It is one where efficient production methods enable farmers to earn acceptable incomes in line with their personal abilities.
Because family farming, like any human institution, stands in more danger of disregard than of denial, these definitional concepts must be adhered to fairly strictly.
One of the most important intangible qualities of family farming is that such a system offers opportunity.
Young people have been welcomed into family farming. In recent years, sharp increases in the cost of entry have worked against preserving this characteristic of family farming. Entry barriers now bring urgency to the question of whether a system of family farms can survive.
Present trends indicate that the family farm as the nucleus of U.S. agriculture is slipping away. We are moving toward a dual agriculture. At one extreme are many small farms, most of them part-time. Fifty percent of all farms, as defined by the U.S. Census, market only about three percent of all farm products. Most of these farmers depend on non-farm income for their living. They are not easily dislodged from farming, although rising costs of fuel for transportation may work against them.
At the other extreme are very large farms. In 1978, the very largest farms, 2-1/2 percent of the nation's total, accounted for 40 percent of all marketings. Among the largest farms are some large land holdings, but commercial cattle feedlots, egg cities and large hog operations also are prominent.
About one-sixth of all farm marketings come from contractually integrated production. Poultry and fruits and vegetables for processing are well known examples, but contracting extends across much of agriculture.
Family farms, intermediate in size and distinguished by their market connection, now contribute no more than half of all farm marketings.
Some argue that new technology, particularly larger field equipment, is almost totally responsible for the trend toward bigness in agriculture. But many explanations now center on financial incentives that favor larger farms. Farm program benefits, applied on a bushel or acre basis, favor larger farms. Tax rules favor high-bracket investors in agriculture, including high-income non-farmers. Larger farmers can often enjoy better access to credit.
Lack of access to markets may be the most subtle threat to family farms. By definition, a family farmer engages in open buying and selling of materials used in production and of commodities produced. The largest farms, however, tend to buy and sell direct. Bypassing local and central market firms, whether of machinery dealers, livestock auctions or a dozen others, threatens the dispersed local market institutions on which family farming depends.
Almost by their nature, family farmers lack powers of survival. The reason lies in the psychology of the individual farmer, whose concentration on his own operation tends to distract him from concern for forces that affect family farming as a whole. This has been referred to as family farmings' "non-instinct for self-preservation." Although many examples could be given, a prominent one is family farmers' support for income tax concessions. Each concession — a deduction from income subject to tax, or to the tax itself — looks attractive to the individual family farmer. But because of our tax structure, most concessions are relatively more advantageous to the high tax-bracket investor, whether farmer or non-farmer. The net effect of these concessions is harmful to ordinary family farmers.
Among the questions associated with family farming, the productivity record of family farm agriculture is perhaps most widely acclaimed.
American consumers have an abundance of nutritious food available to them. In addition, sizable quantities of farm products, notably the grains, are exported to foreign markets each year.
But the record does not prove family farming to be more productive than, say, a system organized along the lines of industrial corporations or even a tenant-dominated agriculture. Big, well-managed corporations are adept at using the latest technology. Non-farm landlords relieve operating farmers of the burden of raising capital for purchase of land.
Certain operations such as commercial feeding of cattle can be more economical as large operations. The big new hog facilities may have a genuine advantage. But these hog facilities often are subsidized by income tax deductions. It remains to be seen whether they can weather the low price period of the hog cycle better than family hog farmers can.
There are some production economies in farming up to about two worker-years of labor. Beyond that size, the output per unit of input changes little. Productivity differences between the well-managed family farm and most other kinds of farming are not wide enough to be the basis for policy choice.
Going beyond production efficiencies, could farming operations get so large as to exert damaging market power? Particularly if the big firms can join together, directly or tacitly, they may be able to lift the price of farm products exorbitantly and resist price declines when supplies are large. This is the threat consumers are most sensitive to. Nor is there clear evidence that higher prices imposed by huge firms would help workers on the land.
Farm leaders often declare that family farmers accept a stewardship relationship to soil and the environment. Family farmers want to preserve farm productivity for future generations, it is said. By implication, other farmers are thought less likely to be good stewards. This attitude prevails widely and is sincerely believed. Unfortunately, not all family farmers have lived up to these noble ideals.
The family farm tradition is potentially positive toward conservation and environmental protection. But measures to improve conservation and regular use of chemicals will necessarily be initiated through government. Family farmers will cooperate as well as others, but family farming is not a guarantee by itself of adequate conservation and environmental protection.
Family farmers have not always fared well financially. The succession of farm programs enacted since 1933 is evidence of the public's concern about the financial well-being of farmers, especially family farmers.
Some "farmers" could become employees of industrial-type corporations. They would qualify only for wages and salaries. Over time, their income would become similar to earnings in industry. But they would get no returns from managing or land holding, as a family farmer does. Wage workers, and some salaried ones too, would eventually be unionized — perhaps to their gain. They would be protected by unemployment insurance and other fringe benefits that go with industrial employment. They also would be subject to seasonal changes in employment and layoffs.
What about family farming versus full tenancy? The tenant farmer receives only the income generated by his labor and by the amount of capital he provides. He gets none of the return creditable to land. Moreover, the historical record shows that when tenant farming becomes widespread, it is difficult for the tenant farmer to protect his income because of the intensified competition for land.
The question of financial returns brings us back to the multiple role of the family farmer. The farmer who owns at least part of his land gets a combined income from land, labor, capital and management. As land becomes relatively scarce, more of the total return generated in farming (including capital gains) will go the landholder. Family farmers then will be likely to enjoy a growing advantage over farm workers, tenants or contractees. However, they may not do as well as absentee landowners, or the owners/managers of large land holding corporations, all of whom will want to acquire land for its increasingly attractive returns on investment.
In the early 19th century, land settlement was a big part of the economic growth of the nation. Family farmers who cleared land and plowed the virgin soil provided the underpinnings for increased commercial activity.
There also was a belief that those who owned and lived on the land would want to protect it, their home, their community. Family farmers were seen as responsible citizens and the backbone of a democracy.
The idea that life on the land develops superior personal qualities is known as agricultural fundamentalism. The doctrine still has strong adherents, even though farmers are less different from non-farmers than they used to be.
However, these good attributes are most often associated more with the proprietary or family farmer. They would be less visible in wage workers or lifelong tenants. The man or woman in charge of his or her own land and livestock is, supposedly, the one most possessed of "fundamental" values.
These values were easier to realize when the open frontier was an invitation to opportunity. If the qualities of family farming are worth preserving, conscious effort must be made to keep the door of opportunity open.
Of all questions about the qualities of family farming, its meaning to the rural community offers the most clear-cut answer. Whether or not family farming is preserved does matter to the rural community.
The question cuts two ways. First, does family farming contribute to the financial strength of local businesses? Second, are proprietary farmers better community participants than farm wage hands, tenants or contractees?
An especially strong case can be made in answer to the first question. Family farmers buy most of their inputs from local suppliers (including their cooperatives). They sell most of their products into local or regional markets. Much of the business enterprise in rural towns and small cities is farm-connected.
In sharp contrast, large corporations engaged in farming are less likely to get their credit from local banks, their machinery from local dealers, or their fertilizer from the local farm supply firm. They also are more likely to sell their products directly to a distant market or processor.
An absentee-landlord agricultural system lies midway between family farming and big corporations in support of local businesses. Tenants do not bypass local suppliers and markets the way big corporations do. Even so, absentee-landlords, like industrial corporations, drain farm income away from the local community. Less of it remains to be spent locally for farm inputs and especially for food, clothing, recreation and other items for family living.
How well farmers of various categories enter into local community activity is more difficult to generalize. Family farmers clearly enter into community activities more actively than wage workers, but little data is available on how well tenant farmers participate in community affairs.
The pattern for farmers producing under contract is mixed. Some contracting farmers have low incomes and may feel themselves to be of low standing in their communities. But contractual producers of vegetables for canning, even though they have transferred much risk-bearing and management to the contractor, enjoy relatively high income and hold positions in their communities.
Owners or managers of large, industrial-type farms who live outside the local community would assume few civic responsibilities within the community.
This guide has presented the unchallengeable data on the gradual decline in family farming, more judgmental notions as to why those trends are occurring, and the highly personal concern as to whether the trends matter.
Whether they matter depends on one's appraisal of the impact to be expected from a highly concentrated agricultural system as contrasted with dispersed family farming. In an industrial-type structure, the incomes of persons working in farming might be protected reasonably well, especially if all the trappings of unionization and fringe benefits were added. But those persons would still be wage workers. Hence the nagging question arises once more: How much importance is to be attached to the status of the family farmer who both labors on the land and owns and manages it?
Where does the public interest lie? When economic and sociological values are taken into account, is it better to have a farming sector of proprietary farmers who provide most of their own labor as well as capital and management? Or is there nothing to fear from a class-stratified agriculture — either one of tenancy as farmers work the land held by absentee landlords, or one of industrial corporation control through contract in which "farmers" are essentially wage-hands?
Order publications online at http://extension.missouri.edu/explore/shop/ or call toll-free 800-292-0969.


