For those who are interested, I have a new study out in Medical Care titled "The Hazards of Correcting Myths About Health Care Reform" (gated) with Jason Reifler and Peter Ubel.
Context: Misperceptions are a major problem in debates about health care reform and other controversial health issues.
Methods: We conducted an experiment to determine if more aggressive media fact-checking could correct the false belief that the Affordable Care Act would create "death panels." Participants from an opt-in Internet panel were randomly assigned to either a control group in which they read an article on Sarah Palin's claims about "death panels" or an intervention group in which the article also contained corrective information refuting Palin.
Findings: The correction reduced belief in death panels and strong opposition to the reform bill among those who view Palin unfavorably and those who view her favorably but have low political knowledge. However, it backfired among politically knowledgeable Palin supporters, who were more likely to believe in death panels and to strongly oppose reform if they received the correction.
Conclusions: These results underscore the difficulty of reducing misperceptions about health care reform among individuals with the motivation and sophistication to reject corrective information.
1. The ObamaCare bill establishes a government body explicity named "Death Panel".
2. The ObamaCare bill includes a government body that will decide on a case by case basis who will or will not receive life-saving treatment.
3. The ObamaCare bill includes a government body that will decide on an overall basis who will or will not receive life-saving treatments.
4. Financial considerations will force ObamaCare inevitably to include a panel that will decide to limit care in some cases, even if current wording doesn't specifically define such a panel.
I think #1 and #2 are false, #3 is true and #4 is neither true nor false, since it's a guess about the future.
IMHO the vagueness of just what is meant by "death panel" makes this particular myth a problematic choice for the purpose of this research.
P.S. I haven't read the full paper. Perhaps the questions used by the reserarchers distinguished between various possible meanings of "death panel If so, then I withdraw this critcism.
to deny care to individual elderly patients.
These results may appear counterintuitive, disappointing or surprising, but it is actually normal and expected that the "politically knowledgable" would be less likely to change their mind in the face of fact-checking. These results are actually almost perfectly predicted by Quasi-Rational or Behavioral Economics (see Kahneman, Tversky, and Thaler). And although the terms didn't exist yet, it's perfectly in line with Festinger's classic "When Prophecy Fails". It's a wonderful demonstration of our inability to ignore sunk costs, and I thank you for conducting it.
A "sunk cost" is any irretrievable expenditure. Rationally, we should ignore any sunk cost. And we have often expected ourselves to behave rationally. But we know now we don't, and this has the kind of policy and debate implications the article points out.
To give a real world example. I'm going to visit a friend this weekend. Several weeks ago, I purchased my ticket. In the intervening time, other opportunities for entertainment have arisen. If I were a perfectly rational being (morality of disappointing my friend aside), I should, according to classical economics and, I dare say, the expectations of the authors of this study, base my decision on whether or not to go or stay on what will bring me the most pleasure this weekend.
But that is not the case. We know, now, that my decision will be highly influenced by the price of my ticket. I paid $3.50 round trip on the bus, and I am likely not to go. Had I paid $250 for a flight, I almost certainly would go.
The point is that the price of the ticket "should" have no bearing on my decision as to what I should do this weekend. That money is spent, gone, and irretrievable regardless. But it does influence my decision (and I'm even aware of this phenomenon!).
The crucial point is that the money (be it $3.50 for the bus or $250 for the plane) has already been spent, is irretrievable, and should have no bearing on the decision I make for what is best for this weekend. But it does.
We only have to change the term "knowledgable" to "invested" to see how this is replayed in this study. A "low information" person has invested less time, thought, and money into their decision. To change their mind is the equivalent of forgoing a $3.50 bus fare. But a person who is highly invested, who has spent time and perhaps money acquiring the knowledge of the "death panels" will be as beholden to those sunk costs as I would be to a $250 plane ticket. And the more expensive the ticket, the more likely I am to make the trip, no matter what events have become available if I stay.
And this is exactly what happens in this study.
In a way it's logical that, among those holding falswe beliefs, the more knowledgeable are less likely to change their mind in the face of fact-checking. The knowledgable ones have already heard the facts, but they've found a way to rationalize their beliefs anyway. Repeating the facts gives them something they've already seen and (wrongly) discounted. Also, their high level of knowledge may give them more confidence in their (false) beliefs.
I am Professor of Public Policy in the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Duke University and served as a RWJ Scholar in Health Policy Research and a faculty member in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College before coming to the Ford School. I also tweet at @BrendanNyhan, contribute to The Upshot at The New York Times, and am a co-organizer of Bright Line Watch. Previously, I served as a media critic for Columbia Journalism Review, co-edited Spinsanity, a non-partisan watchdog of political spin, and co-authored All the President's Spin. For more, see my Michigan website.


On the agenda: Council will discuss the municipal court housing docket and a bunch of financial issues coming up.
#mjlc Ccl Flores asks about technical problems in court computers; Clerk of Courts Maiorana now explains that is small %-age of cases.
#mjlc Ccl Flores: I have been tracking houses for 5 years, I have not lost that data. "I'm exhausted documenting the problem."
#mjlc Ccl Flores has shared various pix & questions with city staff & media about bad conditions of #Lorain homes.
#mjlc Ccl Flores: ... well documented. The citizens of Lorain deserve better than this.
#mjlc Judge Mihok: I don't want misperception that cases were lost due to computer problems; cases were handled.
#mjlc Judge Mihok: We have 6 months to finish cases; some cases were dismissed when we couldn't find proper owner.
#mjlc Ccl Flores: But we still have recurring circle that it's unresolved. We have to make headway somewhere.
#mjlc Mag Cook: 30-40% of citations are landlords, they get firmer treatment bec they should have $ to fix problems.
#mjlc @MayorChase Ritenauer now speaking.
#mjlc @MayorChase now cites northern Ohio cities, larger urban centers losing population but houses stay put.
#mjlc @MayorChase There is no easy solution for this, but we have to keep working on it.
#mjlc @MayorChase Progress is being made; we have to continue demolition, even though some people don't like it.
#mjlc @MayorChase We are 1-2 rounds of $ away from eliminating #Lorain's grade D & F properties.
#mjlc Ccl Edwards: I'm glad we're taking proactive approach, this has been happening for years.
#mjlc Warning @MorningJournal tweeps: battery just went on camcorder, is below 20% on phone, in case I drop offline.
#mjlc Ccl Given to Mag Cook: Send me an email, send me a smoke signal to get new codes on books for stronger enforcement.
#mjlc Ccl Given: We are barely scratching the surface of cleaning up this town.
#mjlc Ccl Given: The way this city is right now, law needs to be punitive to get people to clean up #Lorain.
#mjlc Ccl DeTillio: Look at reason for housing court, there is a problem out there. Comments tonight are right on target.
#mjlc Ccl DeTillio: At #LorainSOTC, crime is down in part due to demolition of vacant bad houses.
#mjlc Ccl DeTillio: We know bad landlords, let's get them on docket before mom & pop residents.
#mjlc Ccl DeTillio: I still don't understand why we have problems tracking ownership, we should know who owns every property in city.
#mjlc Ccl DeTillio: It is really impt to get this right; going fwd, city is in our hands. This program won't succeed w/o teeth to enforce.
#mjlc Ccl Howard: This is not a quick fix but we have to keep taking small bites of this issue.
#mjlc Ccl Howard: We've got to send message, but also help people who are underserved.
#mjlc Committee now opens to public.
#mjlc Resident John Wargo asking questions.
#mjlc 1st committee meeting adjourns ca. 7:05 p.m. Still have 4 topics for Finance & Claims Committee.


Aviator Sunglasses: Designer or Not?
Okay, so I can't seem to make up my mind. For the past week I've been thinking about getting a pair of aviator sunglasses, but I've been debating whether to go cheap and get a pair from Forever 21 ($5.80) or go for a pair of Ray-Bans ($130). The reason I can't seem to make up my mind is because I've already had a couple (make that A LOT) of incidents with expensive designer sunglasses. For my birthday my husband bought me a pair of Prada sunglasses, which ended up broken when I left them on my car seat and sat on them by mistake =( I don't know if I should fork over $125 more and get the designer ones or have I learned my lesson and go for the cheap ones? What do you think? Do you spend a lot of $$$ on designer sunglasses or have you lost/broken a pair of expensive ones and now only go for cheap ones? HELP!
*By the way (in case you couldn't tell) the top sunglasses are from Forever 21 and the bottom ones are from Ray-Ban.
I've had the same problem. I've broken so many that now I only buy cheap ones. I say go with F21.
I say go for designer sunglasses. Though it is expensive compared to knock offs, it is good once in a while to treat yourself with what you want. And the important thing is you know how to take care of your designer sunglasses.
Go with the cheep ones. They look the same, and it doesn't really make a difference-- especially if you're like me and you'll see a different type of sunglasses by next summer and want those too!
hmmm...depend on your need. if you just need it as a protection, then buy the cheepie, but if you need it as a fashion/style/collection just grab the designer's ones.


