The new Congress is going to be a bit different than the old Congress. During an orientation week for new members of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez showed up at Nancy Pelosi’s office. This in itself would not be news, except that she was joining protestors demanding more urgent climate action.
Even before they took the House, national Democrats promised to do precious little on climate change. Since last week’s election, that needle has shifted slightly. Press reports have indicated that Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi—who has said she expects to be elected speaker for the next Congress—would reinstate a select committee on climate change that could investigate the issue but not craft legislation. Which is, basically, good for nothing.
It’s against this backdrop that an estimated 200 protestors from the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats, two progressive groups with the former pushing to get fossil fuel money out of politics, dropped in on Pelosi’s office on Tuesday morning. The groups are pushing a draft resolution that would give the select committee teeth to create a Green New Deal while also asking Democrats to reject fossil fuel donations and barring those that do accept them from being put on the committee.
Such a policy would be modeled after the public works policies that helped lift the U.S. out of the Depression, and would focus on speeding the renewable transition along in a just manner over the next decade. The outlines of a Green New Deal, including 100 percent renewable energy and funding for green infrastructure and carbon capture technology, are broadly supported by Americans. And it has champions in the incoming Congress, including Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives backed by Justice Democrats.
There are a few realities to consider, the most of important of which is the climate itself. Scientists have laid out in stark terms what the world has to do to avert catastrophic climate change. Carbon emissions must fall 45 percent by 2030 and be net zero by mid-century.
The political reality is of course that Democrats only control the House, and any meaningful climate legislation is basically DOA in the Senate. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth crafting legislation for the right time. Democrats accepting the reality of climate change puts them miles ahead of Republicans, but they’re largely unprepared at the national level to chart a legitimate path forward.
Politics can bend, the rules of physics can not. The protestors are focused on the latter in the hopes of changing the former.
In response to the protest, Pelosi officially announced she would move to reconstitute the select committee while not mentioning any specifics about its purview. Her office told Earther details would be considered in the House rules package.
In a tweet, the Sunrise Movement called it “bringing a squirt gun to a wildfire.” Justice Democrats tweeted “[n]ot good enough.” It’s likely not the last time Pelosi or Democratic incumbent in the House will hear that.
This post has been updated with comments from Pelosi’s office and Varshini Prakash.


Okay, this story just keeps a'comin'. Federal prosecutors in Sacramento have announced yet another massive mortgage fraud scheme operating in Southern California. This time, the alleged scammers deployed a "foreclosure rescue scam," in which they suckered people into giving title of the house to a straw buyer, who borrowed against the increased equity and gave to the scammers for a fee. The con men allegedly pocketed the money and walked away. According to the Los Angeles Times, the culprits allegedly did this more than one hundred times and snagged roughly $12.6 million. That's a spicy meatball!
Up in the Bay Area, meanwhile, foreclosures have gotten so common that the East Bay's water utility is thinking about keeping water services operating for tenants who live in homes that are facing foreclosure. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Councilmembers Larry Reid, Nancy Nadel, and Ignacio De la Fuente all approve the proposed policy.


How will House, M.D. end its eight-year run? Take the Blogcritics poll.
My wish list for House, M.D.'s season eight.
Lisa Edelstein leaving House, M.D.
"After Hours" one of the best episodes of House, Season 7.
As Season 8 concludes, House, M.D. Executive Producer Katie Jacobs chatted with Blogcritics in an exclusive interview.
Amber Tamblyn bids farewell as Martha Masters in House, M.D.'s "Last Temptation."


Shannon Purser has revealed that discussions have already been held over a possible sequel to Sierra Burgess Is A Loser, but insisted that it is up to Netflix and the amount of views the film ultimately gets.
As Sierra Burgess, an outcast at high school, Purser has to team up with Kristine Froseth’s Veronica, the most popular cheerleader, so that they can try and win over their crushes.
The rest of the article contains huge SPOILERS for “Sierra Burgess Is A Loser,” specifically when it comes to the end of the romantic-comedy.
So please don’t read ahead if you’re yet to watch the latest Netflix release. You have been warned.
Come the end of “Sierra Burgess” she ultimately lands Jamey (Noah Centineo), who had previously been contacting her under the impression that it was Veronica, as he realizes that he fell in love with their endless chats over the phone.
What time does Netflix release Sierra Burgess Is a Loser?
During our conversation I asked Purser whether these additional tidbits might be explored in more detail in a possible sequel.
“Sierra Burgess Is A Loser” is now on Netflix.


Archives|COLLEGE GIRL DIES IN CROSSING CRASH; Her Car Skids Through Gate Into Path of Train and Is Crushed. TWO COMPANIONS ESCAPE Jump Before Collision -- Victim, Margaret Vreeland, Was on Way to Home at Dover, N.J.
COLLEGE GIRL DIES IN CROSSING CRASH; Her Car Skids Through Gate Into Path of Train and Is Crushed. TWO COMPANIONS ESCAPE Jump Before Collision -- Victim, Margaret Vreeland, Was on Way to Home at Dover, N.J.


Yet another of the "first generation" Hayes Valley businesses  those that have been around since the neighborhood first began its current gentrification, after the double-decker section of the Central Freeway that went over Hayes Street came down due to damage in the '89 earthquake, in 1992  is biting the dust, as Eater informs us. Momi Toby's Revolution Cafe and Art Bar is giving up the ghost after 23 years on Laguna Street, and via a liquor license transfer application, they learn that local restaurant PR person Jen Pelka is teaming up with a couple partners to open a Champagne bar in the space to be called The Riddler.
Momi Toby's owner Anthony Shou, who's only owned the business since 2013, told Hoodline a full year ago that he'd received nine offers to buy the place just in two years, but he seemed to be holding out for a buyer who'd keep the place going as the scrappy neighborhood cafe and bar that it had been for two decades. It sounds like Pelka finally made him an offer he couldn't turn down, however.
The name, The Riddler, derives from the part of the Champagne making process known as riddling  a turning and gradual tilting of the bottles, neck down, so that the yeast and sediment from the bottle-fermentation process collects in the neck and can be removed. The process, pioneered by Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, known as the Widow Clicquot ("veuve" is "widow" in French) is mostly done by huge machines these days, but was originally done by hand using large wooden racks  and it's still done this way at Schramsberg in the Napa Valley, if you ever want to see. As the story goes, the Widow Clicquot inherited the Champagne house and became the first woman ever to run one in 1805. Unhappy with the cloudy, sediment-filled bottles that were being produced, she and her cellar master, Antoine de Müller, invented riddling racks and she began making the brand famous in royal courts throughout Europe and in imperial Russia, for its clarity and quality.
Pelka is paying tribute to Ponsardin with the name in part because The Riddler will be an entirely female-run business.
It remains unclear when Momi Toby's may close, and it remains open for now  liquor license transfers typically take a couple of months. After that, there will be renovations, and an opening date for the Champagne bar remains TBA. Stay tuned.


MANILA, Philippines–Manila North Tollways Corp. (MNTC), operator of North Luzon Expressway, opened on March 19 a 2.42-kilometer NLEx road section providing alternative access to Valenzuela City and the port area in Manila, a statement showed.
MNTC, a unit of Manuel V. Pangilinan-led Metro Pacific Investments Corp., said it had opened the so-called segment 9 of the Harbor Link, which would serve about 27,000 vehicles per day in its first year. The project, connecting NLEx from the Smart Connect Interchange to MacArthur Highway in Karuhatan, Valenzuela City, came at a cost of P1.6 billion, MNTC said.
“Vehicles going to Camanava (Caloocan, Malabon, Navotas and Valenzuela City) via NLEx can take the west-bound ramp at the Smart Connect Interchange, proceed through Segment 9 and take MacArthur Highway instead of exiting at the Valenzuela Interchange and passing through the congested Maysan Road,” MNTC president Rodrigo E. Franco said in a statement on Thursday.
“Vehicles going to the Port Area can take the same route and pass by Monumento in Caloocan instead of exiting at Balintawak and going through traffic-heavy Edsa,” he added.
By easing the traffic, Segment 9 will facilitate the movement of people and goods between Central and North Luzon and Metro Manila, particularly the Camanava area.
“By linking NLEx and MacArthur Highway, we expect to see increased economic activities in these areas since it will improve transport logistics through the more efficient movement of trucks,” Franco said.


NEWLY RENOVATED KITCHEN & BATHS!! WALLPAPER REMOVED & NEW PAINT!! - 5 beds (7 if you include the ones in the basement) 3 full baths, large family room with stone fireplace leading to a large backyard, deck & patio. If you have a growing family, need guest space, want Clinton schools and easy access to everything in & outside of Clinton - This has to be on your short list!!