text: DL Deadrin Senat of Immokalee, FL is on commitment alert regarding USC. 'South Carolina is number one," said Senat who visited USC last weekend. "I like them real good. Everything stood out to me. It was just different, things I hadn't seen before." USC head coach Steve Spurrier and assistant GA Mangus are to visit Senat Thursday and he acknowledged that a commitment is on his mind. 'It's possible," he said. "I like South Carolina a lot but I'm still interested in all my offers. Everybody is coming at me hard." Senat is scheduled to visit NC State this weekend. He has also been to South Florida and the Bulls are second on his list to USC.

subset: commoncrawl


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Nigeria's Skeptical Literary Lion
The first book of Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was nearly lost to history when a London typing service dismissed the handwritten manuscript sent from Africa as a joke.
The joke was on them. Finally published in 1958, "Things Fall Apart" became an improbable success, announcing the Nigerian author, and Africa, on the world's literary stage. It went on to sell more than 10 million copies in 50 languages.
"It literally invented African literature," said Simon Gikandi, Kenyan author of "Reading Chinua Achebe."
Mr. Achebe has died, his literary agent confirmed Friday, following a brief illness. He was 82 years old.
"He was a giant, and a wise and kind man," said a statement by John Makinson, chief executive of the Penguin Group, a unit of Pearson PLC, Mr. Achebe's last publisher.
Born Nov. 16, 1930, in a roadside town in British Nigeria's rural southeast, Mr. Achebe sought work as a young man in Lagos, the colonial capital, where he wrote his first novel: the tragic story of a champion wrestler reduced to suicide by the arrival of Christian missionaries.
Mr. Achebe wrote his early fiction in the 1950s and 1960s at a hopeful time in African history, when waves of independence inspired young writers to celebrate—and perhaps romanticize—the sunnier aspects of life on the continent. Many sought to capture the grandeur of Africa's landscapes—its rivers and gardens.
Mr. Achebe was more wry and more skeptical of Africa's winds of change. In the novels he wrote, African society could be beautiful but brutal, and always in danger of falling apart.
"He started writing at a moment of great expectations, but his works contained this important cautionary note, that things could go wrong," Mr. Gikandi said.
Soon, they did. Mr. Achebe's 1966 novel "Man of the People" ends with a military coup. Weeks after its publication, Nigerians awoke to learn their military had seized power for the first of six times. Civilians and soldiers alike accused the novelist of enjoying foreknowledge of the coup.
Within months, Nigeria was engulfed in independent Africa's first humanitarian catastrophe: a war for the independence of Mr. Achebe's Igbo homeland that left one million people dead, most of them children who starved. The novelist finally delved into this painful period in his final work, released last year, "There Was a Country."
In 1970, after the conflict ended, he drifted from fiction toward criticism and talent-scouting. As editor of a British publishing house Heinemann's African Writer Series, he edited, published and promoted early entrants into Africa's pantheon of writers: Kenya's Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Ghana's Ayi Kwei Armah, Cameroon's Mongo Beti.
A brief foray into politics campaigning for a political party, prompted him to write 1984's "The Trouble With Nigeria," a 68-page rant against everything from taxi drivers to corruption that op-ed writers still quote from liberally. His country—Africa's most populous—looked to him for guidance. At literary seminars in the U.S., Nigerians would pack the seats and exhaust him with questions about their country's politics—to the dismay of non-Nigerians who had come to discuss literature.
In 1975, he accomplished a feat rare even for authors: He knocked a classic, Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," from the literary canon. The 1903 novel had been Europe's most commonly read account of Africa, and bristled with depictions of Africans as half-human cannibals. In an influential series of lectures and essays, Mr. Achebe called the author "a thoroughgoing racist." The charge stuck. Steadily, Mr. Conrad's share of university reading lists fell as Mr. Achebe's rose.
In 1990, a car accident in Lagos left Mr. Achebe paralyzed from the waist down, and sent him to Bard College in New York, an easier setting than Nigeria for a wheelchair-constrained author. In 2009, he joined Brown University in Rhode Island. He would live and lecture in the U.S. for the final decades of his life.
By then, "Things Fall Apart" ranked as one of America's most frequently taught high-school books.
Yet its author played down praise. Twice, he rejected Nigeria's second-highest honor, accusing the leaders who award the prize of trying "to turn my homeland into a bankrupt and lawless fiefdom."
When critics credited him with transforming American and European views of Africa, he abstained—he thought they hadn't changed all that much.
But he believed they could. In a 1994 interview, he summarized the driving thought behind his art: "If you don't like someone's story, write your own."
—Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg contributed to this article.
Write to Drew Hinshaw at firstname.lastname@example.com


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posted by Thom Holwerda on Wed 12th Mar 2008 18:14 UTC, submitted by Flatland_Spider
PC-BSD 1.5 has been released. "System Updater tool: keeps system & PBIs up to date; sound detection program! Uses XML backend to identify and load modules; amd64 build of 1.5, including PBIs that are on our auto-build server; PBI icon preview library, now a PBI file shows the embedded icon on your desktop, not the generic 'PBI' format icon; Xorg 7.3; KDE 3.5.8; FreeBSD 6.3 Release."