How important is it to manage money these days? How important is it to purchase books for school?
If the answer is 'very important', then you surely know how hard it may be to manage money with todays cost of living, and taking that in consideration, it then must also be important when you have a need to spend money to purchase books. That may be an obvious statement, but how about if you are done with the book, and all that is left to do is to store it on a shelf? Actually, that statement is incorrect, because you have another option which is to sell used books if you care to.
You can sell them online for a variety of reasons, but the two main reasons wanting to do so would be to make your title available to many prospective buyers, and then also to recoup most of your funds that were originally spend on the book. So actually a book that you may think costed you a fortune, can now be written off in some cases as a profit. You can either get almost what you paid for the book, or even make more than you spent on it, mainly because it may be a title that noone has.
The method online to sell back books is fairly easy and inexpensive, and can even be a free in some cases. If you print a prepaid shipping label you acquire online, then you may not have to pay for ANY shipping. There is no set time to buy or sell books with this service.


Grassley, in a letter to the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation, said a woman by the name of Judy Munro-Leighton took responsibility for authoring an anonymous letter that made allegations that Kavanaugh and a friend raped her.
After an extensive investigation that included the thorough review of all potentially credible evidence submitted and interviews of more than 40 individuals with information relating to the allegations, including classmates and friends of all those involved, Committee investigators found no witness who could provide any verifiable evidence to support any of the allegations brought against Justice Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh unequivocally denied all such claims and called them "ridiculous".
Grassley referred another one of the women who claimed to be assaulted by Kavanaugh to Sessions and Wray in late October, along with her attorney.
Trump used the referral to cast doubts about the allegations that other women, including Christine Blasey Ford, have made against the now-Supreme Court justice. Committee investigators tracked her down in Kentucky. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations of misconduct.
"When directly asked by Committee investigators if she was, as she had claimed, the "Jane Doe" from Oceanside California who had sent the letter to Senator Harris, she admitted: 'No, no, no".
Grassley said looking into Munro-Leighton's claims diverted resources on a time-sensitive manner.
Justice Kavanaugh's confirmation process was delayed while the committee investigated a number of sexual assault and harassment claims, none of which have been corroborated by any public evidence to date. On October 29, Committee investigators again attempted contact, leaving a voicemail.
The accusations were initially made via a "Jane Doe" letter to Sen. I am not Jane Doe. but I did read Jane Doe's letter. I saw it online.
She further confessed to Committee investigators that (1) she "just wanted to get attention"; (2) "it was a tactic"; and (3) "that was just a ploy".
"Regarding the false sexual assault allegation she made via her email to the Committee, she said: 'I was angry, and I sent it out.'" Grassley wrote.
Kavanaugh, who has served since being confirmed early last month, will have his formal investiture ceremony, which has often been followed by a walk - and photo opportunity - on the front steps with the chief justice, in this case John Roberts.


Who gets the 'BCH' ticker after a contentious fork?
I have already written about the false narratives of different parties vying for political control during a fork upgrade. Indeed it is the only time that the protocol can be changed substantially and as such hard forks attract politics of those who want to alter the protocol to benefit themselves. It is a side effect of the competitive nature of blockchains. That is why hard forks and chain splits should be avoided if at all possible. Sometimes (like the split of 2017 which gave birth to BCH) they are unavoidable (as Segwit was just unacceptable to some in the BTC community), but when they are, such as when the differences between the parties are not fundamentally incompatible, they should be avoided. This, it seems is the reason why the BCH upgrade of Nov has become contentious; the fact that one side believes that the protocol should not hard fork unless absolutely necessary, and should never split the ledger, while the other side believes that hard forks should be regular and often, new features should be put into the protocol, and that splitting the chain into new coins is acceptable.
Those 2 ideologies are not compatible.
During the split that gave birth to BCH, Group 2 and Group 3 were united, (possibly for different reasons), so the BCH split occurred. But now that the second potential split is upon us, it is time to rationalize hard about what we want BCH to be. For any business that values continuity, splitting the ledger is a very painful and disruptive process, and materially discourages any serious use of the blockchain. But many devs feel that they want to improve upon the blockchain to compete with the other blockchain projects, because they feel that if they don't compete and fast, then some how businesses may be compelled to use a competing project.
So here we are. That is the summary of the contention points of the debate. Now, if a split were to occur, as a point of order, WHICH of the chains should inherit the BCH ticker symbol?
This is a decentralized system, there is no authority, so every business will be free to choose whichever one they wish to represent 'BCH' and give the other fork splits a different name. And yes, doing so will confuse the public. But that is the price we pay for decentralization.
I will go over some of the methods of coming to this decision which are wrong, and then suggest one which seems the best and fair.
1) Exchanges choose: This one seems to make sense because exchanges are what most people trade cryptocurrencies on in the first place. If the exchange is a fair and neutral exchange, they will withhold the name for the blockchain that has the most hashpower supporting it for the long term. That is the fairest way to decide. But unfortunately exchanges are run by people and some people may be unscrupulous, (especially on some of the non-regulated exchanges). Some may be taking 'personal donations' to give the BCH ticker symbol to one side summarily. This is very wrong as exchanges should not be in the practice of risking their customers funds, and if customers end up trading on a minority chain which can be erased due to hash attacks, then they will not be doing themselves or their reputation any favours.
2) Wallet providers choose: Again, this is a segment of the ecosystem which should really allow hashpower support to indicate which is the majority hashpower chain, and thus give that chain the BCH ticker. Doing otherwise shows political bias, and perhaps reliance on the falsity of basing the support of a blockchain on the 'Cult of Personality' fallacy that I defined in a previous post. Once again, the best bet is just to let the hashpower decide, as they are the only ones that are directly paid by the network, and thus have the most 'pure' incentives to support their vision of it.
3) The developers choose: By way of saying that the developer or group that created the client code that forked the coin should keep the ticker symbol of the coin they split. This method seems reasonable until you realize that this rule gets murky as development teams are dynamic and transient. What if the original team that created BCH has now fractured into several? Will each of the developers have a partial claim to the name? This is a problem legally.
4) The Coin with the highest price: This method relies on unscrupulous exchanges which wish to exploit the market looking to speculate on fork futures. They will claim that the coin future with the highest price should take the ticker name. This of course makes the least sense of all the choosing methods as it is the one with the most opportunity for manipulation via prices, especially in such as illiquid market as risky fork split futures.
5) Hashpower Chooses: this is the only real fair way of determining the chain with the most support, and thus, the chain that gets to keep the name. The only problem with this approach is that you will not be able to determine which one has the majority hashpower support until AFTER the fork occurs, making using the symbols troublesome before the fork.
6) Fork ID: This one is a pure technical way to determine which chain should inherit the ticker. Basically, when BCH split from BTC, in order to make the split clean, BCH developers added a fork ID to all transactions that they create. They also checked for the ID on txns and rejected any with the incorrect or missing ID. This was popularly named 'replay protection' because it prevented the 'replay' of a transaction on one chain, into the other. (BTC and BCH). This makes the split clean. In the case of a fork ID change, a new ticker was created for the one that changed the fork ID, and BCH was created. We can simply duplicated this logic this time around, the fork chain that uses the same Fork ID as the BCH chain did pre-Nov 15, can be called BCH, and any chain that changes the Fork ID, should be given a new ticker.
Great! Problem solved right? Well, not really because there actually potentially 2+ chains that will be using the original BCH fork ID, Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin ABC and what I will call Bitcoin Cash Classic. What is 'classic'? Well it is the hypothetical client which has the current clients built in Fork flag date of Nov 15th removed. Basically it is a modified client that WILL NOT FORK on Nov 15th. To understand how the hard fork works, you must understand that when the (present) ABC developers wanted to HF away from BTC, they embedded in the day (actually the block number, but don't worry about this, only geeks understand the difference) when the fork away from BTC will happen. But they went one step further. They embedded in the date when the NEXT hard fork would be scheduled. (May 2018) and on that HF, they embedded the next HF (Nov 15th) etc... No drama happened in May because there was not a splitting of the ideologies of the upgrade roadmap back then (or at least it was not as pronounced). But this time around, because of the debate, many have said that we should just put off the hard fork until some developer consensus can be reached. Therefore, it is possible that some miners out there have already done so, and want to promote the 'opt-out' no fork option. These nodes (if they do exist) will be using the original BCH fork ID, as well as SV and ABC.
So if you (as a business) wanted to use the method in which the least amount of people would be able to dispute, the you would use a combination of method #5 and #6, that is, give the BCH ticker to the chain which will be continuing to use the '0x40' fork ID, whichever of them has the most hashpower supporting it.


how about a new conditional expression "between" (for the lazybones)?
I like it e.g. in SQL because it is so obvious and easy to read.
If %value were to be 500, it should be true. Sure, it's obvious for integers... real numbers, not so much.
¿Throw an error, or silently invert the numbers?
Easy enough for plain-old ASCII, but as soon as we consider code pages, etc., it can become rather complex. Should the output of the between operator depend on the active encoding?
Note the lowercase 'j' - "Miguel" would be accepted.
Sure, it could be a kind of challenge, but it could also be a simplification in some cases.