Logo of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
SAARC regional cooperation and sub-regional cooperation were some of the issues discussed during Indian Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar’s visit to Bhutan and Bangladesh on March 1 and 2 as part of his SAARC Yatra. These issues have acquired importance following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘neighbourhoood first’ policy. At the 18th SAARC summit in Kathmandu Prime Minister Modi minced no words in describing the limited progress which the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation has made in the last 30 years.
It is in this context that the experience of sub-regional cooperation in SAARC is being examined to understand whether it has facilitated the bonds to grow among the member countries. But before going any further it is important to understand – What is sub regional cooperation? The normal form of regional cooperation is institutional integration which is characterised by legal arrangements that promote preferential trade among members. Sub regional cooperation is considered as a less formal form of cooperation.
The focus is on border regions of the member countries and not the countries as a whole. Studies have brought out that one of the successful sub-regional cooperation programme is the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS). In GMS, facilities were provided that reduced transaction costs associated with international movement of goods, services, and other production factors. Thus, GMS devised economic corridors where a network of roads were built to connect the region and reduce costs of transporting goods and people. These corridors also focused on interconnections for power transmission and telecommunication links. The GMS programme also simplified customs, and the visa systems among others which helped in regionalism as a whole.
Only with necessary ‘connectivity’ infrastructure – in terms of transport; energy/power transmission; communication – will the member countries benefit from the agreements that they have reached to bring down tariff barriers. Thus, sub-regional cooperation focuses on these non-tariff barriers. It is also observed that the institutional agreements and sub-regional cooperation facilities complement each other wherein the latter helps in effective implementation of the former. In the absence of ‘connectivity infrastructure’, even in a scenario of free trade, the member countries will not benefit.
It was only in the 9th SAARC Summit held at Male, Maldives in 1997 that the member countries agreed for, “…the development of specific projects relevant to the special individual needs of three or more member states”. This proposal was not easy to arrive at and there was resentment among the member countries who would not be part of such projects. However, it was argued that sub-regional cooperation would help in evolving solutions to the development needs of a particular area and that it was not contrary to the SAARC Charter.
The BBIN-GQ (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal – Growth Quadrangle) is the result of these efforts. The concerned countries decided that BBIN-GQ was to follow a project- led approach to cooperation in the core economic areas of multimodal transportation and communication, energy, trade and investment facilitation and promotion, tourism, optimal utilisation of natural resource endowments and environment.
These projects were to be supportive of and complementary to the national plans of the concerned countries and would make the best use of neighbourhood synergies. However, no significant progress was made in BBIN-GQ.
Since 2001, the South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) programme (www.sasec.asia) has brought together Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, India in a project based partnership to promote regional prosperity by improving cross-border connectivity, boosting trade among member countries, and strengthening regional economic cooperation. Since 2014, Sri Lanka and Maldives are also part of this programme. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) serves as Secretariat to the SASEC programme.
The SASEC partnership works to increase trade and cooperation within South Asia, while also creating the linkages to East and Southeast Asia. SASEC countries follow a flexible multi-track approach, with coordinated projects in different countries implemented nationally as well as across borders, to promote sub-regional cooperation. national road and rail networks, for example, are strengthened within individual countries, yet are planned and prioritized to link up across national borders with transport networks in neighbouring countries. Under SASEC, the Chittagong Port Trade Facilitation Project has increased the capacity and efficiency of the container terminal and is helping international port security and environmental standards to be met. This leads to lower shipping and port charges, contributing to more international trade.
Sub regional cooperation is an important instrument to build bonds among member countries. Within SAARC the BBIN –GQ has not been able to show results. However, the experience of SASEC has shown that sub-regional projects have been successfully implemented. SAARC needs to learn from the experience of SASEC. India can take the lead in activating sub-regional cooperation projects. The experience of SASEC has important bilateral lessons for India. For the ‘neighbourhood first’ policy to be effective, it is essential to identify those specific bottlenecks or non-tariff barriers which prevent economic cooperation even in a situation when tariff barriers are brought down.


Growing up in this part of Tennessee, I never really saw a lot of men in the kitchen. Most of the cooking that was done in our family was left to my female relatives, and they are greatly responsible for my extreme obsession of all things food related to this very day.
One exception to this was my father’s blackberry jelly. He made it every year, and that was the only time I can remember him getting near a stove. In fact, my mother was not a huge fan of letting anyone else grace her kitchen with their presence. Especially not an excessively chatty, constantly underfoot, prone-to-mischief-making little girl. That would be me.
After the blackberries were picked on our farm and the process of checking everyone for ticks and briars was complete, all bets were off. Mom would assemble the mounds of cheesecloth, the bags and bags of sugar, and every single stock pot in the house and then quickly evacuate the building because she couldn’t stand to look at the mess that was about to ensue.
Then I would have my daddy all to myself, and it was better than Saturday morning cartoons. He would pull up a little stool for me, hand me a wooden spoon, and after several reminders to stop jumping around and act like I had some sense, he would work his magic. The deep purple concoction would finally be poured into jars ignoring all the splatter and sticky and came out beautifully every single time.
This jelly was so sweet and wonderful that it would make your heart ache, and several of my childhood friends still speak of it with the same fondness as I do. I know my mother had to be a little curious as to why my friends would turn down a perfectly good home-cooked meal for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It must have had something to do with the love.
Carefully measure out the berries and strain through cheesecloth-lined colander then pour seedless juice into a very large pot (8 quarts). Carefully measure sugar in a large bowl. Add the pectin to the juice a little at a time, stirring constantly. Heat on high, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a full boil. Add sugar all at once, stirring. Bring mixture back to a full hard boil, stirring constantly. Boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and ladle into clear, hot 8-ounce jars, leaving 1/4 inch space at the top. Wipe the rim of the jar and put canning lids and rings on fingertip tight. Place in canner with very hot water, make sure water is 1 inch above jars. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes. Remove and set them upright on a towel to set for 12 hours.


Guest post by Mark A.R. Kleiman, public policy professor at UCLA. Professor Kleiman regularly blogs at The Reality Based Community.
I haven't seen any polling on this, but if Romney wants to make this election about whether we need more cops, firefighters, and teachers, Barack Obama ought to accept the invitation. At least Romney is more honest (or just more tone-deaf) than his co-partisans such as Scott Walker, who usually pretend we can cut taxes by eliminating "bureaucrats."
Of course the real hard-core Ayn Rand types think it's a good thing if a schoolteacher loses her job and has to become a stripper -- since, after all, by definition private-sector employment is productive while public-sector employment is unproductive -- but Mitt's welcome to that 25% of the vote.
It's true that there are ways of getting crime control, firefighting, and teaching done with fewer people. The police are only starting to adapt to social and technical facts (almost everyone walking around with a video camera connected to the Net) that could allow the "crowdsourcing" of much of police information-gathering. Changing construction codes have greatly reduced the need for urban firefighters, and the Fire Department is not the best or cheapest way to provide emergency medical service. (On the other hand, increased wildfires due to climate change and exurban sprawl means we need more rural firefighting, and that's an expensive activity.) Interactive software and video can - will have to - replace much of the teaching function. In each case, we need to find a way past the Baumol Cost Disease.
But that's all in the long run.
Today and tomorrow, fewer cops means more crime, fewer firefighters means fewer heart-attack survivors, fewer teachers means worse-educated students. And in the medium term those technological changes will require investments. The cost curve will bend up before it bends down.
Romney thinks the "lesson of Wisconsin" is that the American people have been conned into wanting fewer public services so they can buy bigger TV sets. He's wrong as a matter of politics. In agreeing with them, he's also wrong as a matter of policy.


CBS News’ Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes is linking up with actor Tony Danza for the National Make a Difference Day Awards luncheon set to take place in Washington at the end of April. Cordes will emcee the event; Danza will be the keynote speaker.
Make A Difference Day is sponsored by Gannett Co., Inc.’s USA WEEKEND Magazine in partnership with Points of Light and Newman’s Own.


BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The Tennessee Volunteers scrapped, pounded and grabbed.
They also survived. No coincidence in that.
The second-seeded Volunteers mostly ditched the glamorous 3-pointer and got physical in Sunday’s second-round and moved on with a 76-71 overtime victory over Butler in the NCAA East Regional.
Tennessee (31-4) got a little assist from women’s coach Pat Summitt, who called her men’s counterpart a few hours before the game.
“She said, `Just tell those guys to rebound the basketball,’ ” Pearl said of his colleague, who has won seven national titles.
JaJuan Smith hit four consecutive free throws in the final 13.6 seconds of overtime to clinch it.
The Volunteers, who will play Louisville on Thursday in Charlotte, N.C., had five players with multiple fouls by halftime and made only two 3-pointers in the final 40 minutes against Butler (30-4).
The Volunteers scored six consecutive points inside after the Bulldogs took their first lead in the final two minutes of overtime, including benched guard Ramar Smith’s basket with 27 seconds left to make it 72-68.
Butler still wouldn’t go away. Pete Campbell followed a missed shot to make it 72-70 with 16 seconds left. JaJaun Smith then made both free throws.
Julian Betko rebounded a missed 3-pointer by A.J. Graves and was fouled with 4.9 seconds left for Butler. He went 1-of-2 from the free-throw line, and JaJuan Smith grabbed the rebound before icing the game with free throws at the other end.
The Bulldogs, who got a low seed considering their No. 11 national ranking, didn’t have their minds changed. Coach Brad Stevens remains convinced his team is “Final Four-caliber,” and his players agree.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Earl Clark scored 14 points and Louisville handed Oklahoma its most-lopsided loss in the NCAA tournament, building a 44-22 halftime lead and coasting from there.
Louisville matched its biggest rout in the NCAA tournament, having trounced Kansas State by 30 in 1968. Starting five players born outside Kentucky, the third-seeded Cardinals (26-8) reached the round of 16 for the first time since 2005. They will take on Tennessee, which beat Butler 76-71 in overtime, on Thursday night in Charlotte, N.C.
RALEIGH, N.C. – Wayne Ellington scored 20 points, Ty Lawson had 19 points and seven assists and the Tar Heels raced to a double-digit lead in the first five minutes of the blowout.
North Carolina (34-2) will face fourth-seeded Washington State on Thursday in Charlotte, N.C., the same arena where it won last weekend’s Atlantic Coast Conference tournament weekend.
TAMPA, Fla. – Scottie Reynolds scored 25 points and Corey Stokes added 20 as the 12th-seeded Wildcats reached the round of 16 for the third time in four years.
Villanova (22-12), one of the last teams picked for the tournament field, will play top-seeded Kansas (33-3) in the regional semifinals.
Alex Franklin led Siena (23-11) with 18 points, but the Saints didn’t get the kind of performances they needed from Kenny Hasbrouck, Edwin Ubiles and Tay Fisher, who all played major roles in the team’s 21-point upset of Vanderbilt in the first round.
Hasbrouck had 17 points, but was only 5-of-15 from the field. Ubiles missed his first seven shots and finished 3-of-11 for 12 points, while Fisher was held to five points.
NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A.J. Abrams calmly sank two free throws with 9.5 seconds remaining to give the second-seeded Longhorns a narrow victory.
Abrams gave Texas a 74-69 lead, but the Longhorns weren’t quite safe yet. Miami’s Raymond Hicks made a 3-pointer, and D.J. Augustin then missed badly on his first of two free throws with 1.8 seconds to play. Augustin made the second, though, to preserve the win.
Abrams scored 26 points on six 3-pointers for the second consecutive game. Texas (30-6) next will play third-seeded Stanford on Friday in Houston.
TAMPA, Fla. – The 12th-seeded Hilltoppers advanced to the round of 16 for the first time in 15 years and have a date with top-seeded UCLA in Phoenix.
Courtney Lee finished with 29 points, including a huge 3-pointer that gave his team the lead for good with 6:17 remaining. Six consecutive free throws in the final 34 seconds sealed the victory.
Tyrone Brazelton added 15 points for the Hilltoppers (29-6).


Parents want action to cut speed on a busy road – after a car hit a fence yards from a Doncaster school.
The crash happened in Everingham Road, Cantley, on Thursday, at about 3.05pm, just after pupils at nearby Hawthorn Primary School had finished for the day.
A red Ford Mondeo veered on to the pavement and crashed into a fence next to a clearing in woods on the school’s grounds, which is used as a walkway to and from school by many pupils and their parents.
The parents’ call comes as figures reveal more than two people a week die or seriously hurt on Doncaster’s roads each year.
Parents Laura Fitzpatrick and Lee Mulholland – who were walking their four children home from school when the crash happened – narrowly missed being struck.
Laura, 31, of Forest Grange, Cantley, said: “We were walking back through the woods later than normal, because I was late from work, but if we hadn’t been that car could easily have crashed into us.
“When we came past the engine was still running, the tyres were still turning and the radio was on, so it can’t have happened long before we came past.
“My two little boys normally walk ahead with their bikes, and it’s scary to think they could have been hit.
Everingham Road is subject to a 20mph speed limit during school times, but the couple said they would like to see more safety measures introduced.
Laura said: “Speed bumps would be welcome. A lot of schools have lollipop ladies and I think it would make sense to have one here, because a lot of the children who live around here walk this way to school.
Lee, 33, said: “It’s not enough to just teach children about road safety, because clearly accidents like this can happen on the pavements, which you would think should be safe.
The crash comes after figures from Public Health England revealed that, over the past year, an average of two people were killed or seriously injured every week on Doncaster’s roads, which is worked out as a rolling average of 126 in 2015. Peter Dale, Doncaster Council director of regeneration and environment, said: “We were concerned to hear about the incident on Everingham Road.
“The road safety situation across communities in Doncaster is regularly reviewed and particular attention is given to addressing emerging patterns.
“Any necessary changes to the road will be considered if it will help improve road safety.
• South Yorkshire Police are investigating the collision and anyone with information is asked to contact them on 101.


The idea that the US can legitimately use its military power to ensure continued access to oil resources rests, in large measure, on the (not entirely unfounded) assumption that those controlling the resources are a bunch of sheikhs and military adventurers who happened to be in the right place, with guns, at the right time. Without the Arab exception, the idea of oil as a special case, not subject to the ordinary assumption that resources are the property of the people in whose country they are found, will also be hard to sustain.
Certainly if you were just to look at things in coldly rational terms, the resource-rich country the US should be seeking to dominate militarily is Canada, located conveniently next door. And, indeed, in the first half of the nineteenth century that’s how hawkish American politicians saw things. But it would be politically unacceptable in a modern context to try to bully Canada or Norway into coughing up oil.


Pasztor and local trainer Luke VanMoerkerke are offering a camp for high school aged players on July 2 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Bisons Alumni North Park Sports Complex.
"It’s a chance for us to be able to give back to the community and, hopefully, be able to teach the kids some fundamentals," said Pasztor, a 27-year-old offensive lineman from Langton in Norfolk County, who plays with the National Football League’s Atlanta Falcons.
"And have a good time, as well."
Pasztor and VanMoerkerke ran a similar camp a couple of years ago in Tillsonburg – where they went to Glendale High School together – but on a much smaller scale. That camp gave the pair a blueprint for next month’s camp.
"We have the opportunity to give them some really solid fundamentals that will help them improve their game," said Pasztor.
"The other thing is we want to make it a lot of fun. I’ve set aside some time in the afternoon for just some fun football."
VanMoerkerke played junior B hockey with the Brantford Golden Eagles and then went on to play for the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. A quarterback in high school, he currently runs Athlete Farm Training.
Pasztor has also enlisted the help of another NFLer, tight end Luke Wilson. Wilson, from LaSalle, Ont., currently plays for the Detroit Lions but won a Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks in 2014.
Also at the camp will be VanMoerkerke’s uncle, Ron VanMoerkerke, associate head coach, defensive co-ordinator and defensive line coach at Laurier University. A former player with the team, he won a Vanier Cup while coaching at Laurier in 2005.
Pasztor said the camp will offer something for players at all positions.
"I’m putting together drills that we do in the pros to help with the fundamentals."
Pasztor said he’d like the camp to be an annual thing.
"It’s been pretty good so far," he said of the response. "We’re trying our best to get the word out."
To sign up, visit www.pasztorsprinciples.com. There is also a Twitter page – @PaszPrinciples – with information.
Pasztor’s NFL career began when he was drafted in 2012.
But before that he wanted to be a goalie.
"To be honest with you, when I was younger, I wanted to play in the NHL," said the six-foot-seven, 310-pound lineman.
Playing in the NFL is a "dream come true," he said.
"It’s very challenging," said Pasztor.
"It’s something you have to put your heart and soul into every day in order to just be good enough to stick around."