text:
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text:
The Morning Heresy is your daily digest of news and links relevant to the secular and skeptic communities.
Margaret Talbot at the New Yorker on the internal views of the sex abuse crisis within in the Catholic Church:
What is distinctive is that Catholic officials can find a higher purpose—protecting the sanctity of the priesthood—in shielding abusers, and a spiritually rewarding humility in enduring criticism of their conduct. [Los Angeles cardinal] Mahony has been blogging about the public disparagement he has received, and he compares it to what Christ withstood, urging the faithful to join him in exploring what it is to "take up our cross daily and to follow Jesus—in rejection, in humiliation, and in personal attack." But, unlike the criminal prosecution of perpetrators—or real Church reform—that doesn't do much to help victims or to prevent abuse.
Disgraced Cardinal Keith O'Brien of Scotland cops to "having engaged in unspecified sexual misbehavior" with priests.
That's right, a 2 1/2 year old kid born with HIV may have been cured.
Attention "paleo" fans: Marlene Zuk at the Chronicle of Higher Education disspells myths about what humans are "meant" to do in terms of diet and behavior, and the false idea that evolution has halted for homo sapiens.
Bunny, watch your back. CSH's Tom Flynn is coming to California to present "The Trouble with Easter."
Sharon Hill has a new piece at the CSI website on building bridges with believers to mitigate mischaracterizations of skeptics.
American Atheists turns heads with a new billboard campaign calling out the theocratic musings of high profile religious conservatives, apparently misquoting Sarah Palin in one of them, and inspiring a spokesperson for ad subject Rick Santorum to thank AA for the publicity.
Jeff Strang, already a very good egg and member of the freethought community, donates $240,000 to the Foundation Beyond Belief. Says Hemant, the chair of FBB:
[T]his sort of gift will transform the way we do things at the foundation. It's game-changer in the best possible way and we can't thank him enough.
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom calls upon Pakistan to "stem the rising tide of violent religious extremism that victimizes all Pakistanis."
Sadly, more cases are added to the list of persecuted individuals at CFI's Campaign for Free Expression.
Cool CFI events going on all over the place. A sampling:
- CFI-Michigan is going to have Ed Brayton, who is hilarious, tackling the serious topic of religious justification of violence, on March 13.
- CFI-NYC starts a new group, Queer Humanists, just to drive the religious right into a slobbering fit, March 13.
- Susan Jacoby will talk Ingersoll with CFI-Michigan on March 27.
- CFI-UK presents an event on "The Tricks of the Mind" on March 30.
I have a humble suggestion for the papal conclave, by way of Father Sarducci.
Texas public school class on religion is criticized as a way of "using a high school elective to pole-vault the wall between church and state."
A staged performance of last year's trial of Pussy Riot in Russia is interrupted by the Russian Federal Migration Service to check for illegal aliens in the crowd.
After linking to an anti-vaxxer conference for the irony of it in a previous Heresy, Tim Farley wisely reminds me that the Google machine doesn't understand derision, and that pageviews are pageviews. He offers this bit of helpful advice for keeping those links from benefiting the bad guys.
London nonprofit promotes the reliance on peer review for scientific claims made in the media and in products.
Minister, writing for a Wichita Falls, TX newspaper, is scared of how well secular humanism is doing, frequently citing the Council.
City of Lleida, Spain has its ban on Islamic veils overturned.
AllAfrica: Horrors of genocide turn many surviving Rwandans to atheism.
Seth Kurtenbach shows how the evil skepto-atheist plan to topple the Catholic Church is working:
Joey Ratz, former Boss of the syndicate, shall retain the title of "emeritus pope", which helps us by dividing Catholic loyalties. Each resulting faction will be weaker than they otherwise would be as a unified party.
John Gordon at Salon, battling his way to sobriety, describes a kind of reverse-Francis-Collins-waterfall moment:
I stood on a mountaintop and looked out over the sea. A thousand feet below me, eagles soared on thermals. Wind blew through my hair and I felt dizzy. I fell to my knees and cried. I didn't realize it at the time, but this "white-light" experience was the moment I realized there was no God — I had been struck atheist.
Anti-church-state-separation group Becket Fund denounces atheist attempts to level the religious-display playing field as the creation of a "Stupid Public Square." (Tim, I did the "no follow" in the HTML, ok?)
South Dakota is going to have itself an atheist convention.
Bill Moyers' website rounds up previous discussions on his shows about atheism.
Reuters posts a photo essay on UFO hunting in Arizona.
A new edition of a collection of Mormon holy books wrestles more openly with the church's views on race and polygamy.
Anti-Quote of the Day
Indonesian Constitutional Court justice candidate Arief Hidayat:
Indonesia is a religious nation; so, religious freedom in this country must uphold theistic principles. The discussion about religious freedom here, therefore, is not about whether Indonesians may be atheists. All Indonesians should be believers.
Quote of the Day
Question posed at the always-risible Yahoo Answers site (with original comma usage maintained):
Why has Obama been hiding the Loch Ness Monster, from us? And, why has the mainstream liberal media been covering it up?
* * *
Linking to a story or webpage does not imply endorsement by Paul or CFI. Not every use of quotation marks is ironic or sarcastic, but it often is.
Follow CFI on Twitter: @center4inquiry
Got a tip for the Heresy? Send it to press(at)centerforinquiry.net!
The Morning Heresy: "I actually read it." – Hemant Mehta


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David Eppstein, who already maintains the amazing Geometry Junkyard, and has the best publications web archives I have ever seen, has now "joined the ranks of the blogged". Looks like geometry bloggers are now dominating the algorithms community :).
David also has the distinction of being the only (one of the only?) theoretician to be portrayed in a comic strip.


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Atlantia Technology Group
|home page
Type | Website Design
Description |
Description |
Atlantia Technology Group contracted us to create a full marketing package including a fresh website design. They were looking for a clean, professional, organized layout with a more modern, technical theme. Atlantia is able to update all areas of content on their site via an administration panel.


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Al Sharpton and the media are keeping the Zimmerman protest going.
The trial of George Zimmerman in Florida for shooting an unarmed teenager, Travon Martin, in a confrontation that many believe shouldn't have happened has made a huge impact on many Black Americans. It has been blown way out of proportion, to the point where Al Sharpton revealed plans to sponsor Black protests in a hundred cities. I want to comment on Black protests. What are they protesting, and what would they put in place of what we have now?
The trial was a case study in American legal practice, which many people followed avidly. The TV news channels, even including Fox News, were on it 24-7, and that's all they talked about. The jurors came to the only possible conclusion, given the evidence they were given to consider. However, "Not Guilty" doesn't mean totally innocent. Most people assume Zimmerman acted wrongly, and bears a lot of the blame. However, only he knows what really happened.
Too many people consider the incident a result of racism and racial profiling (a vague term, at best.) Many have generalized from a single incident that racism was involved, (even though there was no hint of it in the trial,) and it's a symptom of modern society. We've heard that from Blacks, celebrities, and politicians on the Left, including Obama himself. If that's true, then we must conclude: (1) Blacks hate Hispanics (assuming that Travon attacked George), or (2) Hispanics hate Blacks, or (3) Democrats hate Blacks, since Zimmerman is a registered Democrat.
The Left and the Left-leaning media concealed the fact that Zimmerman is Hispanic (too bad his last name isn't Garcia) and cast it as White on Black murder. They called it murder even when there was legitimate doubt about what exactly happened. They tried the case in public, based on newspaper and TV accounts alone, and made it much worse than it should have been.
Now, after the trial is over and a fair verdict was reached, Blacks and the Left can't give up their characterization of Zimmerman's act as murder. We've already seen rioting in the streets of several large cities. Sharpton wants to keep the mob violence going. To what end?
Does he expect new laws to be passed? What law could possibly change the current situation? Does he want civil unrest? Does he want a Black vs. non-Black civil war to break out? Doesn't he know that what he's doing emphasizes the differences between Blacks and everyone else, and increases the likelihood of violence?
We need to defuse the situation, not pour fuel on it. I think professional race agitators like Al Sharpton do more harm than good.
I don't know whether this came up in the trial, but I know that Zimmerman's gun was a 9mm – almost certainly an automatic. I had some thoughts about this.
In order to fire, an automatic must have a round in the chamber, and it takes two hands to chamber a round for an automatic. For any automatic I've seen, it takes two hands to flip the safety off as well. If we are to believe that Zimmerman drew his gun while fighting Martin, then the round would have to be already in the chamber and the safety would have to be off. Perhaps Zimmerman prepped the gun while approaching Martin. It's hard to imagine he did these things while being pounded into the cement by Martin.
The second thought I had was, that once he had the gun, he could have put it to Martin's head and said "Stop or I'll shoot", rather than just shooting.
I didn't follow the trial very closely, so I don't know whether these points were examined.


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11 March 2013, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic - The National Council for Climate Change and Clean Development Mechanism (CNCCMDL) of the Government of the Dominican Republic has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Teacher Training Institute (INAFOCAM) to develop a training programme on climate change for teachers. This initiative is part of the UN CC:Learn Partnership. UN CC:Learn is a One UN initiative on climate change learning for which UNITAR is providing the Secretariat. The high-level event was also attended by teachers and a UNITAR representative.
- Adapt an existing UNESCO course on CCESD to the Dominican context;
- Organize a national pilot workshop to train trainers;
- Organize 10 regional workshops to train 400 teachers in 18 regions of the Dominican Republic;
- Follow-up on the implementation of CCESD in selected teacher training institutions;
- Implement an international exchange programme for teachers in collaboration with other Latin American countries.
An important aspect of UN CC:Learn is to support countries in developing a National Strategy to Strengthen Human Resources and Skills to Advance Green, Low Emission and Climate Resilient Development, through a multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder process. During the course of 2012-2013, Benin, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Malawi, and Uganda are participating as UN CC:Learn pilot countries. Core funding for the 2011-2013 implementation phase of UN CC:Learn is provided by the Swiss Government.