Why is it worth it to hire professionals for big projects for redecorating?
The answer to this question is simple. You just need to imagine your ideas about the new appearance of the rooms, the house or the office to be perfect to the smallest details. This is what the interior architects do. They listen to your ideas, create a whole concept for the redesigning where everything matters and event the smallest details fit in the right places and then, they do the work professionally and fast. Interior architects are well qualified professionals with the knowledge and the talent to make your dreams come true, related to interior design and redecorating. In fact, it is most likely that the final results of the project for redecorating will exceed your expectations. All you need to do is make a research for the best interior architects working in the area and describe your ideas. They will make you offers with certain budgets for each concept and the working process on the redecorating can begin.
1. They will do the projects according to your preferences. The best thing to get what you expect when you are redecorating your place is by delegating the task to someone that knows what their doing and listens to your preferences and instructions. It is a big relief to work with highly qualified professionals who are well prepared to work on different projects and always work together with the clients to build and realize the concept for the interior design.
2. It will save you time to work with professionals than hiring decorators or doing everything by yourself.
3. You will forget about the stress and the fuss about the work and the decisions. Of course, you will be asked now and then for your preferences of colors, details and combinations, but the whole process of redecorating will be done by professionals so you can really enjoy the results without feeling overwhelmed.


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Investor Education Am I better off making monthly contributions to an RSP or TFSA?
It is nearing the end of the year and like exercising my intention of making a contribution to my TFSA did not happen. I have instead been making monthly contributions to my RSP. Next year, should I direct my money into my TFSA instead? I like the deduction for the RSP contribution because I get a nice tax refund. What do you think?
The good thing about the contribution room for the TFSA and the RSP is that any unused allowance is carried forward for future years. There is not really a deadline per se. Since it seems that you are in the habit of saving money monthly, you should definitely keep it up. Whether you contribute the money to your RSP or TFSA should be examined by a financial planner or tax specialist. Since I don't have your exact particulars, I will suggest a few options.
You continue to contribute to your RSP and then be sure to take the income tax refund and put it into your TFSA. This way, you are saving in both types of tax-sheltered accounts.
You split your monthly savings amount to contribute to both. Just look how the lower deduction will impact your final tax return. I’m sure you don’t want to have to pay an additional tax.
You contribute the monthly amount into your TFSA only and save up the allowable contribution room to the RSP. Then in the future, you make one large contribution to your RSP, lowering your income to pay no tax at all that year.
Remember that contributions to an RSP or a TFSA don't have to be in the form of cash. It can be in the form or an already existing investment. (We refer to as "in kind".) If you have any non-registered investments such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, GICs, etc., they are eligible to be contributed to an RSP or TFSA.
It is best to seek professional advice beforehand to avoid making over-contributions to either type of account.


Jane Eyre is not an easy read even for erudite adults, which means that younger readers may struggle with its wonderfully rich prose. How to capture a teenager's eye and mind without overwhelming him or her? One option: a graphic novel (sort of a book-length version of a comic book).
Jane Eyre — the Graphic Novel is available in two versions: "Original Text" (employing Brontë's language where feasible) and "Quick Text" (with simplified words for less advanced readers. My review concerns the latter.
The book was published in 2010 by Lucent Books "in association with Classical Comics Ltd." According to a note on the title page, it was "Adapted from an original script by Amy Corzine," which implies that she wrote the words and others created the illustrations.
This graphic novel does some things well. It gives a fine overview of the complex story; it includes bits of the original dialogue (albeit often with words changed to simplify the language); and, unlike most film versions of Jane Eyre, it doesn't alter the plot substantially.
It's hard to get inside characters' heads when space and words are limited, but the writers occasionally attempted to show what Rochester was thinking. I laughed at the way his thought balloons depicted Jane as an angel or a bird, or St. John as a toga-wearing Greek god.
I found the art — particularly the people — rudimentary; for example, eyes sometimes appear to have been penciled in hurriedly and are not focused in the right direction.
The proofreading was poor; I spotted numerous "typos" in various parts of the book, including the introduction, the brief biography of Brontë, and even the dialogue in the word balloons.
Also, the glossary makes an odd impression with its definitions of very simple and common words. How could a reader get through this book without knowing such terms as "forgive" or "tray" or "weakness"?
My overall assessment: Nice try, and likely good enough to enthrall many teen readers, but this graphic novel should have been produced with more care.
P.S. The dialogue is written well enough, but sound effects are awfully cartoony. For example, the insane Bertha Mason is depicted in one panel delivering the following soliloquy: "U- HUGG- AHHCHH- FAHG- GRRR- LLOCHLL- BAHG!"
◦ 1934 - the first "talkie"
All contents © 2009-2019 by the owner of JaneEyre.net.


Question: I have a half-dozen containers of unused prescription drugs. Is there anywhere I can donate them?
Private individuals, by law, are not allowed to donate their unused prescription drugs because of safety and liability concerns.
"We realize unused prescription drugs from private individuals are an untapped resource," said Lynn Nakasone, program manager of the state Department of Health's Food and Drug Branch. "However, once the drug is dispensed to a private individual, the chain of custody is broken, and issues regarding proper storage, differing expiration dates, possible tampering, etc., make the donation process problematical."
You are advised to properly dispose of the medications so they cannot be used by anyone else.
In December the state Department of Health responded to the state Legislature's request to "report the implementation and operation of the prescription-drug repository program and drug donations."
In its report, the Health Department noted that the Medicine Bank in Hawaii is the only prescription-drug repository program in Hawaii, and that organization does not have the space or personnel to accept all the drug donations that are allowed legally.
The Medicine Bank currently accepts only surplus manufacturers' drug samples in the original, unopened packaging, with intact labels, or samples donated by physicians. The samples are then given to health clinics in the state for use by "needy individuals."
State law also allows the Medicine Bank to receive donated drugs in unopened, single-user units prescribed for a single patient from institutional facilities.
Nakasone said there is some potential for expanding drug donations under Chapter 328-C of the Hawaii Revised Statutes (which deals with donations of pharmaceuticals and health supplies), "if, for example, the Medicine Bank was somehow placed in a better position to take advantage of the full potential of the drug donation stream."
In 2004 the Legislature provided for "return-for-credit-and-reuse of prescription drugs," with no details, under Chapter 328-B, with the proviso that "this chapter shall not be implemented until certain administrative rules are adopted." At this point there are no rules.
Without implementing the rules, "we cannot determine the effectiveness of the return-for-credit-and-reuse program," Nakasone said. Until it can be evaluated, "we feel it is premature to suggest legislation" on expanding drug donations, she said.


Makes: 6 servings Serving Size: 1 cup Preparation Time: 15 minutes Cooking Time: 10 minutes Ingredients 1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, patted dry and cut into 1/2-inch chunks 2 Tbsp. lower-sodium soy sauce, divided 1 tsp. cornstarch 3/4 cup reduced-sodium, low-fat chicken broth, divided 1 Tbsp. oyster sauce 1/2 tsp. toasted sesame oil 1/2 tsp. chili puree with garlic 1 Tbsp. cornstarch Vegetables 2 Tbsp. canola oil, divided 3 cloves garlic, minced 1 Tbsp. peeled, grated ginger 2 cups broccoli florets, cut into bite-size pieces 1 med. red pepper, cut into strips 2 Tbsp. toasted coarsely chopped peanuts, almonds, or cashews Directions 1.In a medium bowl, combine the chicken, 1 Tbsp. of the soy sauce, and the 1 tsp. cornstarch and let stand for 15 minutes. 2.For the sauce, combine 1/2 cup of the broth with the remaining soy sauce and the oyster sauce, sesame oil, chili puree, and the 1 Tbsp. cornstarch; set aside. 3.Heat 1 Tbsp. of the canola oil in a wok. Add the chicken and stir-fry for 3 minutes. Remove the chicken from the wok and place in a bowl; set aside. 4.Heat the remaining oil in the wok. Add the garlic and ginger, and stir-fry for 30 seconds. Add the broccoli and red pepper. Carefully add the remaining chicken broth and cover. Steam for 3 minutes. Add the sauce mixture and cook 1 minute. Add the cooked chicken and toss gently to heat. Top with the nuts and serve.


1) Uwingu has extended the contest by one week, and the winning name now won't be decided until Monday, April 22, at midnight EDT. You can continue to vote at www.uwingu.com.
Informal names for astronomical objects are common (e.g., “The Milky Way”). And in fact, there is no such thing as a unified astronomical naming system, and there never has been. Claims to the contrary are simply incorrect, as an astronomical database search on a representative star, Polaris, reveals. This star is also known to astronomers and the public as the North Star, Alpha Ursae Minoris, HD 8890, HIP 11767, SAO 308, ADS 1477, FK5 907, and over a dozen more designations.
There are many instances where astronomers name things without going through the IAU’s internal process. There are many features on Mars, ranging from mountains to individual rocks, with names applied by Mars-mission scientists and never adopted by, or even considered by, the IAU. And Apollo astronauts did not seek IAU permission before naming features at their landing sites or from orbit.
There are also numerous recent press releases in which astronomical objects were given names by astronomers without any IAU process: Supernova Wilson, galaxy cluster El Gordo, the Black Eye Galaxy; none drew attention from the IAU.
Uwingu looks forward to continuing to help the general public to engage creatively in astronomy and to participate in the excitement of the exploration of the universe in which we all live.
In our Alpha Centauri People’s Choice naming contest, anyone can nominate a name to honor a friend, colleague, loved one, or to recognize a place name, an author, an artist, or a sports team, for example. The name getting the highest number of votes will be declared the public’s choice for Uwingu to use as the name for this mysterious new world. Never before has the public been asked to choose its favorite name for a planet.
Name nominations are $4.99; votes cost $0.99. Proceeds from naming and voting fuel new Uwingu grants to fund space education projects affected by sequestration cuts to NASA.
So, yes, the IAU is right in that the designation can't become “official.” But then again, the North America Nebula isn't the official designation for NGC 700, nor is the Horsehead Nebula the official designation for Barnard 33. Yet the public still uses such monikers. And to infer that the Uwingu contest is in the same category as various star registry companies is a little excessive. You don’t “buy” a planet name; you buy a vote, and the money goes toward a good cause.
I say keep voting if you understand the parameters of the contest and what “winning” really means. No one gets hurt by spending a little money to help space funding. And who knows, the name just might catch on.