State Police in Harrisburg are investigating an armed home-invasion robbery in the 7200 block of Linglestown Road in West Hanover Township, Dauphin County.
On Monday afternoon, the victim found an adult male wearing all black clothing and a black mask inside their residence. The male suspect pointed a small handgun at the victim and demanded money. The suspect fled the residence on foot with an undetermined amount of cash and a handgun, state police report.
The suspect was later identified as Vincent J. Crockenberg, 25, of Coal Township. He faces numerous charges including burglary, robbery, aggravated assault, simple assault, terroristic threats, false imprisonment, harassment and firearms not be carried without license.
Police say Crockenberg has been at large since escaping from the Keystone Correctional Facility Feb. 18.
Several local schools, including Central Dauphin High and four elementary schools, were locked down for a brief period with troops searched the area for the suspect.
Anyone with information on Crockenberg's whereabouts is asked to contact the state police at Harrisburg at 717-671-7500.


This picture illustrates part of a spectrum of a star obtained using the HARPS instrument on the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Astronomers searching for alien planets may be a step closer to finding true Earth-like worlds around sun-like stars, by using a new tool that promises to increase the accuracy of planet-hunting instruments tenfold, scientists say.
The laser frequency comb is a calibration tool specifically designed for large ground-based telescopes that search for alien planets through the "wobble method," which identifies extrasolar planets by the gravitational effect (the wobble) they have on their parent stars.
Today instruments such as the European Southern Observatory's High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph on a telescope in Chile observe planets via the wobble method. But precision is key, and the hollow cathode lamps used to calibrate those spectrometers have their limitations, researchers said — they are not adjustable, can be difficult to gauge, and allow the spectrometers to track the wobble of a star only down to about 30 centimeters per second.
Lo Curto worked with an international team led by Tobias Wilken of the Max Planck Institute to improve the calibration of large telescopes used in wobble method searches.
So far, telescopes using this method, which measures the Doppler shift of starlight, have lacked the precision to identify rocky alien planets that could boast water as they orbit sun-like stars, considered the most likely to give birth to life.
As a planet-hosting star tips toward Earth, its light waves are compressed; as it wobbles away from view, its light waves are spaced out. Measuring the spacing of these wobbles allows astronomers to calculate the mass and distance of the planets causing the shift.
Larger planets closer to their stars produce more significant wobbles. Thus, large, Jupiter-size planets in close orbits were the first bodies found circling other stars.
Over the past 20 years, technological advances led to improved measurements that have turned up smaller and increasingly distant planets. The HARPS spectrograph is one of the most recent additions to the alien planet search.
"HARPS is the most stable astronomical spectrograph, and is supplying the scientific community with the most precise Doppler shift measurements of nearby stars," Lo Curto said. "However, this precision is limited, among other factors, by the precision of the calibration."
Wilken, Lo Curto and their colleagues tried out their new laser comb on HARPS. The results are detailed online in the May 31 edition of the journal Nature.
As its name suggests, the laser frequency comb emits many lines of light spread apart like the teeth of a comb. Because the distance between the teeth is known, the spectrograph, responsible for reading the light from the star, can use the comb to ascertain that it is correctly reading the stellar signal.
The lines are based on an atomic clock and so are as accurate as that clock, Wilken explained. The comb also can be tailored to fit the exact size of the telescope spectrograph that needs calibration, he said.
The team's laser frequency comb can measure shifts as low as 2.5 centimeters per second, a substantial improvement to the cathode lamp approach — allowing astronomers to see smaller, closer planets, including rocky bodies with the potential of containing water.
Telescopes still would be limited by their aperture, or how much light they can collect. HARPS, even equipped with a laser comb, would capture nothing less massive than Neptune-size planets in the habitable zone around sun-like stars, researchers said.
But larger instruments, such as several giant telescopes currently under development, could fare better. "Future instruments installed at larger telescopes, if equipped with a frequency comb, will have the capability to detect an Earth-mass planet in the habitable zone of a sun-like star," Lo Curto said.


It was a historic day for recreational cricket as the inaugural Sussex Cricket League AGM was held at the 1st Central County Ground, Hove.
The East Sussex, Mid Sussex and West Sussex Leagues all merged with the Sussex Premier Cricket League before last season, but still played under their own league rules.
The leagues are now represented under one banner - the Sussex Cricket League - and at the AGM tonight, the formats of the divisions were decided.
The Premier Division and Division 2 will continue to play a split season (nine win/lose/draw matches and nine limited overs matches).
Divisions 3 and 4 will play limited overs - 45 over a side - all season while Division 5 and below will play 40 over matches all season.
The start times will be: Premier Division 11.30am; Divisions 2, 3 and 4 12.30pm; Division 5 and below 1pm.
The league has a new twitter account - @SussexCricketLg - and the accounts for the West Sussex (@WSICL), East Sussex (@cricketescl) and Mid Sussex (@midsussexcl) will be deactivated.


One of the main candidates to become the new chair of Football Federation Australia has withdrawn from the race to replace Steven Lowy, with Judith Griggs stepping out of the board elections.
In a letter penned to the FFA, Griggs confirmed she will no longer be in the running for the top job in Australian football due to her international business commitments.
In a letter seen by Fairfax Media, Griggs expressed a desire to continue assisting in Australian football but has ruled out being part of the new board, to be elected on November 19.
Griggs confirmed to Fairfax Media she would no longer contend for the board. "I felt after careful reflection that I might not be able to do proper justice from a time perspective to the role and responsibilities of director, if elected," she said.
Griggs previously headed the Congress Review Working Group which oversaw the governance reforms within Australian football. Lowy announced he would step down from his role in the wake-up of the reforms passed.
Griggs' previous roles include chief of the Australian Grand Prix.
The likes of media personality Craig Foster, former Capital Football boss Heather Reid and referee Mark Shield are among the 11 remaining candidates to be apppointed to the board and become the new chair of the FFA.


If you are a working mother, plagued with guilt that you aren't doing right by your children, there's some good news coming your way. Thanks to a new study by the International Social Survey Program of 50,000 adults in 25 countries, it seems working moms are setting up their children — particularly their daughters — for success.
Daughters of working mothers completed more years of education, were more likely to be employed and in supervisory roles, and earned higher incomes. Across the globe, 69 percent of women who had a working mom were employed, and 22 percent were supervisors, compared to 66 percent and 22 percent, respectively, of women who had a stay-at-home mom.
It also showed that women in the US with moms who worked outside the home were paid a whopping 23 percent more than those raised by stay-at-home moms.
Whether a mom worked didn't have as much influence on the careers of sons, which researchers made sure to note was expected because men are historically expected to work. However, sons of working moms did spend more time at home, roughly seven and a half more hours on child care, and 25 more minutes on housework.
"Part of this working mothers' guilt has been, 'Oh, my kids are going to be so much better off if I stay home,' but what we're finding in adult outcomes is kids will be so much better off if women spend some time at work," said Kathleen McGinn, a professor at Harvard Business School and one of the study's authors. "This is as close to a silver bullet as you can find in terms of helping reduce gender inequalities, both in the workplace and at home," she said.
It's important to note that this study counted "working moms" as any mother who was employed outside the home at any point before their child was 14 years old — it didn't discriminate how many years she worked or at what age it was in the child's life. Also, the results don't necessarily prove causation — the fact that they had working mothers might not be the reason that these women work.
Still, the results of this research — which follow a March study that revealed the amount of time spent with children has no impact on their development — should bring a sigh of relief to those working moms who are unsure of their choices.


Will the iPhone 8 Not Have a Fingerprint Scanner?
Will the iPhone 8 Ditch the Fingerprint Scanner?
An ostensible look at the iPhone 8, as rendered by iDropNews.
Which is why everyone is raising eyebrows at his prediction yesterday that Apple’s upcoming OLED flagship phone, the iPhone 8, won’t have a fingerprint scanner. The reason? Apple hasn’t been able to produce the tech needed to place a fingerprint scanner underneath the Apple 8’s screen, and there won’t be a physical home button to take its place. Qualcomm recently unveiled tech that would allow for on-screen fingerprint scanning, but it’s still slow and is unlikely to be rolled out in mass numbers for a while.
Of course, a fair number of phones have recently shrunk down their bezels, including Samsung’s Galaxy S8 and LG’s V20, and stuck a fingerprint scanner on the back, to mixed success. (Samsung’s isn’t great; LG’s is better.) But Kuo says Apple is not going to place a fingerprint scanner on the back of the iPhone 8 (or on the power button). Instead, it will simply forgo one altogether, instead using front-facing, depth-sensing tech together with facial-recognition software as a biometric way of logging users in without a PIN number.
Kuo may have a good batting average … but this seems like a bit of a stretch. Apple might need to skip the on-screen fingerprint scanner, but it seems likely that they would simply move it to the back of the phone instead. It’s not as elegant, but people have grown very accustomed to unlocking their phone with their fingerprints. And while Apple may have made some leaps forward in facial recognition, my experience is that the tech (as implemented in other phones and laptops) isn’t fully baked: If your hair is too long, you’re wearing glasses, or you simply look at your phone from the wrong angle, it won’t work. Not to mention that it feels odd to hold your phone in front of you like you’re taking a selfie every time you want to unlock your phone.
Beyond that, people now use their fingerprints for banking, authorizing App Store purchases, and — most important for Apple — activating Apple Pay. While Apple Pay adoption rates are still low, Apple shows no signs of wanting to slow down on promoting it. (For example, iOS 11 Messages allows you to text money to friends using Apple Pay.) The payment system is already struggling in the U.S.; making people looking deeply into their own phones before ordering a McChicken sandwich isn’t going to help that trend.
It’s entirely possible — likely, even — that Apple simply won’t have enough time to gets its on-screen fingerprint reader ready, even if that is what the designers in Cupertino would prefer. Apple seems to already be scrambling to make enough units available (whatever ends up happening, be ready to preorder or wait), and if the tech isn’t ready, the company may have to hold off until the iPhone 8S to get the fingerprint scanner of its dreams in place. But I’d be willing to bet ten-to-one that the iPhone 8 that will be unveiled this September will have some kind of fingerprint scanner on it. It’s just that no one seems quite sure where.