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It's no secret that media companies have started to hire companies such as BayTSP to automatically find file sharers and send letters to their ISPs. The goal of this is to use fear to persuade people to use legal methods of getting digital content.
Many ISP's, especially universities, trust the good faith of these companies and will automatically deactivate the Internet connection of those who they get notifications for. As a personal project, and with the help of Carnegie Mellon's Information Security Office (which employs me to work on various computing security tasks), I decided to investigate the reliability of notices from companies such as BayTSP. The answer: the companies do not actually gather the data they claim to. Their standards for sending DMCA notices are very low.
In order to understand the issues, it's first necessary to have a basic understanding of BitTorrent. In order to download something via BitTorrent you download a ".torrent" file from any number of sites that index the content. This file contains a fingerprint for every piece of the file that you are attempting to download. It also contains a reference to a tracker. This tracker is the way that peers (the people downloading the content) find each other. After contacting the tracker, you contact each of the potential peers that the tracker shares with you (and other peers may contact you). The client then begins swapping parts of the file with each of the peers. What the media companies object to is that in the process of downloading the file, your client will offer parts of their copyrighted content to other users -- a violation of copyright law. In order to catch these violations, BayTSP advertises fake clients to the Bittorrent tracker and uses the list of peers which it gets back to find violations
For my investigation, I wrote a very simple BitTorrent client. My client sent a request to the tracker, and generally acted like a normal Bittorrent client up to sharing files. The client refused to accept downloads of, or upload copyrighted content. It obeyed the law.
I placed this client on a number of torrent files that I suspected were monitored by BayTSP (For my own protection I don't want to identify the torrents used for this research. I used the fact that NBC is a client of BayTSP to find trackers. If you want to check if BayTSP is monitoring a torrent, look for IPs coming from ranges in test.blocklist.org). Because the university's information security office is very diligent about processing DMCA notices, I would be able to tell if the BayTSP folks sent notices based on this. With just this, completely legal, BitTorrent client, I was able to get notices from BayTSP.
To put this in to perspective, if BayTSP were trying to bust me for doing drugs, it'd be like getting arrested because I was hanging out with some dealers, but they never saw me using, buying, or selling any drugs.
The fact that BayTSP does not confirm that the client it is accusing actually uploads illegal content could cause false identification of innocent users. BitTorrent trackers work via a standard HTTP request request, for example:
GET /announce?info_hash=579CC43E4D66D35AE22312985EA04275939AB477&peer_id=asdfasdfadfasdf&port=12434&compact=1
One easy way to make somebody look likea bittorrenter would be to get them to go to a website with the code <img src="http://tracker.com:12345/announce?info_hash=579CC43E4D66D35AE22312985EA04275939AB477&peer_id=asdfasdfadfasdf&amp;port=12434&compact=1" />. They'd be on the tracker, and BayTSP would see their IP address, and might send them an infringement notice. BayTSP might check that they are listening on the port they advertise (maybe even check for a BitTorrent handshake). If the user is using bittorrent for legal usages, you could just advertise a port they were listening on. More investigation is needed into exactly what triggers the notice.
One even easier trick you can use: the BitTorrent clients BayTSP uses support Peer Exchange. You can give them the name of another peer for them to rat out to the ISP.
At the end of the day, BayTSP (and probably other similar companies) are sending DMCA notices which claim that they detected a user uploading and downloading copyrighted files. This is a lie. They didn't catch the user in the act of downloading. A lying tracker, a peer using peer exchange, hostile web page, or buggy BitTorrent client could all result in a false DMCA notice.
If your ISP forwards a DMCA notice from these guys, point them here. This research suggests that they have no evidence of wrong-doing. If ISPs learn that the folks sending them DMCA notices are not being completely honest, they may be willing to reconsider their position about how they respond to the notices. The people I work with at Carnegie Mellon seemed willing to reevaluate their policies given this evidence. I believe that ISPs should require that any peer-to-peer related DMCA notice include a statement regarding exactly what evidence of sharing was found. Ideally, the notice should contain evidence that could be corroborated with log files (for example, "we found that the client at 184.108.40.206 uploaded 1 MB of file X to 22.214.171.124". The ISP may be able to check that there was 1 MB of traffic between these two clients).
A piece of good news for anybody who has gotten a bittorrent related notice from BayTSP: it doesn't seem like a studio could do much in terms of court action with the evidence BayTSP gives them.
For the technically minded, I though I'd share some observations of the behavior of BayTSP's clients
- BayTSP's clients don't don't accept incoming connections, only send outgoing ones. I wonder what exactly this is for.
- Some of the BayTSP clients claim to be using Azureus (and support Azureus extensions), while others run libtorrent. I'm not sure why they are doing this
- When BayTSP's clients connect to a BT user, they claim to not have downloaded any of the file, but refuse uploads. Not only does this behavior not make any sense for an actual user, but it seems like BayTSP would want to accept data, which might provide proof of infringement.
- Some of the IP ranges I noticed coming from BayTSP were: 154.37.66.xx, 63.216.76.xx, 216.133.221.xx. Sometimes, they make themselves really obvious on the tracker. For example, 154.37.66.xx and 63.216.76.xx will send 10 clients to the same tracker all claiming to listen on port 12320. Maybe trackers should block these folks


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Helping Caribbean Entrepreneurs Get Down to Business
By Jason Kohn, Contributing Columnist
There's plenty to love about Jamaica: the weather, the food, the music, the gorgeous beaches and mountains. But there's one area where, according to one study at least, Jamaica is lagging behind: information technology.
This shouldn't necessarily surprise. While some Latin American countries, especially Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, are seeing significant economic and IT growth, investment in the Caribbean is growing much more slowly.
But if you think there's nothing interesting happening in the Jamaican and Caribbean tech scene, you'd be wrong. As the Kingston BETA tech conference held last month in the Jamaica's capital demonstrates, there's a burgeoning tech startup community in the region, and many people dedicated to helping that community grow and thrive.
Supporting Entrepreneurs
I spoke to someone intimately involved in that process last week, Ingrid Riley, founder of the nonprofit ConnectiMass, which hosts the Kingston BETA and Caribbean BETA events.
"We're an entrepreneurship foundation," she says. "We started in 2007 with the goal of helping young people and women across the Caribbean to become successful tech entrepreneurs. We do that primarily by connecting them, educating them, and inspiring them."
ConnectiMass is a major force in the region for collecting and publishing technology data and reports, and working with governments throughout Latin America to help accelerate technology investment and entrepreneurship. ConnectiMass also publishes an award-winning blog on the Caribbean tech scene, SiliconCaribe.com.
But Riley's real passion is working at the ground level with budding entrepreneurs to help them develop their ideas into viable businesses.
"We're a foundation that was started by entrepreneurs for aspiring and existing entrepreneurs," she says. "We host startup boot camps and other events geared toward educating people about things like how to pitch your idea, how to make your idea actually viable. Our role is to do whatever we can to help them to be successful. That may mean they're now able to say, 'Hey, my goodness, my idea is viable so I'm going to bootstrap it,' or 'I'm going to form a team and go after angel or venture funding.' Whatever route they choose, it's about getting them ready. We try to inspire them and educate them so they can actually build, launch, and prosper."
Building a Tech Community
A major part of ConnectiMass' efforts are annual tech meet-ups, where aspiring entrepreneurs can meet with others in the tech community, participate in pitch contests, and get face-to-face coaching and guidance to help them succeed.
"We've held our Kingston BETA tech community meet-up since 2007," says Riley. "We've had around 50 events, around 3,500 people attending, and a little more than 100 entrepreneurs have pitched their ideas at these events. We're also in year two of the Caribbean Beta annual tech entrepreneurship conference."
In Riley's experience, the conferences are already having a significant effect.
"In the first three years of Kingston BETA, there were no pitches," she recalls. "People didn't know what it was, and there was this culture of people not wanting to share their ideas or worrying that they would be stolen. So it took a while. We did a lot of hands-on, face-to-face, small group meetings. We met with people one-on-one, and worked to get them to a comfortable place of simply speaking in the public and sharing their idea. The last three years have been amazing. This year we had an average of eight to 10 pitches every event, which was never the case early on. And we're seeing that happen across the Caribbean. We've helped Barbados set up their own mini-meet-ups. We've helped Trinidad with their Trinidad & Tobago Startup Weekend. We've helped Cayman. When we say we're Caribbean, we mean we're Caribbean."
This most recent Kingston BETA saw several exciting startups presenting at the event, including:
- Farmscore, a web application that aims to provide a credit score service to banks for local farmers
- Student Resident Web, an online business to advertise and manage housing at Jamaican universities
- BlastJA, a local deal site for Jamaican businesses and consumers
Past Kingston BETA successes include Gordon Swaby, founder of the online e-learning platform EduFocal, and the founders of JamaicansMusic.com, a global digital marketing platform for reggae music.
Looking Ahead
Riley believes that the future is bright for the tech scene in Jamaica and throughout the Caribbean. That's due to all the smart and talented people in the region, but also due to the unique technology and business problems they're trying to solve.
"We expect to see a lot of growth in startups that focus on empowering small businesses, and things like helping agriculture and government become more efficient," says Riley. "Mobile applications and content are also going to be huge. Jamaica is number one in talk time and penetration and adoption across the region, and among the top three in social media presence. In addition to that, music without question, because we have one of the most influential music forms in the world, reggae music."
And Jamaican entrepreneurs are about to get some help. The Jamaican government just announced it will invest US$20 million to further develop the country's ICT sector. Two major telecom service providers also just announced a major joint commitment to expand wholesale broadband capacity to Caribbean companies.
Can't wait to see the innovative things Jamaican entrepreneurs do with these investments? Keep your eye on the news from the region, and on the SiliconCaribe blog.
>>More… Connected Life Exchange
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2 Comments
Glad to see interest growing in Jamaican ICT. I attended the last Caribbean Beta conference in November 2012 and competed in the pitch fest along with Team Claja. Although we didn't win, (not even close) the experience and connections made were invaluable. Furthermore, we were amazed at some of the tech displayed by the competition.
Jason Kohn
That's great to hear, it sounds like a very cool experience!