A question from a voter at Tuesday evening's town hall debate -- regarding whether it was within the purview of the government to control the price of gas -- sent President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney into a war of words over energy policy, and neither actually answered the question.
Instead, both candidates introduced some of the same energy talking points that have animated the campaign for months, though as presented, Romney's charges held the least amount of water. He blamed the Obama administration, for example, for the fact that gas prices have doubled over the last four years, and he hammered the president for stalling oil and gas production by curtailing leases on federal land, and for introducing policies that will run the coal industry into the ground. Romney also argued that he is a supporter of renewable energy -- just not to the exclusion of fossil fuels.
Obama, meanwhile, largely touted his record on both fossil fuels and renewable energy investments, though he sometimes took credit for things that aren't entirely in his control. Let's run down some of the assertions.
The answer to the voter's original question, of course, is that, generally speaking, administration policy has minimal impact on gas prices. Oil is a global commodity, and its price is set by, and subject to the whims of, a global energy market over which an American president has little control. Increasing domestic drilling -- a key part of the Romney energy plan introduced in August -- won't significantly alter the price at the pump. As the Congressional Budget Office noted in May, more U.S. oil on the world market would almost certainly be offset by adjustments in production by other countries, all but erasing any price impacts.
A 2011 report from the Federal Trade Commission provides a useful primer on the factors that tend to influence gas price fluctuations.
Romney's charge that gas prices have doubled over the last four years is roughly true, and it has been a popular talking point since the Republican primaries. However, gas prices plummeted with the collapse of the economy in late 2008, just as Obama was taking office, and the doubling has really only restored prices -- though not quite fully -- to where they were prior to the recession, or more to the point, prior to Obama. As data from the Energy Information Administration shows, retail gas prices were also climbing steadily under the eight years of the Bush administration, hitting a high in the summer of 2008. Bush can't really be blamed for that increase any more than Obama.
The current president can very much take credit -- and he did so at this evening's debate -- for tough new fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. Those standards may not impact the price of gas at the pump, but they do mean that by 2025, drivers will be getting almost twice as many miles per gallon, on average, than they are now.
Romney has come out in opposition to those new fuel economy standards, and has said that he would even roll back existing standards that would have cars reaching an average of 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016.


The ibis Strasbourg Centre Petite France hotel is in the heart of Strasbourg. By foot, bike or bateaux mouches, discover the historic city, Petite France, Strasbourg Cathedral in its Millennium year 2015. By foot, bike or bateaux mouches, discover Alsace.
5 min on foot from the Petite-France area.
Paying private car park, available only by reservation. Ideal for bikers!
The room was quite noisy but the breakfast was excellent.
Quick and easy check-in and check-out. Nice clean room, comfortable bed. Enough space for suitcase. Tried to set the temperature lower, but despite a setting at 17-18 degrees C, the room was still a bit hot.
Just average Ibis hotel near city center. Unfortunately I was not provided with room upgrade as well as welcoming the platinum guest - only beer as welcome drink.
A bit of a disapiontment.
I am sorry to rate it an average but my last stay was not what I expected to be. First, there were some works to change the floor carpet in the corridors and the glue that workers were using had a very strong aceton-based smell, almost painful to the eyes! Both my eyes had actually tears from that smell, even inside the room. Second, when I left my room during the day I left hanging on the door the "Do Not Disturb" sign, but when I was back in the late afternoon the sign was removed and placed back on the inside and my bed arranged - so, why do you even have the sign there if you are not respecting my wish not to be disturbed? Since I am using your hotels for my business trips I really hope my next stay with you will be better, otherwise I am changing the hotel... Thank you.
Everything was fine, but the bathroom is extremely small.
Very basic hotel with very helpful staff.
The hotel is very central, but the rooms are very basic. Staff are very helpful.
I have always found the service in Ibis hotels to be good and this was no exception. The room was excellent and the hotel had made sure we were well away from any possible traffic noise - although there was very little noise around the hotel and the tram (with a stop across the road) is very quiet. The breakfast buffet has an excellent choice of fruit, breads, pastries, etc, etc - probably enough to eat for a day!
The stay was as I had expected, everything ran smoothly and the room was clean and well lit.
The hotel is good, its not the beautyfuller location but the hotel its good and at a good location.
the location and the service is well，but the WI-FI is so junk，even I couldn't downlaod my message immediatly.
Central and convenient location, car park inside hotel, clean and tidy room, wonderful breakfast! If you look for a business or pleasure short stay, you don't need to look further. Highly recommended!
I usualy use Ibis hotels for my stays across Europe. I liked it a lot. Facilities were nice and staff was very helpful and polite. Since hotel is placed i the city center it was a good option.
We needed a room for 3 and a room for 2. The rooms were fine. The beds were comfortable. The bathroom was small but was clean and very functional. The location was fantastic for Petite France with many places in convenient walking distance. The tram stops very close to the hotel. There are a few parking spaces - we used one and it was a major decision for why we stayed here. You have to confirm the reservation for parking space in advance and the lot is very tight.
The staff were really friendly and made us feel welcomed. They even gave us tips and directions for the christmas market and drinks and snacks. The room is comfortable and the wifi is excellent.


How to execute a SQL Server stored procedure from a SQL job?
First, I apologize if this question has been asked before. I am running version 9 of the Automation Engine. I have a SQL Agent set up to run SQL jobs. I have several stored procedures I would like to call, but I can't seem to get them to work. I followed the steps in the documentation, with no luck.
The job immediately errors out with nothing written to the report. I have triple checked the security roles and the login has rights to execute the stored procedure. I can run SQL statements with no problems, I just can't seem to get stored procedures to execute. Thank you.
I haven't done this for SQL Server though... We have been invoking them by calling sqlcmd from a windows agent.
Thank you Pete. I was able to get this to work by creating a windows job and using SQLCMD. I hate to say it, but I am a bit disappointed that the SQLJOB can't seem to handle executing a stored procedure.
Perhaps you should open this as an issue with Support. Either it's (not) working as designed and if so I should be fixed or the documentation updated to identify the restriction.
I'm betting that it can, we just haven't figured it out. I just ran a small test where I executed a select, an exec, and another select without any of the terminator override stuff, and it seemed to work? I did not try to assign a result to a variable however. I just let the database agent check it. The database agent seems to immediately terminate the script and sets the return code to 1 when an error occurs.
I've done some further testing with vanilla exec commands and am having success. So I don't see any problem with doing it this way against SQLServer. The confusing part is that it is simpler than Oracles requirements!
I have tried to get it to work with just a simple Exec statement - fails immediately.
Old post but I am also having this issue.
I can run the predefined commands as select and list tables but not exec or desc.
Hi Lucas_Amorim_9853 - are you running against MSSQL or Oracle? It would help if you can post the error that you're getting, and the code/script you're running on your SQL job.
Also, make sure that your syntax is correct and there's no error on your stored procedure by running it on SQL Management Studio (MSSQL) or Toad/SQLNavigator (Oracle) first.
I am running against Oracle.
The steps I am taking are: New Object > JOBS > SQL > and running the commands from the "Process" tab.
I've also tried from the "Form" using the "User defined" option.
There are no errors on report. The job simply ends with error: ....aborted (return code='0000000001').
I can run a "Select * from Dual" and it works fine.
But if I try for example: "DESC GMF_GB_REPORTING.PKG_DM_RESPONSE_INCRMNTL" the job ends.
I'm just wondering if the job is limited to basic commands?
I'm not sure if it's limited to basic commands. It seem that the SQL job for Oracle doesn't accept EXEC as well, among other things (ALTER TABLE, WHENEVER SQLERROR..). It throws the ORA error "invalid SQL statement".
You may want to check the option "Agent log" in the 'SQL' tab >' Optional Reports' of your SQL job. You'll see the error here when you run your job.
I'm on extended vacation right now, so I can't look at exactly what I did. But I think I had to alter the Oracle command delimiter to "@" and wrap my code in a BEGIN/END block to be able to EXEC a stored procedure?
@ or / should work (I was able to run my stored procedures using / as delimiter). When I inserted something through the Form tab it did change my delimiter from '/' to '@'.
You may want to check back on https://community.automic.com/discussion/6929/what-are-the-supported-oracle-sql-commands-that-you-can-use-in-an-sql-job You can get the columns of a table through Form tab > Insert line at current position > SQL > Automation Engine Commands > Get columns of a table.
The Host on the attributes tab is different from the server that I am trying to connect to, but I have done that before with SQL jobs and they work.
JGi604607 - Do you have the correct Oracle ojdbc in the JDBC folder of the Agent?