SOUTH KOREA made an explosive start in Group B as they cruised past disappointing Greece 2-0.
Goals from Lee Jung-soo and Park Ji-sung early in each half gave the 2002 semi-finalists only their second World Cup win on foreign soil.
The Koreans defended solidly against the Euro 2004 champions – who have lost every World Cup finals game in which they have played without even scoring.
At the other end, European-based duo Cha Du-ri and Park Chu-young proved a real handful for the shaky Greek defence.
South Korea coach Huh Jung-moo said: “We played to win and our players worked really hard.
The Red Devils took the lead after seven minutes when Lee Young-pyo’s corner drifted past four defenders into the path of Lee Jung-soo, who volleyed in from close range.
Skipper Park Ji-sung, strangely quiet in the first half, burst into life by doubling his side’s lead in the 52nd minute to deal a killer blow to Greece.
He chased a poor ball from Avraam Papadopoulos, beat two defenders and coolly slotted into the corner.


The Los Angeles Unified School District's student enrollment numbers have decreased again, and a new headcount shows this year's drop was slightly bigger than district officials had anticipated.
Instead of losing around 10,000 students — as originally forecast — L.A. Unified's final enrollment count was down by 13,000 students compared to last year, the district's chief financial officer Scott Price said.
In the short term, district officials project the discrepancy will cost L.A. Unified an additional $17 million in revenues generated by student attendance — yet another hit to the district's $7.5 billion operating budget.
But in the longer term, the new headcount will do nothing to quell anxieties about whether L.A. Unified officials are doing enough to reverse a decade-and-a-half-long trend of enrollment decline.
"Besides asking people to have more children and fixing the housing crisis, what can we be doing?" school board member Nick Melvoin asked at a meeting last Tuesday.
In his statement, Melvoin hinted at the factors that are often raised to explain the decline of L.A. Unified's enrollment from its peak in 2002: the county's birthrate has dipped in recent years; the rising cost of living in L.A. has forced families out of the city; gentrification is changing the neighborhoods the district serves.
But parents are also choosing schools other than L.A. Unified. In the face of the same broader demographic trends, publicly-funded charter schools — which are run by outside groups, not the school district — are expected to add another 4,000 students to their rolls this year.
Among the strategies district officials are exploring to reverse the enrollment decline: making it easier for parents to choose L.A. Unified schools. Superintendent Michelle King has said she wants to expand popular L.A. Unified "pathways," such as magnet schools, dual language programs, pilot schools or career programs.
And this year, the district has launched its first version of a universal enrollment system, an online "one-stop shop" website that will — when fully operational — allow parents to browse school options for their students and apply for them all with a single form.
"You may not see the enrollment increase immediately," Ekchian told school board members on Tuesday. "But the quality of programs and the variety of programs that really provide choices to our students, we expect we’ll be able to change enrollment decline to enrollment increase."
But board members also pushed for a deeper, neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis of enrollment changes — because some schools have seen increases in their student counts.
Board member Kelly Gonez noted a blue-ribbon panel studying the district's finances recommended doing this enrollment deep-dive two years ago: "It would be great if we could get started on that soon," she said.
"We have to understand that families are choosing and we have to be able to respond to that, not just after the fact," said board president Mónica García.
Melvoin also requested an update from a task force of district officials studying student attendance — after all, it's student attendance, not enrollment, that directly determines a school's funding. He said the board hasn't been kept in the loop about that task force's work.


Dr. Michael Widlanski is the author of Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat published by Threshold/Simon and Schuster. He was Strategic Affairs Advisor in Israel's Ministry of Public Security, and he will be a visiting professor at University of California, Irvine.
And why Jews are leaving.
Why Israel's existence is tied in with being a Jewish state.
How Barack Obama would answer.
Why the jet-setting secretary won't be bringing peace to the Middle East any time soon.
The president shares a few of his most memorable post-election correspondences.
On Obama characterization, Clint Eastwood has the last laugh.
The useful idiots of our time.
Why we can't rely on our policy elites to be "the best and the brightest."
How we helped the Muslim Brotherhood come to power and undermine the US in the Middle East.
How Obama has badly hurt America’s ability to acquire data on terrorists.
An American president does all he can to shield Iran from Israel.


Will Greece break the euro?
A make or break meeting on Saturday could determine whether or not Greece defaults on its debts. How damaging has Greece's debt crisis been for the euro and the idea of irreversible euro membership? Kirsty Basset reports.
Greeks protesting outside parliament, calling on their government to keep their country in the euro zone. The Greek government says it wants to stay in too. But with Greece due to pay the IMF 1.6 billion euros on Tuesday, time is running out. If a deal isn't drawn up on Saturday, the stage could be set for a Greek default - which could push the country closer to an exit from the euro zone. What would that look like? Reuters correspondent Jamie McGeever. (SOUNDBITE) (ENGLISH) REUTERS CORRESPONDENT JAMIE MCGEEVER SAYING: "There would be a huge collapse in the value of the currency. The price of imported goods, fuel, medicine, would go through the roof. Inflation would rise. There'd be all sorts of volatility and uncertainty." Some argue it would in the long term give Greece a competitive boost. Either way, the possibility of an exit - by accident or design, is undermining the concept of euro zone membership as irreversible. Jeremy Stretch is from CIBC. (SOUNDBITE) (ENGLISH) EUROPEAN HEAD OF STRATEGY AT CIBC, JEREMY STRETCH, SAYING: "If we were to see one member leave, that irrevocability would be compromised and that would be an obvious counterweight to the European project." And it's a precedent Brussels wouldn't want to see set. (SOUNDBITE) (ENGLISH) REUTERS CORRESPONDENT JAMIE MCGEEVER SAYING: "Well if one country was to leave what's to stop another from leaving whether it be a year, or five or ten years time? Once that genie is out of the bottle so to speak there's no putting it back in." So is Greece responsible for its problems, or is it the system that needs fixing? IG's Chris Beauchamp says the crisis has shone a light on some of the euro zone's underlying cracks. (SOUNDBITE) (English) CHRIS BEAUCHAMP, SENIOR MARKET ANALYST, IG, SAYING: "I think it just shows up what we'd already suspected about the euro. That while it had a pretense of being a union of pushing together with the same aims and monetary policy it does sort of paper over the cracks. People started to believe in the mid-2000s that you could treat all the government bonds in the euro zone the same as a German bond but of course that's proven to be manifestly untrue." Will the crisis break the euro zone - or make it stronger? (SOUNDBITE) (ENGLISH) EUROPEAN HEAD OF STRATEGY AT CIBC, JEREMY STRETCH, SAYING: "It may well be the legacy of this ongoing crisis that we do see the necessary political integration or fiscal consolidation which is necessary to be a successful monetary union over time." And despite the euro's recent resilience, many investors see almost every outcome of Greece's stand-off with its creditors leading to a weaker euro.


Japan is getting a white and yellow Nintendo 2DS.
Japan is getting a white and yellow Nintendo 2DS. Priced at 11,980 yen (US$114), it will be out on December 15 and come bundled with New Super Mario Bros. 2. No word if a similar bundle will be released internationally.