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NEWARK, N.J. - U.S. Senate candidate Cory Booker's campaign is downplaying the disclosure of Twitter exchanges he had with a stripper.
Booker, the Democratic mayor of Newark and a prolific Twitter user, is running in a special Senate election that is less than three weeks away.
Booker, 44, exchanged direct messages earlier this year with Lynsie Lee, who works at a vegan strip club called Casa Diablo in Portland, Ore.
Lee provided a screenshot of the exchange Wednesday to the website BuzzFeed.
In the messages, Lee told Booker the West Coast loved him. Booker, who is single, said the East Coast loves her, "and by the East Coast, I mean me." Lee responded she was blushing. Booker replied "it's only fair."
Booker, an early Twitter adopter, has 1.4 million followers and uses the social media site constantly.
His campaign issued a statement noting that the two-term mayor has long used Twitter to direct city resources and communicate with supporters across the country.
"In an era when nearly every moment in most public officials' lives is scripted and controlled, the mayor remains accessible to regular people," the statement said. "The most shocking thing about this story is the news that there's a vegan strip club in Portland."
Lee did not return an email seeking comment.
She told Portland television station KPTV that she had never met Booker. She and the mayor both appeared in a documentary about Twitter.
She told the TV station her message to Booker was: "I just hope this doesn't hurt your political career, because I'm rooting for you. And, you can take me out to dinner any time."
Associated Press writer Angela Delli Santi in Trenton contributed to this report.


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The 2nd Womble wrote:If its a law, for chemists sake just obey it.
That is an extremely poor argument. History and the present is fully of BAD laws. I doubt you obey every law applicable to cyclists. The bell is a typical one many cyclists break.
The 2nd Womble wrote:What harm is there is being the bigger man? Someone has to be, and yet half in here are waiting for the other guy to make the first move. It's puerile in the extreme.
Now you seem to be making this into a competition or a war. I'm not sure how stopping at an empty intersection makes you a bigger man.
The 2nd Womble wrote:And yes, every day I drive AND ride I do my utmost to obey the road rules. Why? Because its one less Richardhead for everyone else to contend with. Shock horror if everyone did likewise we'd all be fine.
I'm sorry but this is simply false. Following road rules wont ensure the safety of cyclists!


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Through Don's research in his family and local history he came across the Branch family. Young Elma Branch kept a diary of her life on the plains and Don made copies of all the notes that referred to his family and happily for me my family was included in the notes he made.
December 24, 1890: cooked some this fore noon and cleaned up. went up to Cash (City) this evening got Rosa Rees and Nellie Kieth. we got pretty cool.
December 25, 1890: well we all have had a good time I guess. I have any way. Ben Johnson took dinner here to. it turned out a nice day.
December 26, 1890: Elias (Elma's husband) took Rosa & Nellie back to Kieths. I dont feel very well. we churned this evening. the wind blew hard this fore noon.
September 20, 1891: Lizzie and Charley Kieth came & got 1 bushel of peaches
Nellie Keith is my great grandmother and Charley her brother. I can still remember the excitement of seeing these little bits about my family.
Photo of a school outing including my Great Grandmother Nellie Keith (center of the three ladies on the left.)
In 1990 my daughter and I drove to Kansas and met with Don. He took us out to the area where our families settled. This is still known as "Keith Canyon" and those two collapsed areas are where the family had dugouts.
The site of Don's families ranch in southwestern Kansas.
There are a lot of published diaries and journals now. With the interest in genealogy and easier access to publishing there seems to be a boom of memoirs and old family records.
I found Covered Wagon Days: From the Private Journals of Albert Jerome Dickson, edited by Arthur Jerome Dickson at a used book sale a month or so ago. I haven't had time to read it but I'm sure it will be a help in understanding what Nellie Keith and her family went through on their own covered wagon journey from Illinois to Kansas when she was a young girl.
Understanding the times is important for family historians, historical fiction writers and everybody who wonders about the history of our country.


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text:
Definitions of about
prep. - Around; all round; on every side of. 2
prep. - In the immediate neighborhood of; in contiguity or proximity to; near, as to place; by or on (one's person). 2
prep. - Over or upon different parts of; through or over in various directions; here and there in; to and fro in; throughout. 2
prep. - Near; not far from; -- determining approximately time, size, quantity. 2
prep. - In concern with; engaged in; intent on. 2
prep. - On the point or verge of; going; in act of. 2
prep. - Concerning; with regard to; on account of; touching. 2
adv. - On all sides; around. 2
adv. - In circuit; circularly; by a circuitous way; around the outside; as, a mile about, and a third of a mile across. 2
adv. - Here and there; around; in one place and another. 2
adv. - Nearly; approximately; with close correspondence, in quality, manner, degree, etc.; as, about as cold; about as high; -- also of quantity, number, time. 2
adv. - To a reserved position; half round; in the opposite direction; on the opposite tack; as, to face about; to turn one's self about. 2
The word "about" uses 5 letters: A B O T U.
No direct anagrams for about found in this word list.
Words formed by adding one letter before or after about (in bold), or to abotu in any order:
r - rubato tabour
Shorter words found within about:
ab abo abut at auto ba bat bo boa boat bot bota bout but oat out ta tab tabu tao tau to tub tuba ut uta
List shorter words within about, sorted by length
Words formed from any letters in about, plus an optional blank or existing letter
List all words starting with about, words containing about or words ending with about
All words formed from about by changing one letter
Other words with the same letter pairs: ab bo ou ut
Browse words starting with about by next letter
Previous word in list: abounds
Next word in list: above
Some random words: ilk biophysical eger luau wogs on oidia
This is not a dictionary, it's a word game wordfinder.
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Privacy and Cookies Policy - Share - © Copyright 2004-2018 Morewords.com - 21.737mS


text:
It's time to party
x 4 with
The Wildly Original Crowd
x 4 with
The Wildly Original Crowd
here at I Gotta Create!
This is the last week that
You have 4 places to link up...
1. Whatever you're working on...show off & inspire us!
2. Your G+ page
3. Your Pinterest page
4. Your Facebook page
First, a couple of features:
click here to pin properly
Do yourself a favor and go see the closeups
of Me and My DIY's February calendar!
Gorgeous!! Plus you get a free download.
click here to pin properly
Go get the tutorial for this DIY Wall Wrapping Station
at Inspirations by D! Functional and pretty.
I feature artists who link back to I Gotta Create!
Thanks, gals
Party Rules:
Follow me, your host, for each of the 4 parties.
For the craft & DiY party, link to your specific post, and link back to I Gotta Create! in your post. Only your self-made projects ~ no round-ups, link parties, etsy's, giveaways, etc.
If you were deleted, try again and be sure to follow the rules ;)
Let's link up!
Be sure to mingle: visit a few neighbors and show some loooove!
Follow me, your host, for each of the 4 parties.
2. Let's link up on G+!
3. Let's link up on Pinterest!
4. Let's link up on Facebook!
Catch the Spectacular Spotlight Features .
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Thank you for making this a fun and well attended party by including a text link
to I Gotta Create! in your post or party button on the front page of your blog.