The family of a north Devon student are calling for a worldwide inquiry into a drug they say caused the depression which led him to kill himself.
Medical student Jon Medland, 22, had been taking Roaccutane for mild acne for just three-and-a-half weeks.
An inquest ruled his death in Manchester in January was suicide.
Roaccutane's manufacturers, Roche Pharmaceuticals, said no causal link had been established between the drug and either depression or suicide.
Jon Medland, from Barnstaple, was in the final year of his medical degree at Manchester University when he hanged himself at his student lodgings on 13 January.
Manchester Coroner Leonard Gorodkin heard during the October inquest that had suffered from mild acne for several years and had become self-conscious about dealing with patients.
He was referred by his GP to a consultant dermatologist at Withington Hospital, Manchester, and had his first appointment on 11 December.
The consultant, Dr Haydn Muston, said it was not standard practice to prescribe treatment at the initial appointment, but as Mr Medland was a medical student and had already researched the drug, he prescribed it.
The inquest was told that in a short time Mr Medland changed from a "bubbly, outgoing" young man to one who was withdrawn and depressed with suicidal thoughts.
He apparently told friends and family that he feared his mental state was somehow connected to the Roaccutane.
He had also "read somewhere" that the effects might not cease when he stopped taking the drug, the inquest was told.
Pam and Jonathan Medland described Jon as "amazing"
They told him to stop taking the tablets, which he did on 8 January but was found hanged at his student lodgings five days later.
His father, Jonathan Medland, said he wanted the inquiry because he did not want other parents to experience what they had gone through.
He said: "He was so full of life, so full of enthusiasm."
"The only reason we're going through this and laying open our grief to public scrutiny is because we don't want other parents, and other boyfriends and girlfriends, to go through what were going through.
"He was the most amazing son and this is the worst thing you can ever imagine."
Roche Pharmaceuticals said the drug carried a warning of possible mood changes and depression.
But it said no causal link had been established between the drug and either depression or suicide.
The company added that, over 20 years, it had successfully treated up to 13 million acne sufferers but the drug was regarded as a last resort treatment.


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A look at three possible national security advisor replacements following Michael Flynn's resignation. Feb. 14, 2017.
President Donald Trump should thank his lucky stars that Republicans control both chambers of Congress, because Democrats would be announcing a Benghazi-style inquest this week if they could.
Michael Flynn lost his job as national security adviser after just 24 days less because he offered potentially illegal secret assurances to Russia's ambassador, an adversary of the United States, but because he gave an inaccurate accounting of those conversations to his colleagues in the White House, particularly Vice President Mike Pence.
This imbroglio will make it politically untenable for Trump to scale back sanctions on Moscow now. The blowback from hawkish Republicans in the Senate would be too intense, hobbling the rest of the president's agenda. The episode will probably give added momentum to John McCain's effort to codify existing sanctions into law so that the administration cannot unilaterally unwind them.
2. Why was Trump planning to stand by Flynn? "One senior White House official said that Trump did not fire Flynn; rather, Flynn made the decision to resign on his own late Monday evening because of what this official said was 'the cumulative effect' of damaging news coverage about his conversations with the Russian envoy," The Washington Post's Greg Miller and Philip Rucker report. "This official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the situation, said Trump does not relish firing people - despite his television persona on 'The Apprentice' - and had intended to wait several more days before deciding whether to seek Flynn's resignation. 'There obviously were a lot of issues, but the president was hanging in there,' this official said."
3. What did White House counsel Donald McGahn do after the then-acting attorney general notified him last month that Flynn was potentially vulnerable to Russian blackmail? "In the waning days of the Obama administration, James R. Clapper Jr., who was the director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the CIA director at the time, shared (Sally) Yates's concerns and concurred with her recommendation to inform the Trump White House," Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima and Philip Rucker report. "They feared that 'Flynn had put himself in a compromising position' and thought that Pence had a right to know that he had been misled. . . . Yates, then the deputy attorney general, considered Flynn's comments in the intercepted call to be 'highly significant' and 'potentially illegal,' according to an official familiar with her thinking. . . . A senior Trump administration official said before Flynn's resignation that the White House was aware of the matter, adding that 'we've been working on this for weeks.' "
Vice President Mike Pence first learned that former national security adviser Michael Flynn had misled him about the nature of his contact with a Russian official on Feb. 9, a full two weeks after other White House officials were briefed on the matter, an aide to Pence said on Tuesday.
Yates was accompanied by a senior career national security official when she alerted McGahn. What we don't know is who McGahn subsequently shared that information with and what he did after the meeting. He didn't respond to a request for comment last night from my colleagues.
"It's unimaginable that the White House general counsel would sit on it (and) not tell anybody else in the White House," said David Gergen, who worked in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton administrations. "In every White House I've ever been in, this would go to the president like that," he added during an interview on CNN, snapping his fingers.
If McGahn did indeed tell others, especially the president, how come Flynn kept his job until Monday night?
4. What is the status of the FBI investigation into possible contacts between Trump associates and Russia? FBI Director James Comey initially opposed Yates notifying McGahn, citing concerns that it could complicate the bureau's ongoing investigation. "A turning point came after Jan. 23, when (Sean) Spicer, in his first official media briefing, again was asked about Flynn's communications with (Ambassador Sergey) Kislyak," The Post reports. "Spicer said that he had talked to Flynn about the issue 'again last night.' There was just 'one call,' Spicer said. And it covered four subjects: a plane crash that claimed the lives of a Russian military choir; Christmas greetings; Russian-led talks over the Syrian civil war; and the logistics of setting up a call between Putin and Trump. Spicer said that was the extent of the conversation. Yates again raised the issue with Comey, who now backed away from his opposition to informing the White House." Yates then spoke to McGahn.
Another mitigating factor: Jeff Sessions got confirmed as attorney general despite refusing to commit to recuse himself from Justice inquiries into Trump and other administration officials.
The committee led by Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., is continuing to explore Russian efforts to interfere with the election, including the intelligence community's assessment that the Kremlin was attempting to tilt the election to Trump. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a member of the committee, told reporters a few hours before Flynn resigned that his contacts with the Russian ambassador are part of the bipartisan inquiry. "This and anything else that involves the Russians," Rubio said, per Kelsey Snell. "We're going to go wherever the truth leads us."
Two White House sources tell The Washington Post's Robert Costa that Harward emerged overnight as the front-runner to get the post. (Pence is leading the discussions.) He is seen as a safe and steady, low-profile consensus pick, which is appealing after the tumult that swirled around Flynn. Harward worked on the NSC during George W. Bush's presidency, focused on counterterrorism strategy. He's from Rhode Island and attended the Naval Academy in Annapolis. He's worked on SEAL teams and was a commander in Afghanistan and Iraq.
If Trump settles on Harward - always an "if" with Trump - that's a huge win for Jim Mattis. He served under the secretary of defense back when he was at Central Command and remains both an ally and friend. Harward has been under consideration as a possible undersecretary of defense for intelligence.
9. Who else leaves the White House because Flynn is gone? Flynn's departure means that the people he brought with him are likely to go too. The new national security adviser will want his own loyalists. Kellogg is considered a Flynn guy, the New York Times notes, as is K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security adviser. She is expected to leave soon.
10. Who exactly is in charge at the White House? Monday was just the latest illustration of the chaos and dysfunction that plague the infant administration. Officials found themselves in an uncomfortable holding pattern for much of Monday, unsure about whether to defend Flynn and privately grumbling about the president's indecisiveness.
Michael Flynn's resignation as Donald Trump's national security adviser late Monday night proves that even for this most unorthodox of presidents some of the old rules of Washington politics still apply.
"After Trump made it through a joint news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau without being asked about Flynn, a group of reporters gathered outside Spicer's office for more than 80 minutes," The Post's Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker report. "Spicer twice declined to answer questions about Flynn. When chief of staff Reince Priebus walked by, he was asked whether the president still had confidence in Flynn. Priebus gave no answer. Then, a few minutes later, Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to the president, declared on MSNBC that Trump had 'full confidence' in Flynn. Yet a few minutes later after that, Spicer issued an official - and conflicting - statement, saying Trump was 'evaluating the situation.' " A few hours after that, Flynn was gone.
Conservative columnist Michael Gerson, a veteran of George W. Bush's White House, opens his column Tuesday with a damning anecdote: Last month, House Speaker Paul Ryan met with a delegation from the president-elect on tax reform. Attending were Priebus, Conway, Stephen Bannon, Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller. As the meeting began, Ryan pointedly asked, "Who's in charge?" There was silence.
"It is still the right question," Gerson writes. "Former officials with deep knowledge of the presidency describe Trump's White House staff as top-heavy, with five or six power centers and little vertical structure. 'The desire to be a big shot is overrunning any sense of team,' says one experienced Republican. 'This will cause terrible dysfunction, distraction, disloyalty and leaks.' "