Global sea levels are rising and the world’s land ice is disappearing. Sea levels have risen 6 to 8 inches in the past 100 years, and Antarctica has been losing more than 100 cubic kilometers of ice per year since 2002, according to NASA satellite data. By the year 2100, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that sea levels will rise as much as 20 inches.
While rising sea levels ultimately influence the entire planet, they pose the greatest threat to the islands currently residing at sea level. Here are some of the islands — many of them small nations — likely to face this crisis first.
This file has been updated with new information since its original publication in October 2012.


This is one time you'll want to encourage kids to color inside the lines. Grown-ups, too.
Just before dinner, as Mickey Mouse appears on large monitors around the room, our placemats are whisked away. While we eat (have you ever tried buttered popcorn soup?) we're treated to a montage of famous food-themed moments from Disney cartoons (think Lady and the Tramp sharing that strand of spaghetti). But the piece de resistance isn't dessert, though the warm chocolate lava cake certainly is yummy. It's the magic that has animated our rudimentary green stick drawings and brought them to life on the huge screens around the dining room. Your characters march and skip and dance with Mickey, Jiminy Cricket, Cinderella and Snow White.
Wow! Even the jaded 17 year olds I'm with are impressed. At the end of the show, each of our names -- as we signed them on our placemat -- is listed on the credits as "guest animator." We leave the dining room smiling, clutching our drawing that has been returned embossed with a gold seal proclaiming each of us an "Official Disney Animator."
There's the first onboard Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique where little girls were patiently waiting in their princess gowns to be transformed into princesses with special updos, including one with multicolored hair, sparkly nail polish, eyes shadow and face gems. One mom from Michigan noted her daughter never sits so patiently when getting a hair cut at home. If you'd rather be a pirate -- there is a special pirate night complete with fireworks -- the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique can also accommodate pirate makeovers for boys, as well as girls.
There are two new Broadway-caliber musical shows, including "Disney Wishes" about three best friends about to graduate from high school and a Muppets Adventure Game around the ship where you uncover clues by use of a dozen pieces of "Enchanted Art" that come to life as you stand in front of them. (In case you are wondering, the Enchanted Art looks like a painting but is really a framed LCD screen that "recognizes" a guest is present and activates the animation. What's even cooler is you will see something different another time you visit.
Kids gave thumbs up to the new AquaLab -- an 1,800-square-foot water play area on Deck 12 with pop jets geysers and bubblers.
There are scores of activities scheduled for the entire family to share (everything from family dance parties to first-run Disney movies and game shows (how well do you really know your mom and dad?) but a surprising array for adults, too.
No wonder Tom Staggs, the chairman of Disney Parks and Resorts, who was about to sail with his wife and three sons, says bookings on Disney Cruise Line are ahead of last year, despite consumer concerns in the wake of the Concordia tragedy and the fact that half of those who sail with Disney are first-time cruisers -- those most skittish about cruising now. Disney has made it easier for would-be cruisers to try their ships, too, with sailings this year from New York, Galveston, Los Angeles and Seattle.
Bronlyn Holland, 10, from Georgia was preening in front of the mirror at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, the sparkles glinting in her hair. She'd saved her money to pay for her $54.95 makeover herself. "I've always loved princesses," she explained. "You never are too old to be a princess!"
Certainly not aboard the Fantasy.


Prof. Trussell’s research program currently focuses on a number of important issues in evolutionary, community and ecosystem ecology. These interests are being explored in a number of systems including rocky intertidal shores, old fields, and freshwater amphibian communities. In a nutshell, Prof. Trussell thinks interesting questions are far more important than interesting systems but, of course, if one can have both then things are that much better! Much of his current work emphasizes the evolutionary and ecological significance of predation risk, with an emphasis on the evolution of phenotypic plasticity and inducible defenses, the ecological significance of nonconsumptive predator effects, and the influence of trait-mediated indirect interactions on community dynamic and ecosystem function. However, he also spends a good amount of time on other topics including the factors influencing invasive and exotic plant diversity in terrestrial systems, the influence of species diversity on ecosystem function, and the impact of climate change on natural food webs.
Prof. Trussell’s research is highly collaborative and involves some outstanding colleagues including Oswald Schmitz (Yale University), Barney Luttbeg (Oklahoma State University), Matthew Bracken (Northeastern University), Steve Vollmer (Northeastern University), Lee Smee (Texas A&M), Jeremy Long (San Diego State University) and Osamu Kishida (Hokkaido University).


Looks like my wife’s house in Auckland won’t be swamped with a tsunami after all. Good news all around.
Intelliworks, Inc., a vendor of CRM for higher education, has announced that it is launching a new version of its enterprise product specifically designed to meet the CRM needs of small to midsize schools as well as individual programs, and departments.
The new iRM Essentials product is being billed as providing the ability to set up and operate a full-fledged CRM system at a lower price point, in a shorter amount of time, and in a hosted environment.
According to Intelliworks officials, the key value proposition of the iRM Essentials product includes rapid deployment of CRM, speed to the point of value creation, a predictable budget via fixed-price acquisition, deployment, and support as well as reduced implementation complexity and hassle free hosting.
Advertised as having a zero footprint as a 100 percent web-based product, iRM Essentials provides such features as a common database with a 360° view, inbound and outbound communications, marketing and campaign automation and event management as well as program and marketing dashboards and other features.
Intelliworks builds and sells the ‘Intelliworks Relationship Manager (iRM)’ as its flagship CRM technology suite. iRM has two distinct product offerings -- iRM Essentials for the small to midsize organization, whether a school, a department or even a group of programs, and iRM Enterprise for larger university implementations that require greater performance, configuration, and scalability.
“Now more than ever, every type of institution in higher education can take advantage of what CRM provides as a technology platform,” said John Pearson, Database Architectural Manager, Clark University.
IKnowWare, a business management product billed by company officials as giving companies “all they need to know – anytime, anywhere,” has announced the “growth” of two Internet Service Providers and data centers to host iKnowWare for its growing small to medium business subscriber base.
With software as a service (SaaS), iKnowWare claims to now be “viable” for large and small businesses with its scalability to Savvis Corporations’ 31 data centers and iKnowWare’s newest ISPs provided by Layered Technologies of Dallas and LasVegas.Net.
“We understand SMBs use VARs because VARs understand businesses such as insurance, health care, logistics, and advertising companies – both large and small – and are able to use their domain knowledge to package a set of services into a one-stop product,” said Marty Mizrahi, president of LasVegas.NET.
IKnowWare says they’re building a “standard model for the integration of hundreds of different” SaaS products with one another. IKnowWare’s single sign-on and billing account for a significant part of the Value Added Reseller appeal, company officials believe.
The iKnowWare SaaS program provides IT and business services. If a VAR wants to offer iKnowWare as a SaaS business process management solution and use iKnowWare for CRM, iKnowWare can supply it with everything from SSO, to provisioning, billing, and support. iKnowWare is a Microsoft Partner and a Microsoft Integrated Software Vendor.
Saying ““CRM and ERP systems do not offer the right level of granularity to enable informed decision-making,” Bill Stevens, senior director of life sciences solutions at Cognos has announced the launch of two new Cognos products designed to help pharmaceutical companies “improve clinical trials management” and improve sample distribution across the sales force.
Using the multi-dimensional modeling and integrated workflow of Cognos 8 BI and the new Performance Blueprint, the product is marketed as helping organizations more accurately forecast, plan and manage trial expenses, recognize and correct under-performing clinical trials, consolidate all trials to facilitate enterprise-wide visibility and analysis and drive greater accountability and control at each stage of the trial.
By providing an automated and consistent vehicle to solicit input from all stakeholders – including finance, sample administrators, brand managers, and operations managers – the Blueprint helps organizations build optimal sample distribution strategies that take into account current market conditions, field level information, inventory plans, and other corporate goals.
Clinical Trial Forecasting and Sample Optimization are the first in a series of life sciences-specific solutions planned by Cognos.
It was on this day in 1626 that Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on what is now Manhattan Island and, as the famous story goes, bought the island from the Algonquin Indians for the equivalent of twenty-four dollars, (re)naming the settlement New Amsterdam.
But only the Dutch considered the transaction a “sale,” Indians had no concept of buying or selling land, they thought the Dutch were offering gifts for hunting rights. When the Dutch enforced boundaries against the Indians they were completely dumbfounded.
“The Dutch were drawn to Manhattan because of its extraordinary fertility and variety of wildlife. There were tall oaks, chestnuts, walnuts, maples, cedars and pines right up to the edge of the water. A vast array of flowers, including many roses, grew wild on the island, and the fragrance of flowers drifted far out to sea. Sailors coming into harbor said it was one of the sweetest-smelling shores they’d ever approached.
I know, not much has changed since.