text:
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text:
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text:
Welcome to the CRG Discussion Forum!Forum registration problems: Make sure you enter your email correctly and you check your spam box first. *Then* email KurtS2@gmail for help.Classified ads are not allowed on the forum.
The question of whether Penske would have traded the 4 luggers, during the '70 season, that is, is answered by the b&w photo on the page of this link: http://hooniverse.com/2011/08/19/morning-qualifying-brave-captain/. This is from the Riverside race, the last of the '70 racing season.S A
Just a quick observation, but here is my PERSONAL take on the lug controversy. If they recognized that "hubs were open", they probably considered going to a knock-off or something similar. I also recall reading/hearing (not saying its factual!) that when Bud Moore saw it, he threatened to go to THREE LUG wheels, but apparently didn't make good on it. Pretty sure SCCA didn't want wheels flying off into the crowd!klvn8r
I fail to see where a 'vinyl roof' would be an advantage in racing (or any other venue).... so I'm still at a loss. The vinyl roof covering would be additional drag (in an aerodynamic sense)..


text:
SOURCE: Hispanicize 2013
February 22, 2013 09:00 ET
MIAMI, FL--(Marketwire - Feb 22, 2013) - A Who's Who of the nation's most influential Latino and multicultural bloggers will take center stage at Hispanicize 2013 as part of 22 blogger-focused sessions that were announced today.
Hispanicize 2013, the fourth annual Latino trends event set for April 9-13 in Miami Beach, is a partnership of the Hispanic Public Relations Association (HPRA) and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).
"Hispanicize 2013 is on track to obliterate last year's event with more bloggers, brands and agencies converging to meet each other than ever before," said Manny Ruiz, founder and creative director of Hispanicize 2013. "We know that bloggers and brands depend on this platform to connect with each other so that's why this year's program is more comprehensive and more entertaining than last year's event. We are significantly raising the bar on ourselves."
Among the long list of this year's top blogs and social media influencers are: The Online Mom; Charles P. Garcia; Pili Montilla; Curves and Chaos/Blogs By Latinas; Latino Rebels; Hispanic Kitchen; Ted Rubin; Mama Contemporanea; Spanglish Baby/Latina Bloggers Connect; Cuponeando/Las Blogueras; Latina Mom Bloggers; Juan of Words; Mocha Dad; Sazon Boricua; DigiBunch/Being Latino; The Wise Latina Club; Mamiverse; Presley's Pantry; Brotha Tech; Nibbles & Feast; Los Tweens; Mocha Dad; Queen of Swag; Web City Girls; Latino Foodie and much more.
Hispanicize 2013 has organized blogger sessions into three categories: 1. blogger to brand panels, 2. entrepreneurship sessions, and 3. blogger to blogger professional development workshops/trainings.
In the spirit of putting bloggers high on the event's agenda, bloggers will get major red carpet treatment with VIP access to celebrities, high-end giveaways, film premieres, music concerts and a Second Annual Latino Blogger Yacht Party. The event schedule is purposely packed daily with top quality sessions that make it hard for bloggers to choose which days to attend.
(See the most recently updated schedule online http://www.hispanicizeevent.com/schedule-2.html)
Even though the blogger portion of the event is unprecedented for its size, it only represents a portion of the more than 90 sessions and 260 speakers that will be announced relating to trends and trendsetters in social media, music, public relations, advertising, media, and filmmaking. The event's remaining agenda will be unveiled in the next two successive weeks.
Among this year's blogger-focused sessions are:
"Latino Tech and Social Media Leaders Symposium"
"Blogging 101: A Roadmap to Blogging Success"
"Twitter en Español"
"Facebook en Español"
"The Rules Of Engagement 2013: A Major Update on How Brands and Agencies are Effectively Engaging and Collaborating with Latino Bloggers"
"The Blogueras: A Primer on Working with Spanish-Dominant Latino Bloggers"
"The Blog/Home Life Balance - Become a 'Force' of One!"
"The Latino Blogger Marketing Challenge: Latino Bloggers Compete to Develop a Winning Business Proposal for One Leading Consumer Brand"
"Upwardly Mobile and On the Go: The Latina Lifestyle Bloggers"
"How to Plan and Execute a Great Latino Blogger Event"
"Papa Knows Best: The Proud and Sometimes Loud Multicultural Dad Bloggers"
"Cooking Good! Latino Food Bloggers Share their Recipes for Great Social Media Content Marketing Success"
"How to Create Branded Videos that Go Viral"
"Return on Relationships: Relationships ARE the New Currency"
"Meet the Latino Health & Fitness Bloggers"
"Taking Your Blog Mobile"
"Beautiful and Bold: The Proud Leaders of Latina Fashion Blogging"
"BLOGGING CASE STUDY: The American Latino Heritage Road Trip"
"Thumbs Up: Meet the Film Bloggers"
"15 Minutes of Genius: The Latino Blogger Edition"
"Mama Power: Best Practices and Insights from the Communities of Latina Mom Bloggers"
"Let's Talk Tech: Meet the Latino and Multicultural Tech Bloggers"
"Going Places: The Further Adventures of Latino Travel Bloggers"
Sponsorship information is available by emailing email@example.com or contacting tel: 203.364.4779.
Sponsorship and Registration Information
As of today, confirmed sponsors so far include: Coca-Cola, MundoFox, Sherwin-Williams, Ford, The Clorox Company, Maseca, ViSalus, Fender, Radio Shack, Transitions, NBC Latino, The Axis Agency, JeffreyGroup, Lanugo, Visit Orlando, Fox News Latino, Business Wire, Sensis Agency, PR Newswire, El Sentinel and several more brands who will shortly be disclosed. Media partners include Latin Heat Media, Getty Images Hispanic, Media Moves, PRODU and Hispanic Market Weekly.
Sponsorship information is available by contacting firstname.lastname@example.com or calling 203.364.4779. To reserve a hotel room, visit https://resweb.passkey.com/Resweb.do?mode=welcome_gi_new&groupID=14723119
About Hispanicize 2013
Now in its fourth year, Hispanicize 2013 (http://www.HispanicizeEvent.com) (#Hispz13) is the iconic annual event for Latino trendsetters and newsmakers in social media, journalism, advertising, PR, film, music and innovation.
Hispanicize 2013 brings brands, media, marketers, celebrities, filmmakers, innovators and bloggers together in a unique creative environment focused on ideas and best practices. The event is a launch pad for creative endeavors, new products, technologies, marketing campaigns, films, books and more targeting Latinos.
Hispanicize 2013, a partnership of the Hispanic Public Relations Association (HPRA), Hispanicize and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), will be held at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach, April 9-13, 2013.
Hispanicize 2012
Katherine Johnson
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Hispanicize 2012
Katherine Johnson
Tel: 786.624.1864
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text:
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to this week's broadcast and the "troublemaker" of the year. That's right, my guest is the first recipient of a new award that singles out teenagers who are not afraid to speak their minds on major issues, even when everyone else around them disagrees. Not afraid, in other words, to stir up trouble for a good cause. That's what Zack Kopplin was doing just the other day at a Save Texas Schools rally in Austin, the state capital:
ZACK KOPPLIN: Do we want Texas tax dollars being used to fund private schools teaching creationism? Say no Texas!
ATTENDEES: No!
BILL MOYERS: Zack Kopplin was chosen to receive the first "troublemaker" of the year award because he's made waves fighting on behalf of science and against laws making it easier to teach creationism in public schools.
Today's fundamentalists, with political support from the right wing, are more aggressive than ever in crusading to challenge evolution with the dogma of creationism. But they didn't reckon on Zack Kopplin.
Starting at the grass roots in his home state of Louisiana, he's become a formidable adversary nationally, speaking, debating, button-holing politicians, and winning the active support of Nobel laureates, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The New Orleans City Council and tens of thousands of students, teachers and others around the country who have signed on to his campaign. Troublemakers all. Zack is now 19 and a history major at Rice University in Houston. He's with me now. Welcome to the show.
ZACK KOPPLIN: Thank you so much for having me on.
BILL MOYERS: What was it about the Louisiana Science Education Act that you didn't like?
ZACK KOPPLIN: Well, this law allows supplemental materials into our public school biology classrooms to quote, "critique controversial theories," like evolution and climate change. Now, evolution and climate change aren't scientifically controversial, but they are controversial to Louisiana legislators. And basically, everyone who looked at this law knew it was just a backdoor to sneak creationism into public school science classes.
BILL MOYERS: Who was behind it?
ZACK KOPPLIN: Nationally, there's this group called the Discovery Institute. They're a creationist think tank that's been pushing these types of laws all around the country for years and years. They even tried to get one nationally included in George Bush's No Child Left Behind with the Santorum amendment. And so they wrote this law and they passed it on locally to the Louisiana Family Forum, which is our affiliate of Focus on the Family. Senator Ben Nevers, who sponsored it, said the Louisiana Family Forum suggested the law to him because they wanted creationism discussed when talking about Darwin's theory. So we know from the horse's mouth exactly what this law is about.
BILL MOYERS: What's your understanding now of creationism? What essentially does it hold?
ZACK KOPPLIN: Essentially it's a denial of evolution, mainly based off a literal interpretation of Genesis.
BILL MOYERS: That God created the earth, a supernatural power intervened, and that's where we and the universe came from?
ZACK KOPPLIN: Yes. And so there're some versions that say the earth is less than 10,000 years old. There're some where they've, creationists have adapted and said, "Well, we got in trouble in the court case when we said that, so we'll say it's millions of years old. But evolution still doesn't happen. We were created in our present form." And that's intelligent design creationism. Intelligent design creationism is still creationism dressed up to look like it's scientific, but it's really not.
BILL MOYERS: When did you collide with this notion?