Brazil is already the world's biggest soy producer.
What has the US-China trade war got to do with the Amazon rainforest?
The US-China trade war has a lot to do with soybeans, and soybeans have a lot to do with the Amazon.
Brazil, where most of the Amazon rainforest lies, is the world's biggest soybean producer, and growing soybeans is one of the leading causes of deforestation in Brazil, behind cattle grazing.
Until last year, the world's biggest buyer of soybeans, China, was splitting its soy imports mostly between Brazilian and US growers, taking more than 31 million tonnes off US hands in 2017 alone.
But as the trade war escalated between Washington and Beijing, the US slapped a 25 per cent tariff on goods imported into the United States from China, and China responded in kind, with its own 25 per cent tariff on US products, including soy.
As a result, China's soy imports from the US crashed and they looked for cheaper alternatives, namely Brazil, to plug the gap.
While all this was going on, Brazil elected a right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, who had promised to water down protections for the Amazon, and described indigenous land rights in Brazil, including the Amazon, as "an obstacle to agribusiness".
His first move after being elected was to hand control of the department charged with protecting indigenous rights over to the Ministry of Agriculture.
Now according to researchers writing in Nature today, this has set the stage for a potential rush on deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.
Researchers fear an area as big as Greece could be cleared in the Amazon to grow soy.
In a worst-case-scenario, Brazil will need another 12.9 million hectares of land dedicated to growing soy to meet China's needs, according to researcher Richard Fuchs from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.
"Everything that more or less was the shortfall from the US [soy supply in 2018] was covered by Brazil," he said.
"It's a kind of early warning sign that, at least in the short term, China will try to satisfy their demand by turning towards Brazil."
In 2006, Brazil implemented a soy moratorium, meaning that Amazon forest couldn't be directly cleared to grow the crop.
A 2006 soy moratorium means the Amazon can't be directly cleared for its farming, but there are other ways soy production could encroach on the forest.
The moratorium has largely been successful in slowing Brazil's rate of deforestation, although research has found that nearly 60,000 hectares of forest have been illegally converted to soy plantations in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso since the moratorium came into place.
But Mr Bolsonaro could ignore the moratorium, or soy expansion could have a less direct impact on the Amazon, according to Dr Fuchs.
"Often [soy is] not driving deforestation directly, but indirectly by expanding into pastureland, and then pastureland is driven into the rainforest," he said.
For the worst-case-scenario to happen, Brazil alone would have to make up for the US soy shortfall and new growing regions would have to be concentrated in the Amazon rainforest.
But there are several factors at play that make the worst-case-scenario, at least in the short term, unlikely.
Firstly, Brazil could replace existing crops like maize with soy, thus negating the need to clear more land.
But more immediately, if the US-China trade war cools, China is likely to resume its soy trade with the US before Brazil can significantly expand its own industry, according to Rod Keenan from the University of Melbourne.
"The timeframes are the issue. It depends how long these trade tariffs stay in place," Professor Keenan said.
He also said there were significant hurdles in the way that limit how much product Brazil can export.
"One of the big restrictions on soy production in Brazil is getting the stuff out — the infrastructure's not there at the moment."
President Bolsonaro's environmental credentials have many ecologists worried for the health of the Amazon.
China's massive demand for soy is a result of its growing middle class with an increasingly westernised, meat-rich diet.
The soy is used as a feed-stock for pigs, poultry and cattle.
As climate change and growing population make food security one of the biggest challenges of the next century, China is intent on a plan it calls the "Belt and Road" initiative, locking in its global food supply through a vast network of land and sea trade routes across 152 countries.
And Brazil is set firmly in its sights.
In 2015, China's Premier Li Keqiang secured agreement from Brazil and Peru to begin feasibility studies into a railway line crossing South America from Brazil's east coast, 5,200 kilometres through the Amazon to Peru's west coast.
Researchers have suggested eating less meat as a way to combat growing soy demand.
The railway would allow exports from Brazil to travel straight to the west coast, opening up a direct route to China by ship, rather than via the Panama Canal, under the South American continent, or around Africa.
Brazil and Peru both found the project to be unfeasible, but some of the environmental obstacles standing in its way will be of little concern to Mr Bolsonaro, according to Bill Laurence from James Cook University.
"[Mr Bolsonaro's] a really big worry. He's the worst environmental president I think in living memory. People call him the Tropical Trump for good reason," Professor Laurence said.
"Environment, development and indigenous people...things that have held up these projects in the past he doesn't see as an obstacle."
Even if the US-China trade war is settled soon, the long-term environmental impact of China's expansion into South America is likely to be significant.
Despite Chinese President Xi Jinping's assurances that the 21st century silk road would be "green, healthy, intelligent, and peaceful", huge environmental concerns have already been raised around the world.
A hydroelectric power plant and dam being built under the Belt and Road initiative by state-controlled Chinese companies in Sumatra, Indonesia, is threatening the only known habitat of the world's rarest orangutan, and the endangered Sunda pangolin, for instance.
If little regard is shown for development in the Amazon, the entire dynamic of the forest ecosystem could be altered, according to Clive McAlpine from the University of Queensland.
"You've got deforestation, which is releasing carbon back into the atmosphere. The impacts on the environment are quite significant," Professor McAlpine said.
"It will make that environment hotter and drier. Forests keep the land surface cooler, and impact cloud formation. You will lose all those benefits of the forest on the climate."
article Could restoring forests help ease drought in Australia?


Have you ever heard anyone say they don't like pizza? I'm fairly certain everyone loves it. And why not? You can eat it standing up. It doesn't require any utensils. It's delicious hot from the oven or cold from the fridge. Pizzas can be dressed up with fancy toppings or served simply. Even picky kids will eat it when they won't eat anything else. I dare say, pizza just might be the perfect food.
If you're not making pizza at home then you're seriously missing out. Sure, it's tasty, quick and easy, but it's mostly super fun to make. Pizza is also the perfect meal for a busy weeknight, so don't be intimidated! With a few tips and tricks you can make a pie that's just as good (or better!) than your local pizzeria.
I'm very picky about my sauce and almost always make my own. You could use jarred sauce, but this is so much tastier that it's definitely worth the few extra minutes. Start by infusing a few tablespoons of good quality olive oil with thinly sliced cloves of garlic in a small sauce pan. Cook over gentle heat until the garlic starts to sizzle and becomes fragrant.
Add one small can of diced tomatoes, a pinch of sugar, and pinch of dried oregano. If you have fresh oregano, even better!
Bring to a simmer and cook until the tomatoes are tender and the mixture thickens. Season with salt and pepper and remove from heat to cool.
Time for the dough. Ok, so, I have a confession: I don't usually make my own dough. I know, shocking. I'll give you all a minute to collect yourself. I usually buy it from the pizza counter at my local market. Their pizza crust is super delicious and it saves me the half a day it would take to make my own. That said, if I have a lazy weekend day all to myself, I will totally make my own dough. Pizza dough is so simple to make and requires just a few pantry staples to prepare. However, it isn't quick, so when I make pizza mid week, I usually buy the dough. By the way, if you buy your dough frozen, you're going to want to thaw it out first and let it come to room temperature. Pizza dough should be soft and tender.
Lightly flour your work surface. I like to halve it and make two smaller pizzas rather than one big one because it's easier to work with. You could also quarter the dough and make personal size pizzas.
Shape the pieces of dough into balls and then flatten them.
Then begin hurling the dough into the air. (Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGDUmGlMJzU.) It's especially fun if you speak to the dough with a really bad Italian accent while you do it.
KIDDING! Simply, stretch or roll the dough to your desired thinness.
I like paper-thin pizza crust, but if you like it thicker, by all means make it thicker. This is, after all, your pizza pie. To get mine super thin, sometimes I bust out a rolling pin. Repeat with remaining balls of dough.
Transfer pizza crust to a rimmed baking sheet pan that has been brushed liberally with olive oil. Top with about half of the pizza sauce. I love baking my pizzas on these old sheet pans. They are so well seasoned that the crust wouldn't even dream of sticking.
Now comes the fun part—toppings! I always use fresh mozzarella on my pizza, but feel free to use your favorite cheese. After the cheese comes the really good stuff. I'm going to top one pizza with pepperoni and sliced olives and the other with goat cheese (in addition to the mozzarella), thinly sliced zucchini and red onion.
Pop the pizzas into the oven and bake until the crust is golden and crisp.
Times will very depending on the thickness of the crust, but they cook pretty quickly at high heat, 10 to 15 minutes. I'm finishing my pizzas with some parmesan and fresh basil.
That's it! Whip up a simple salad and open a bottle of red wine and you have a quick, yummy dinner for any night of the week.


Voice processes can be either inbound or outbound. In inbound processes you'll be handling calls that customer or prospects make. For example, a telecom company outsources its customer support, so in this you'll be handling calls from their customers on the telecom company's behalf. One other example would be that a prospect customer is calling to get more information about a product or service.


Is Russia to blame for latest chemical weapons attack in Syria?
Syrian doctors and rescue workers said Sunday that scores of people had died in an apparent chemical attack on a besieged enclave near Damascus, as government forces escalate their battle there.
At least 42 people were killed in the attack in Douma, the final rebel stronghold northeast of Damascus, according to the Syrian-American Medical Society.
The group, a Washington-based nonprofit medical relief organization that supports health facilities in the area, shared photographs of men, women and young children, apparently dead and foaming at the mouth. They said a barrel bomb packed with chemicals had hit an air raid shelter Saturday night.
The Syrians are, as usual, denying there were any chemical weapons used and writing it off as propaganda. Given their record, however, it’s difficult to take their claims seriously. The initial reports claim that dozens are dead with those numbers expected to rise.
The State Department put out an initial statement saying that we’re monitoring the developments closely and condemning any use of chemical weapons. The language in the statement is rather provocative on two levels. First, they’re calling for “an immediate response by the international community.” Beyond that, the State Department appears to be assigning the blame equally to both Syria and Russia. Here’s the key passage involving the Russians.
Reading that a second time, it appears that State is actually assigning more blame to Russia than to Assad, the person who presumably ordered the actual attack and is stockpiling the banned weapons. If we were claiming that the Russians were supplying the weapons that would be one thing, but this statement suggests that Russia bears responsibility because they are an ally of Assad and are providing cover for him to commit such crimes.
Is this setting the stage for another attack on Syria? President Trump certainly wasn’t shy about going after them the first time they deployed chemical weapons after he took office. That would be understandable under the circumstances and most of our allies would get behind the response. But calling out the Russians adds a new wrinkle to the tale.
Trump has faced a lot of criticism for being “too soft” on the Russians, despite the huge sanctions imposed on them. Assuming this statement came from Trump (or at least had his approval) rather than being an independent move by John J. Sullivan, it might be an effort to show that he’s taking a hard line with Putin and dampen complaints that the two leaders are good buddies. Another bit of wild speculation: What if this didn’t originate with anyone in the State Department? John Bolton is in the house now and he’s not really much of a dove when it comes to responding to such military situations. Does this statement have his fingerprints on it?
Stand by for some sort of cruise missile or air-to-surface strike on Syrian weapons caches, likely with a bit of air support from some European allies. If Trump holds true to form, those could be coming as soon as the next 48 hours. And with Assad being an ally of not only Russia, but Turkey as well, this is going to complicate the mess we’re dealing with over there even more.