The important questions: Are surprise parties ever a good idea?
Few good deeds are as misguided as throwing someone a surprise party.
One of my favourite episodes of Mad Men proves this very point. At the beginning of Season 5, Don Draper’s new wife Megan plans him a surprise 40th birthday bash. Despite being warned by his colleagues that Don hates unexpected parties, the spunky, 26-year-old insists, “People are always glad” to be surprised in the end. The night ends the way most surprise parties do: with a messy house, a stained carpet and a vicious argument. Needless to say, Don and Megan’s marriage doesn’t last.
I learned to fear surprise parties from personal experience. When I was eight, my fellow third-graders and I planned an end-of-year shindig to thank our teacher for her work teaching us fractions and administering time-outs. We believed the party would be more meaningful if we planned the whole thing behind her back, so we we invested our parents’ hard-earned money on streamers and cake. On the big day, however, it turned out our teacher’s husband had unexpectedly suffered a stroke the night before; Mrs. L. was in the mood for neither a surprise, nor a party.
Surprise parties are sort of like self-serve check-outs at the grocery store: they may seem like a good idea, but they seldom work outside the realm of theory. You may have the best intentions, imagining that your planning represents a grand gesture, a touching tribute to someone you love. However, instead of gratitude, you’re more likely to feel like the American military strategists who planned the Bay of Pigs operation.
That’s because surprise parties are a burden to the person being celebrated. If someone had really wanted a party, they probably would have planned one. Instead, these get-togethers are typically organized by “party pushers” who can’t fathom the idea of anyone preferring a night in over a night out.
Now, what about planning a surprise party for someone who actually enjoys parties? You might think, “Surely that’s acceptable!” But the answer’s still no. The only thing a true party person loves more than attending a party is planning one. Ordering invitations and creating playlists are some of a party person’s favourite pastimes. If they’re not planning a party, they don’t want one.
Besides all that, no rational person wants their loved ones to gather together to crouch in a dark room like creeps, all ready to jump up and shout “surprise” when you open the door. And even after all that organizing and all of the conspirators necessary to pull off the surprise, it’s unlikely that the planner has managed to keep it a secret from the guest of honour/victim of the party.
In the end, the most surprising thing about surprise parties is that people are still throwing them.


The Nobel prize won by Francis Crick in 1962 for his discovery of DNA was sold at auction on Thursday for more than $2m (£1.3m).
Heritage Auctions identified the buyer as Jack Wang, CEO of Biomobie, a regenerative medicine technology company located in Silicon Valley and Shanghai. The price surpassed the pre-sale estimate of $500,000 (£325,000).
On Wednesday, a letter Crick wrote to his son describing the discovery sold at Christie's for $6m (£4m). It was a record for a letter, eclipsing a record price for an Abraham Lincoln letter that went for $3.4m (£2.2m) in 2008.
Crick was awarded the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine along with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins. He spent the latter decades of his career doing brain research at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Califiornia. He died in 2004 at the age of 88.
The medal was among 11 artefacts Crick's heirs offered at the Heritage auction.
Wang said the medal and diploma will be used to encourage Biomobie scientists working on regenerating damaged human organs. He said the company's work could "launch a biomedical revolution like the discovery of the structure of DNA".
Crick's granddaughter Kindra said the family decided to sell the medal and other items because they had been in storage for 50 years, first locked up in a room of her grandfather's home and later in a safe deposit box.
They chose to sell them now because it "coincides with the 60th anniversary of the historic discovery and 50 years since he received the award", she said.
20% of the proceeds from the Heritage Auctions sale will go to the new Francis Crick Institute in London, a medical research institute slated to open in 2015. Half the proceeds from the Christie's sale will benefit the Salk Institute, the granddaughter said.
Crick's son Michael, who was in New York to attend the auctions with his daughter, said the family hoped the winning bids went to someone who "will give people the opportunity to look at them and that they will be an inspiration for future scientists".
The 1962 medal is struck in 23-karat gold. One side features the Genius of Medicine holding an open book in her lap, collecting water pouring out of a rock to quench the thirst of a sick girl beside her. It was offered together with his Nobel diploma, a handsome two-page vellum document that contains an original picture of a long-haired youth in a blue tunic holding the Rod of Asclepius.
Dallas-based Heritage Auctions said it is only the second time that a Nobel medal has been offered at a public auction. The first was Aage Niels Bohr's 1975 Nobel in Physics that sold in November for about $50,000, said Sandra Palomino, director of its historical manuscripts.
The late William Faulkner's 1950 Nobel prize for literature is heading for auction at Sotheby's in June.
Other items in the Heritage sale include Crick's endorsed Nobel Prize check in the amount of 85,739,88 Swedish krona, dated 10 December 1962, and a white lab coat complete with stains and wear.
Michael Crick said he has made "really good copies" of the letter that was sold on Wednesday at Christie's.
In the 19 March 1953 handwritten letter to his then-12-year-old son, Francis Crick describes his discovery of the structure of DNA as something "beautiful". The note tells his son how he and James Watson found the copying mechanism "by which life comes from life". It includes a simple sketch of DNA's double helix structure, which Crick concedes he can't draw very well.
The seven-page letter, written to his son in boarding school, concludes: "Read this carefully so that you will understand it. When you come home we will show you the model. Lots of love, Daddy."


IT’S so frustrating to watch that you want to rip your hair out. But Rob Sitch says ABC’s Utopia has become more reality than satire in season two.
From the creators of 'Frontline' and 'Hollowmen' comes a new comedy that takes a swipe at government.
UTOPIA may have won the Logie for best comedy this year, but co-creator and star Rob Sitch admits he’d lost faith in the project on more than one occasion.
A comedy about a bunch of bureaucrats at the Nation Building Authority who fail to achieve anything doesn’t necessarily scream “champagne comedy”.
When we spoke ahead of the program’s launch last year, Sitch sounded a little nervous about the public’s reaction to the show.
This is perhaps unsurprising: after years of creating comedy classics including Frontline and The Dish, the Working Dog team had hit a rough patch following a solid response to political satire The Hollowmen in 2008.
For a group that had rarely stumbled, facing failure was tough: first their $11 million feature Any Questions for Ben? bombed at the box office, then the Brian Nankervis-hosted biographical show Pictures of You was cancelled after one season. Comedy game show Have You Been Paying Attention? was a prime time ratings disaster on Ten, with some episodes last year attracting as few as 164,000 viewers.
So Utopia’s success meant a lot and seems to have turned around their fortunes. The show quickly became a comedy favourite and won the peer-voted Logie this year for Most Outstanding Comedy. And in a nice bit of serendipity, HYBPA has finally become a modest hit in the ratings.
One of the smartest Aussie comedies of recent years, Utopia combines the based-in-truth satire of government found in Yes Minister (albeit a much gentler version) with the comedy of the modern workplace found in The Office.
The program’s become synonymous with government waste and ineptitude — “it’s like an episode of Utopia” is a frequently heard refrain.
“It was really a delight that people got it in a way that we never thought they’d get it,” says Sitch, who plays the long suffering head of the NBA, Tony.
Season two sees the NBA failing their way to ever greater success.
“That was our rule: They officially don’t achieve anything but all along the way their political masters are even more appreciative of what a great job they’re doing,” he laughs.
Born in 1962, Sitch has been a familiar face on Aussie TV since 1986, when sketch comedy, The D-Generation, began on the ABC.
Honing their comedy skills on radio, the team moved into production in 1990, borrowing a camcorder earmarked as the major prize for Australia’s Funniest Home Videos to film the very first Shitscared sketch in the Channel 9 carpark.
Sitch, Jane Kennedy, Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and producer Michael Hirsh formed Working Dog in 1993 to make current affairs satire Frontline, and the team’s quality control over every aspect of production since has resulted in some of Australia’s best loved comedy, including The Castle, The Dish, The Panel and Thank God You’re Here.
Sitch and Kennedy married and have five children together — including Joshua Sitch, who’s currently appearing in ABC comedy Little Lunch.
How do they find the time for such a big family and Working Dog too? “Outsourcing,” he laughs.
Sitch is particularly thoughtful for a comedian, and you get the impression he’s constantly analysing the world from six different perspectives.
He constantly offers up considered observations about why things happen, or aspects of issues he’s noticed that no one else has. Sitch chuckles constantly, and at one point starts laughing so hard recalling a sketch from cult comedy series Big Train it takes him three attempts to finish his sentence.
A favoured phrase is: “the interesting thing about that”, and for Sitch, the most enjoyable aspect of making Utopia is the research phase, chatting to bureaucrats and insiders for material to base episodes on.
One of the great delights of the first season was watching the satire become reality: an episode sending up the myriad public announcements over decades that have never resulted in a Very Fast Train was broadcast just days before a new VFT report was launched.
A similar thing occurred as they shot this year’s season opener, about work on a multi-billion dollar project similar to the East West Link in Melbourne being delayed at a cost of millions simply so politicians can attend a publicity launch.
This infuriates the Spanish tunnelling team who are forced to sit on their hands during weeks of delays.