ZACK KOPPLIN: So the Louisiana Science Education Act passed back in 2008. It was the summer before my sophomore year in high school. And so I knew about it. My dad's been involved in Louisiana politics my entire life, so it was a dinner conversation. We'd be, like, "We can't believe this bad law is just, like, it's passing. But Governor Jindal will never sign it." We knew Governor Jindal. He's a very smart man. He's a Brown University biology major. And so we decided, "Okay, when it gets to him, he'll veto it."
BILL MOYERS: He's also a Rhodes Scholar.
ZACK KOPPLIN: He's a Rhodes Scholar, yeah. And so it got to Governor Jindal with overwhelming support. And Governor Jindal started voicing his support for intelligent design creationism, he signed the law and he's defended it ever since. And we were shocked. So for about two years I sort of stewed over this law. I wanted to fight it. I talked to all my friends. And my friends knew I couldn't stand this law. But I never really knew how to take it on at that point. I was still too young to really recognize I had a voice.
BILL MOYERS: At what point did you say that to yourself, "This is so important to me for my own reasons of conscience, that I'm going to make it my life as a young man."
ZACK KOPPLIN: So, my senior year of high school, I had to do a senior project. And I had friends who learned how to cook healthy food, learned a new language. And I was just, like, none of that interests me. But you know what? But what got my attention was this law. And so on a whim, I sent an e-mail to Dr. Barbara Forrest, who's an expert about, an expert on this issue. She—
BILL MOYERS: Teaches philosophy, doesn't she?
ZACK KOPPLIN: She teaches philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana. So she was an expert witness at the Kitzmiller versus Dover trial, where—
BILL MOYERS: In Pennsylvania.
ZACK KOPPLIN: In Pennsylvania, where intelligent design creationism was ruled unconstitutional. And while it's not a Supreme Court case and doesn't have holding across the entire United States, it essentially has put a stop to intelligent design as a serious method of sneaking creationism into the classroom.
But, so she was an expert witness there and she happens to live 30 minutes away from me in Livingston Parish, a local hotbed of creationism. And so I sent an e-mail to her and said, "I'm a student at Baton Rouge Magnet High and I really want to fight this law." And so she apparently looked me up to make sure I wasn't a creationist plant and then set up a meeting with me. And we got going from there—
BILL MOYERS: A mole.
ZACK KOPPLIN: Yep. I didn't really ever expect it to actually take off the way it did. I sent one e-mail, and suddenly this whole campaign began.
BILL MOYERS: Who else helped you?
ZACK KOPPLIN: I set up a meeting with Barbara and I asked her, "who should I talk to locally?" We worked out Senator Karen Carter Peterson, who represents a district in New Orleans. And she was one of the few votes against the law when it first passed. So I got her to agree to sponsor a repeal bill. And that was a great meeting. She just said, "Okay, like, when do we get started?" And that was just her response to me, "When do we get started." So, I talked to her and I also talked to Barbara about if we wanted to bring some big names on board, who should I, like, who should I talk to? And one of the people she recommended was Sir Harry Kroto, who is a Nobel Laureate chemist at Florida State. And so I sent him an e-mail. And he immediately called, he sent me an e-mail back and said, "Hey, do you have time to talk on the phone, like, on Friday?" And so we set it up where I had written a letter for Nobel Laureate scientists to our state legislature. I talked to him. And I woke up the next morning with him and about ten other Nobel Laureates having signed the letter. And we just started building from there. And so we have 78 Nobel Laureate scientists onboard.
BILL MOYERS: But you haven't repealed the law. It's still in place.
ZACK KOPPLIN: I mean, we would, I would've liked the law to be repealed two years ago, or even five years ago now. But it's going to be a long, tough fight. And I think we know that at this point.
BILL MOYERS: You realize that you're bucking public opinion. The latest findings from Gallup last June are that 46 percent of Americans believe in creationism. 32 percent believe in evolution guided by God. I guess they would call that a form of intelligent design. And 15 percent believe in evolution without God's help. You're definitively in the minority.
ZACK KOPPLIN: I would say we've got about 54 percent that are in the majority because there's a difference between intelligent design and what I think that second option about God guided evolutionists, which be theistic evolution. And there's a lot of people who say that God has caused evolution to happen. But they don't, that's not actually intelligent design. Intelligent design specifically rejects evolution, especially on a large scale. Creationists like to break it up into micro, macro evolution. That's not a legitimate thing. That's not what scientists do. But that's how they say, "We can't accept change over millions of years." And—
BILL MOYERS: And the theistic theory?
ZACK KOPPLIN: Theistic evolution is to say what the Catholic Church accepts, where Pope John Paul II said there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of faith. And they just say, "We think God started evolution. And it's run the way scientists say it's run."
BILL MOYERS: Do you think the Gallup poll is simplistic?
ZACK KOPPLIN: I think it's very simplistic.
BILL MOYERS: Doesn't recognize the varieties of ideas on this subject—
ZACK KOPPLIN: Yes, having said that, the 46 percent who think the earth was formed in the last 10,000 years is a very scary number for me.
BILL MOYERS: Let me play you a clip from Representative Paul Broun of Georgia. He's a member of Congress. You've heard of him, I'm sure. And this was his appearance at an event organized by the Liberty Baptists Church in his own state.
PAUL BROUN: God's word is true. I've come to understand that all that stuff I was taught about evolution, and embryology, and big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it's lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see there are a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young earth. I don't believe that the earth's but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That's what the bible says.
BILL MOYERS: Representative Broun is a medical doctor. He is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. If he were sitting here instead of me, what would you say to him?
ZACK KOPPLIN: We need to change that attitude. I mean, we need to be teaching evolution and embryology and the big bang theory because, you know, while he may think they're lies from the pit of hell, they're not. They're good, established science. And if our students don't learn it, they're going to be at a disadvantage to the rest of the world, to China, to Britain to France. And we're not going to do what we need to really make the advances to keep our way of life and ensure the survival of the human race, if we don't teach our students science.
He has the freedom to be educated and educate his children the way he sees it. But, we have to make a specific distinction. Not in the public schools, not in publicly funded private schools, like voucher schools. And definitely not educating other people's children.
BILL MOYERS: You've taken this fight beyond the Louisiana law into the fight against school vouchers. Why?
ZACK KOPPLIN: I didn't initially really care about school vouchers because I was fundamentally a science advocate. And I was worried about evolution. And then last summer I got, a friend sent me an article by Alternet that had exposed a school in Louisiana in this voucher program that was apparently using curriculum that taught the Loch Ness Monster disproved evolution, and the Loch Ness Monster was real.
And so it caught my attention. And I said, "Well, let me look into this more." And so I pulled a list of the voucher schools off our department of education's website and just started going through them. And I'd look up a school and look up its website. And I'd go find a school that said, "Scientists are sinful men." And we are—
BILL MOYERS: Sinful?
ZACK KOPPLIN: Sinful. And they rejected the things like theories like the age of the earth and anything else they said anything that, like, that that goes against God's word is an error. And so I found a school like that. I found a school that put in their student handbook that students had to defend creationism against traditional scientific theory. And so these are schools receiving millions in public money.
BILL MOYERS: Through vouchers—
ZACK KOPPLIN: Through vouchers—
BILL MOYERS: --transferring public funds from public schools to private religious schools.
ZACK KOPPLIN: And recently we, I exposed with MSNBC that over 300 schools in voucher programs in nine states and Washington DC are teaching creationism. We have schools that call evolution the way of the heathen. And so it's become pretty clear if you create a voucher program, you're just going to be funding creationism through the back door.
BILL MOYERS: Neal McCluskey at the Cato Institute writes, "Were Kopplin's argument fundamentally that taxpayers should not have their money taken against their will to schools with which they might disagree, it would be one thing: vouchers do transfer taxpayer money, though they provide far more overall freedom than does public schooling. But Kopplin's argument, like the arguments of so many people on numerous education issues, isn't ultimately about freedom. It's about prohibiting others from learning something he doesn't like."
ZACK KOPPLIN: I think Neal McCluskey is forgetting about the First Amendment fundamentally. We have a separation of church and state in this country. And creationism is fundamentally religious. And evolution is just science and is not religious.
And I think as you probably have discussed on the show, the free exercise of religion includes religion and non-religion. So this country is fundamentally secular. And there shouldn't be, you, we shouldn't bring in one specific, not even just Christianity, but one specific version of Christianity that would not teach what the Catholics, or the Hindus or the Muslims or the atheists believe in the public schools and teach it instead of established science.
BILL MOYERS: Do you ever wake up in the morning and say, "Hey, I'm only 19. I've got Rice, tough school to get out of and get started in my life, in my work. Why am I doing this?"
ZACK KOPPLIN: I don't think it's a choice. I think it's something that has to be done. And I'm the one who's in the right position to do it, so I'm going to do it.
BILL MOYERS: Well, Zack, I've enjoyed this conversation and I wish you well. Thank you for coming.
ZACK KOPPLIN: Thank you so much for having me on.