Is 'nothwithstanding' a preposition? I always thought it was a participial adverbial.
'Participial' suggests an originating verb, but there is no verb to 'notwithstand'. I wouldn't use that term here.
It can certainly be an adverb, as in 'John, notwithstanding, decided to go'. And it can also be a conjunction. But in the examples for this post, it's definitely prepositional.
Yes, 'long' isn't a preposition, but the notion of 'postposition' isn't restricted to prepositions, of course.
There's a verb "to withstand", though.
But I'll accept your answer: I really was asking.
That's true, but it isn't relevant to the prepositional question, as there isn't a prepositional use without the 'not' bit. We can say 'notwithstanding the objection' but not 'withstanding the objection'.
Etymologically you're right: historically, the word comes from 'naught' + a participial form of 'withstand'.
Lawyers favour words such as ‘hereto’, ‘herewith’ as ‘therefrom’ (compare German ‘damit’, ‘dazu’, etc.). These seem to show obligatory postposition, as does, possibly, the more common ‘therefore’.
What about "over" as in "the world over"? = "all over the world".
"Over" seems to collate strongly with "world". It sounds rather strange (to me) in "the land over", "the earth over", etc.
What about the suffix -ward(s)? "Homeward bound", "upwards", "windward", etc. These are, no doubt, adverbial or adjectival in origin; but they act very like postpositions in those languages which have them -- & would probably be translated as such.
I can't see why telling students it is a 'preposition of time' is any more or less difficult than telling them it is an 'adverb of time'. Certainly, maintaining the fiction that it is a preposition won't help them in the long run, as their understanding of English increases, and they begin to note the parallels between ago and other postposed adverbs. A recipe for greater confusion, I would have thought.
Hmm, "Today we are going to do a lesson on prepositions of time and one adverb of time, but please don't ask me to explain the difference because that would be a 15 minute distraction from what we are trying to learn today"
Can't see it, especially as it is something that is studied from Elementary level and 95% of Elementary level students are never going to need to be higher than Intermediate. Perhaps because of that, I have never seen the expression "adverb of time" in an EFL textbook. Day to day here on the chalkface, almost every grammar explanation is a compromise between being accurate (assuming it is even a point that the experts agree on) and being easy to understand, use and remember. For that reason, the differences between adverbs and prepositions in phrasal verbs is also something I only explain about 50% of the time, even with higher level classes.
Looking at it another way, words quite often have different meanings for experts and non experts, and an EFL context is naturally a place where another whole use of grammar terminology can, and should, exist.
I think you need to widen your reading! I've often seen it in EFL coursebooks, ever since I started teaching EFL teachers back in the 1960s. Coincidentally, I was at an EFL conference in Portugal just last week, and the term (along with 'adverb of frequency' and a few others) came up there, and it was obvious that all the teachers knew and used this sort of terminology. The relevance of time adverbs to the teaching of tenses is so important that personally I can't see how you can do without it. To leave them out actually complicates the teaching of tenses. Simplification I fully support, and there are indeed several ways of simplifying the teaching of time expression in TEFL. Teaching something that is 'wrong', as you put it, I don't have any sympathy with, I'm afraid.
The aside on phrasal verbs is not really relevant.
In Look it up, whatever we choose to call up , it isn't a postposition following it.
Nor is it fair to tell foreign students that it's a preposition. Unless we make the difference clear, they'll never see the different between Look up the new words and Look up the chimney .
I stand corrected. Obviously I have taught adverbs of time, "recently", "already" and "yet" being some obvious examples. I can't see any parallel between those and "ago" though, and certainly not one I could explain to my Elementary students. We've got "in seven months" and "for seven months", and then "seven months ago". It seems more natural to put those together and call them the same thing to me.
The parallel is that 'already' etc are adverbs of time, and 'for seven months;' etc are adverb phrases of time. The term 'adverbials' subsumes them both, along with adverb clauses. They always are brought together in any grammar book I know.
"'for seven months;' etc are adverb phrases of time"
Yes, 'for' is a preposition. And prepositions are followed by noun phrases (not by nouns). That is a structural statement. The description as an 'adverbial of time' is a functional statement. The two are not incompatible.
These points are taking us away from the original topic, and are too elementary for continued discussion in this post. Any future contributions to this theme should focus on the notion of postposition, please.
Ago is one of those words which doesn't fit well into any system of word classification (there are several others, such as enough). So the issue is: which word class does it most closely resemble? It is called an adverb by most grammarians because there is at least one clear case of it doing onw of the things that adverbs routinely do - namely, modifying an adjective or adverb. The example is long ago. Prepositions do not do this. What makes ago exceptional is that it also modifies a noun phrase (as in three weeks ago).
If there were a class of postpositions in English, then it would be possible to argue that ago had some similarities with that. But there isn't. Which is where we all came in. It wouldn't make much sense to set up a new word class category for the language where the only examples of its use were unclear instances such as ago.
Hello, everyone. I discovered these blog entries on postpositions a few weeks AGO. Hope it's not too late. I guess the one person who would argue most strongly in favour of AGO as a postposition is R. Huddleston (1984, and Huddleston & Pullum 2002), who called it so in the early 80s and has been doing it ever since. His argument is, mainly, that AGO requires obligatory complementation, a fact which not only makes it HEAD of the phrase -unlike Quirk et al 1985, who see it as a modifying postposed adverb- but also a postposition. They recognise, though, its 'slippery' nature and highlight its exceptional syntactic character. I find it hard, however, to think of AGO as a postposition in LONG AGO, even when H&P mention 'premodifiers' of prepositions, or when Kurzón (2008) entertains the idea of LONG acting as some sort of 'pro-form', its meaning dependent on some unspecified time extent.
...unless we see LONG as an adverb, that is, which is perfectly possible, considering it can function as complement of a preposition (=for long). In this case, we would probably feel happier if we eventually WANTED to class ago as a 'postposed' preposition, or just as another 'preposition' -though maybe not merely as a 'postposition', since the latter can also act as a cover term, a 'bin bag' with different parts of speech inside. Great 2010 to you all and best wishes from scorching hot Argentina!
How about the 'Saxon genitive'? It's now considered a clitic, not an inflection, because it attaches to the end of the whole phrase (the King of Denmark's hat, !the King's of Denmark hat).


My 3 month old is breastfed and formula fed at night. 3 days ago I started putting him in his crib to sleep. I start the night by bathing him around 8:30pm and then giving him a 4 oz bottle of formula before bed. He wakes up at around 11:30pm wanting to be fed again. He only eats about 2 oz and is back to sleep. He wakes up every 2 hours after and is fed 2-3 oz each time. What can I do to make him sleep longer?
I think it is normal for most babies that age to wake up at least once in the night.


Let's examine a few statements reflecting a vision thought to be beyond question. "The world that we live in is beautiful but fragile." "The 3rd rock from the sun is a fragile oasis." Here are a couple of Earth Day quotes: "Remember that Earth needs to be saved every single day." "Remember the importance of taking care of our planet. It's the only home we have!" Such statements, along with apocalyptic predictions, are stock in trade for environmental extremists and non-extremists alike. Worse yet is the fact that this fragile-earth indoctrination is fed to our youth from kindergarten through college. Let's examine just how fragile the earth is.
The 1883 eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, in present-day Indonesia, had the force of 200 megatons of TNT. That's the equivalent of 13,300 15-kiloton atomic bombs, the kind that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. Preceding that eruption was the 1815 Tambora eruption, also in present-day Indonesia, which holds the record as the largest known volcanic eruption. It spewed so much debris into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight, that 1816 became known as the "Year Without a Summer" or "Summer That Never Was." It led to crop failures and livestock death in much of the Northern Hemisphere and caused the worst famine of the 19th century. The A.D. 535 Krakatoa eruption had such force that it blotted out much of the light and heat of the sun for 18 months and is said to have led to the Dark Ages. Geophysicists estimate that just three volcanic eruptions, Indonesia (1883), Alaska (1912) and Iceland (1947), spewed more carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than all of mankind's activities in our entire history.
How has our fragile earth handled floods? China is probably the world capital of gigantic floods. The 1887 Yellow River flood cost between 900,000 and 2 million lives. China's 1931 flood was worse, yielding an estimated death toll between 1 million and 4 million. But China doesn't have a monopoly on floods. Between 1219 and 1530, the Netherlands experienced floods costing about 250,000 lives.
What about the impact of earthquakes on our fragile earth? There's Chile's 1960 Valdivia earthquake, coming in at 9.5 on the Richter scale, a force equivalent to 1,000 atomic bombs going off at the same time. The deadly 1556 earthquake in China's Shaanxi province devastated an area of 520 miles. There's the more recent December 2004 magnitude-9.1 earthquake in the Indian Ocean that caused the deadly Boxing Day tsunami, and a deadly March 2011 magnitude-9.0 earthquake struck eastern Japan.
Our fragile earth faces outer space terror. Two billion years ago, an asteroid hit earth, creating the Vredefort crater in South Africa. It has a radius of 118 miles, making it the world's largest impact crater. In Ontario, there's the Sudbury Basin, resulting from a meteor strike 1.8 billion years ago, which has an 81-mile diameter, making it the second-largest impact structure on earth. Virginia's Chesapeake Bay crater is a bit smaller, about 53 miles wide. Then there's the famous but puny Meteor Crater in Arizona, which is not even a mile wide.
I've pointed out only a tiny portion of the cataclysmic events that have struck the earth — ignoring whole categories, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, lightning strikes, fires, blizzards, landslides and avalanches. Despite these cataclysmic events, the earth survived. My question is: Which of these powers of nature can be matched by mankind? For example, can mankind duplicate the polluting effects of the 1815 Tambora volcanic eruption or the asteroid impact that wiped out dinosaurs? It is the height of arrogance to think that mankind can make significant parametric changes in the earth or can match nature's destructive forces.
Occasionally, environmentalists spill the beans and reveal their true agenda. Barry Commoner said, "Capitalism is the earth's number one enemy." Amherst College professor Leo Marx said, "On ecological grounds, the case for world government is beyond argument." With the decline of the USSR, communism has lost considerable respectability and is now repackaged as environmentalism and progressivism.


Most Londoners - including Boris Johnson supporters - see themselves as social liberals, according to the findings of a new online tool designed to help voters compare their political positions to those of the mayoral candidates.
Since its launch in April 2012, several thousand Londoners have tried out Mayor4London.com, the voting application developed by the London School of Economics, Queen Mary, University of London, and the e-Democracy centre (e-DC) based at the University of Zurich.
Users of the app answer a series of questions on policy issues being debated in the run-up to the election, such as crime, education, welfare and transport. They are also asked which party they feel closest to, and which mayoral candidate they intend to vote for on their first and second preferences.
The application then analyses how closely a person's responses overlap with the policies of Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnston and other candidates bidding to run City Hall on 3 May.
Designed by Dr Nick Anstead in the Department of Media and Communication at LSE, Dr Mario Mendez from the School of Law at Queen Mary and Dr Jonathan Wheatley at the e-DC, the tool aims to engage voters in the mayoral elections.
"The application aims to help voters understand key election issues and where candidates stand on them, particularly important as this hotly contested election is in two rounds, so voters need a deeper knowledge of more candidates than in a parliamentary election," said Dr Anstead.
Discussing the findings, Dr Mendez said: "It is very interesting to see that the Londoners who responded tended to self-position themselves as social liberals. Data also suggest that a greater percentage of those who identified as Conservative Party supporters intend to vote Boris as compared to the figures for the Labour Party and Liberal Democrat candidate."
"However, when it comes to second preferences Ken has greater support than Boris from those who intended to vote Green, Lib-Dem and for the independent candidate," he added.
1. Most Londoners see themselves as social liberals. Even Tories place themselves midway between the social liberal and social conservative poles, and Boris's supporters are, on average, mildly socially liberal.
2. Green supporters are the most left-wing group.
11. In terms of second preferences, 27.0 per cent of Brian's supporters will give their support to Ken and 23.8 per cent for Boris. 70.2 per cent of Jenny's supporters will go to Ken and just 6.8 per cent will go to Boris. Finally, 32.1 per cent of Siobhan's second preferences will go to Ken, 19.3 per cent to Boris.
User results are displayed in three graphs, plotting how closely users match candidates on policy statements and themes such as crime, transport, society, education, welfare and mayoral powers. A fourth graph pinpoints whether a user is more closely aligned to the left or right, based on their attitude towards the economy, and to social liberalism or social conservatism based on their feelings towards matters such as family, patriotism, law and order.


Is this a coincidence, or possibly something spookier? This week I have witnessed not just one but TWO dramatic re-enactments of the same symphony, Shostakovich’s 9th.
Monday night’s Prom with Aurora Orchestra had broadcaster Tom Service and conductor Nicholas Collon probing the work's double nature, its light-and-dark, its tragi-comedy, followed by a wonderfully energetic live performance played from memory. Gripping stuff. Tonight I went to the second of three nights at the Cockpit Theatre of Miriam Gould’s one-woman show Empty Room. It also dealt with the very same music, which the actor was seeing through the eyes of one of the three characters she plays, herself as a teenager obsessing about the Russian symphonist.
This show is a family memoir in which, with great candour, she explores the legacy that her parents have left her. It is a powerful exploration of how an involvement in music overshadows everything – relationships, grief, personal identity – in the lives of a family.
Her father – whom she also portrays as a shivering, fast-talking, intense character dealing with heroin addiction, was the saxophonist Sal (Salvatore) Nistico. He was born of Italian-American extraction in Syracuse, New York State, in 1938, and died in Berne in 1991. He was a member of one of Woody Herman’s herds, and a blistering presence on tenor saxophone (try THIS !!) Her mother is the renowned singer and educator Rachel Gould, the child of two holocaust survivors, who made a classic record with Chet Baker, All Blues, and has also been a prominent educator in the Netherlands for several years. The two of them, plus the angsty teenager obsessing about Shostakovich 9 are the three characters played by Miriam Gould as she tells the story of her family.
I had reservations before going to this show. Would an actor narrating something quite so personal come across as anything other than self-indulgent? Well, the answer is that the show can and does transcend all that. The issues which it takes on will fascinate anyone interested in the psychology of music. And Gould's acting craft, notably the deft way in which she transitions and transforms from one of her three endearing characters to another, is miraculous. And she also sings and plays the violin – very well.
There is one more night. This is a jazz show in a space that through the involvement of NYJO and Jez Nelson's Jazz in the Round has its own jazz identity, and is familiar to London's jazz fans. For whom there can surely be only one option, and one night left: note the early start time, 7pm, and GO SEE!


I have two tables, both having more than 20 million records; table1 is a list of terms, and table2 is a list of keywords that may or may not appear in those terms. I need to identify the terms that contain a keyword.
The 'term' field is a VARCHAR(320) and the 'keyword' field is a VARCHAR(64).
This is not working, it takes f o r e v e r.
It's not the server, afaict (see notes).
How might I rewrite this so that it runs in under a day?
I have entertained in-memory tables, or changing to innodb and making the buffer pool big enough to hold both tables. Unfortunately, each mysql thread is bound to one cpu, but I have 4 cores (well, "8" with hyperthreading); if I could distribute the workload, that would be fantastic.
Regarding server optimization: both tables are myisam and have unique indexes on the matching fields; the myisam key buffer is greater than the sum of both index file sizes, and it is not even being fully taxed (key_blocks_unused is ... large); the server is a 2x dual core xeon 2U beast with fast sas drives and 8G of ram, tuned for the mysql workload.
I just remembered that I only index the first 80 characters of the 'term' field (to save disk space); not sure if this is hurting or helping.
You want to set up a full-text index, then do a search against that. Right now, your unique index probably isn't helping the search at all (because of the leading '%' in the search).
That means, it's almost certainly running a full scan of table1 for each item in table2. Calling that grossly inefficient is putting it nicely. Building a full-text index is somewhat slow (though probably faster than what you're doing right now) but once that's done, the searching should go a lot faster.
As to what to use to do the full-text indexing: while MySQL has a built-in full-text indexing capability, I doubt it'll help you a lot -- with 20 million rows, its performance is pretty poor (at least in my experience). Sphinx is a bit more work to set up, but is a lot more likely to give you adequate performance.


What is another word for ascent?
An upward movement; the act of climbing; the way of reaching a height; an upward slope.
enlightenment, escalation, advancement, increase, surge.
ascendancy, climb, emergence, upturn, upswing, upwelling, rebound, upsurge, elevation, resurgence.
discharge, dismissal, impeachment, dethronement, abasement, plop, demotion, decrease, basin, comedown, expulsion, hanging, unseating, downhill, hollow, nosedive, fall, deposition, overthrow, ouster, reduction, depression, suspension, plummeting, down, sinking, removal.
Quick as thought he sprang up the steep short ascent that led to its narrow entrance and darted in.
There was a point on the steep hill - side where horseman must dismount, where lady must leave litter and continue the ascent on foot.
accouchement, ashamed, accented, accent, askant, asquint, agnate, acanthoid, accommodate, agent, awakened, ascend, assumed, assignment, augend, assonant, azimuth, assessment, acquaint, aquanaut, assigned, agamidae, acquainted, assent, assassinated, agamid, agamete, accentuate, acned, augment, as needed, augmented, account, assonate, aconite, acquainted with, assassinate, agenda, agony aunt, Asininity, Acantha, acquiescent, agnatha, agonidae, acuminate, azoimide, assuagement.