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When Every Practical Economic Idea Is Political Suicide, Something's Wrong With Politics
from the too-bad dept
So what policies did all five agree on? Here's the list (though you really should listen to the podcast to hear them all talk about the details)
One: Eliminate the mortgage tax deduction, which lets homeowners deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages. Gone. After all, big houses get bigger tax breaks, driving up prices for everyone. Why distort the housing market and subsidize people buying expensive houses?So there you go. Six proposals from five economists who represent a very wide spectrum of political views, which they all agree on. And nearly every one of those is political suicide (though, to be fair, Libertarian candidate -- and former beloved New Mexico Governor -- Gary Johnson's platform actually does include many of these).
Two: End the tax deduction companies get for providing health-care to employees. Neither employees nor employers pay taxes on workplace health insurance benefits. That encourages fancier insurance coverage, driving up usage and, therefore, health costs overall. Eliminating the deduction will drive up costs for people with workplace healthcare, but makes the health-care market fairer.
Three: Eliminate the corporate income tax. Completely. If companies reinvest the money into their businesses, that's good. Don't tax companies in an effort to tax rich people.
Four: Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. All of them. For everyone. Taxes discourage whatever you're taxing, but we like income, so why tax it? Payroll taxes discourage creating jobs. Not such a good idea. Instead, impose a consumption tax, designed to be progressive to protect lower-income households.
Five: Tax carbon emissions. Yes, that means higher gasoline prices. It's a kind of consumption tax, and can be structured to make sure it doesn't disproportionately harm lower-income Americans. More, it's taxing something that's bad, which gives people an incentive to stop polluting.
Six: Legalize marijuana. Stop spending so much trying to put pot users and dealers in jail — it costs a lot of money to catch them, prosecute them, and then put them up in jail. Criminalizing drugs also drives drug prices up, making gang leaders rich.
The show suggests they're going to explore in future episodes why so many proposals that a large number of economists think make sense are simply politically unfeasible, and I look forward to that. But, a lot of these are situations where old policies effectively locked us in, and making changes would upset an awful lot of existing infrastructure and jobs, not to mention beneficiaries of those policies. And that's one of the reasons why we're always a bit worried about government leaping in to regulate areas where they don't fully understand what's going on. Those regulations can (and often do) lock us into a situation that is not easy to get out of -- even if getting out of it makes a lot of sense...
What's really unfortunate, of course, is that we can't even have reasonable discussions about most of the proposals above. Bringing up nearly any of them is considered a political non-starter, even though if people really understood the overall impact of them, they might agree that all are at least worthy of discussion.


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Top 14 Orange
Bayonne lift Phillips' suspension
ESPN Staff
October 1, 2012
Mike Phillips has had his suspension lifted © Getty Images
Bayonne have lifted scrum-half Mike Phillips' ban after just one game, according to reports.
Phillips was suspended on Friday for what club president Alain Afflelou described as "unacceptable off-field behaviour". It is thought that the suspension came after Phillips reportedly broke team rules by going out after their loss at home to Toulouse on September 21, 2012.
But Phillips is expected to return to the mix for Bayonne's Amlin Challenge Cup match with Modigliano on October 12. He is currently sidelined with a hand injury and would have missed their match with Biarritz on Sunday anyway, but his conduct has come under the spotlight at the Top 14 Orange club.
A report on the BBC claims that his suspension has been waived after one match and he will now meet with the club to discuss his discipline. "Mike has a meeting with the board of the club and head coach, Christian Lanta, at the start of next week and they will talk about his suspension," said a Bayonne spokesman. "All the players have to be responsible and have a professional attitude at the club."
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
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I want to share a little secret with you. I can't wait to be a grandmother.
Not that I want to rush my kids into having children! They are only 18 and 21. But I AM very much looking forward to the birth, someday, of my first grandchild.
So many of our customers at Bella Luna Toys are grandparents and I LOVE talking with them when they call. When I share my secret with them, they tell me that being a grandparent is more rewarding than they ever could have imagined, and that it's different from a mother's love for her child.
They describe an unconditional love, and an overwhelming desire to shower their grandchildren with gifts and affection, and that tell me that it should be a grandparent's right to spoil their grandchildren!
Below is a childhood picture of my grandmother — born Sarah Laird, who later became Sarah Baldwin when she married my grandfather, and for whom I was named.
My grandmother was one of the most special people in my life. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of summers spent at my grandparents' house, in the country on the eastern shore of Maryland.
As I got older, my grandmother was someone in whom I could always confide, without fear of judgment. I felt her unconditional love, and could share things with her that I would never tell my parents.
Well, today is Grandparents Day, and while many have complained that it is a made-up holiday, created by the greeting card industry, I think it's a lovely reminder to take time to reflect with gratitude on our relationships with our own grandparents, and to appreciate the special bond that our parents share with our children.
While I was reflecting on the topic of this week's blog post, I started looking through family photos and came across this favorite (above) of my dad, who was a banjo player, singing and playing for my one-month-old son, William.
Then I started thinking about how much fun it would be to see YOUR cherished photos of your children with their grandparents.
So I decided to host our first ever photo contest at Bella Luna Toys!
Our contest is hosted on Bella Luna Toys' Facebook page. You can enter and find all the details there. We are accepting photo submissions through September 14, 20013 at noon, when the voting will begin. The winning photograph will be announced on Sunday September 22 and the winner will receive a $100.00 gift certificate from Bella Luna Toys!
If you are not on Facebook, no worries! Simply e-mail your photo to firstname.lastname@example.com and will will enter your photo in the contest.
So, Happy Grandparent's Day to all you loving grandmas and grandpas!
And to all you mamas and papas, be sure to let your parents know how much you appreciate them—not just on Grandparent's Day, but all year round.
What are some favorite memories of YOUR grandparents? What do you most appreciate about your parents' relationship with your children? Share your reflections and stories here!


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Set Your Fitness Goals. We'll Help You Achieve Them.
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Core Knowledge
90-90 Stretch - Football
Starting Position
- Lying face up on ground with arms out to the side, left knee bent to 90 degrees, and right leg crossed over left
- Roll over on your left side, pinning a pad between your right knee and the ground
- Maintaining pressure on the pad and keeping hips still, rotate chest and right arm back to the right, trying to put your back on the ground
- Hold for two seconds and return to starting position
- Repeat for prescribed number of repetitions and switch sides
Coaching Keys
- Keep pressure against roll with knee of top leg
- Only rotate as far as you can keep your knee down
- Exhale as you stretch
You Should Feel It
- Stretching your torso and working your groin