A scheme to financially support small-scale solar energy generation in Irish homes will be rolled out this summer, Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment Denis Naughten has announced.
The grants will be for roof-mounted solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. Initially, they will support “self consumption” of electricity in domestic properties – ie the energy generated will not be fed into the national grid.
However, it is envisaged the scheme will in time be rolled out to small businesses; community organisations, sports clubs and farmers – though a timetable for this has to be finalised.
“The reality is that bringing microgen onto a /[electricity supply]/ system designed for large generators is complicated. It impacts how we pay for the network, how we manage regulation and how we technically manage the system,” Mr Naughten told the 2018 Renewable Energy Summit this week.
Pat Smith, joint chairman of the Micro-Renewable Energy Federation (MREF), welcomed the announcement but called for the pilot scheme to be quickly extended to businesses and farmers.
MREF represents organisations and individuals seeking to generate their own micro-energy, and businesses seeking to develop, install and/or supply rooftop solar generation and battery storage in Ireland.
While Mr Naughten had re-stated the Government’s view that micro-generation was”complicated” to manage and would not be included in upcoming mainstream renewable energy support schemes, Mr Smith said a new EU directive would require member states to pay for electricity generated by small-scale producers.
Current options for “the renewable self-consumer” are being enhanced by the increased availability of smart technology that allows Solar PV not only to generate electricity but also to avail of battery storage (keeping electricity for use at a later time); to generate heat in a house and to recharge electric vehicles.
IFA Renewables spokesman Tom Short said, however, the pilot scheme was “mere words” that will only become reality when a robust budget backs it.
Previous micro-energy pilot schemes had proved the appetite and demand from farmers to step up and meet environmental obligations, he added.
There should not be a repeat of the situation where cheap equipment imported from non-EU countries is sold to farmers and homeowners without warranties, guarantees or acceptable standards,” Mr Short said.
“The financing of farm-scale and community renewable projects should be underpinned by a ring-fenced budget of €100 million from the additional charge paid by all homeowners by way of the public service obligation (PSO) levy. Renewable energy can no longer be the exclusive right of large-scale big developers,” he added.


Kendall Jenner and A$AP Rocky go jewellery shopping and look SO happy.
24. Kendall Jenner and A$AP Rocky go jewellery shopping and look SO happy.


Inasmuch as the floor was removed, it has not had the desired impact of creating headroom for banks to lend, according to Genghis’ senior research analyst Churchill Ogutu.
Genghis head of research Joy D’Souza adds that before the lifting of the floor, many banks had restructured their liabilities so that the portion that attracted interest was so little.
“We saw banks like KCB #ticker:KCB and Stanbic, which have a huge chunk of corporate clients, restructure how they categorise different deposits, which meant that what was termed as fixed deposits was only a small portion of the books,” said Ms D’Souza.


The TV talking head will return to his post at Talking Dead and Talking with Chris Hardwick, a little over a month after he was accused of sexual and emotional abuse by an ex-partner.
Chris Hardwick’s Hollywood exile has apparently come to an end. Just a few weeks after AMC paused its relationship with the omnipresent TV host after he was accused of sexual and emotional abuse by an ex-partner, it seems the network has had a change of heart. According to Entertainment Weekly, Hardwick will be reinstated as the host of Talking Dead, the Walking Dead-themed talk show he has hosted since 2011, and as the host of his series Talking with Chris Hardwick. His renewed tenure on Talking Dead will begin on August 12. It was previously reported that Yvette Nicole Brown would temporarily take over Hardwick’s position on that date, in addition to hosting a Walking Dead Season 9 preview special on August 5. Per E.W., she will still host the special, and will now be a guest on the August 12 Talking Dead episode.
Hardwick came under fire in June after his former girlfriend, actress and model Chloe Dykstra, accused him of sexual and emotional abuse in a lengthy personal essay on Medium. Though Dykstra did not name Hardwick in the essay, he later released a statement confirming that she was writing about him. In the statement, he simultaneously denied the allegations and claimed that Dykstra cheated on him. Actress and model Lydia Hearst, Hardwick’s wife, also released a statement in defense of her husband.
It is not yet clear when Talking with Chris Hardwick will return. Representatives for AMC and Hardwick have not yet responded to Vanity Fair’s request for comment.


Misreading biblical prophecy can have terrible consequences.
When large groups of Zionist Jews first immigrated to Palestine around the turn of the 20th century, many felt they were fulfilling the prophecies of Israel being restored to the Promised Land (for example, Isa. 14:1-3; Jer. 23:7-8; Ezek. 39:25-28).
They were wrong. In fact, the Jews are only one tribe (Judah) of the ancient nation of Israel. The fulfillment of those prophecies will include the other, “lost” tribes of Israel. In addition, they refer to a time after Jesus Christ’s Second Coming. So, many Jews were basing their modern “exodus” on an erroneous interpretation of Scripture.
Herbert Armstrong knew that and predicted, based on correct understanding of prophecy, that the mistake would cost the Jews dearly. He wrote this in the June 1948 Plain Truth, just days after the official establishment of the modern nation of Jews called “Israel”: “In God’s own due time the Jews are to be released from their persecutions, their harrowing trials, and be reestablished within Palestine in peace! But this is not that prophesied regathering of Israel!
“This is merely a blundering human effort to do for themselves, before the time, what they will have to wait for God to do for them.
Other prophecies do indicate that Judah would found a nation in this end time, but every one of them associates that little nation with violence—never peace! (see main article).
How poignant are Mr. Armstrong’s words, with half a century of history to look back on. The State of Israel has faced virtually uninterrupted conflict since its inception, flaring up in five full-out wars (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982). Finally, this past decade has seen a war-weary people slowly and painfully giving up piece after piece of hard-won land in exchange for promises of security—a security that will never come. That is, until God’s time.


A worker inspects solar panels at a solar Dunhuang, 950km (590 miles) northwest of Lanzhou, Gansu Province September 16, 2013. China is pumping investment into wind power, which is more cost-competitive than solar energy and partly able to compete with coal and gas. China is the world's biggest producer of CO2 emissions, but is also the world's leading generator of renewable electricity. Environmental issues will be under the spotlight during a working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will meet in Stockholm from September 23-26.
Contrary to what the plaintiffs in the case were claiming, there was no "flooding" of any sort, according to the solar industry association in response to the court ruling. What Chinese exporters did was merely provide U.S. solar installations builders with the necessary materials—namely, cells and modules. In fact, the SEIA said, the plaintiffs were trying to blame Chinese cell and module makers for their own failure to turn in a profit because their products were subpar, while the Chinese suppliers were simply filling a critical gap amid booming demand for utility-scale solar installations.


After eight months of research and discussions, the town of Bluffton and the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce are set to reveal a new branding of Bluffton campaign aimed at attracting tourists, new residents and businesses to the town.
Charleston-based marketing agency Rawle Murde will present the new brand to the public at noon Feb. 19 at Oscar Frazier Park. The chamber will then begin a four-month marketing campaign across the region. A more in-depth presentation will be held the same day at 9 a.m. at Town Hall.
Rawle Murde was selected to lead the branding project last year by a branding task force consisting of representatives from the town, chamber and other stakeholders in the community.
"We're very excited to be unveiling this and pleased with how the process went," said Susan Thomas, executive vice president of the chamber's visitor and convention bureau. "This was a thorough, transparent and collaborative effort, which is what all community branding projects should be."
The three-phase project, which consisted mainly of qualitative and quantitative research by Rawle Murde, the University of South Carolina, USC Beaufort and Clemson University, began in June.
The cost of the research project was $94,200, with $20,000 coming from a town contribution and the other $74,200 stemming from town and Beaufort County bed tax money. The chamber automatically receives 30 percent of Bluffton's state accommodations tax money annually, because it serves as the town's official marketer.
The first phase of the project, Thomas said, was qualitative-based. Rawle-Murde organized four public meetings and conducted more than 40 one-on-one interviews to gather input from community stakeholders on the importance of Bluffton.
"We wanted to know what comprises Bluffton - what its values and priorities are, where these stakeholders see Bluffton today and where they see it heading in the future, relative to visiting, working and living here," Thomas said.
The qualitative phase also had a social media component, in which Rawle Murde and Clemson scoured social media sites for discussion centering around Bluffton.
"That research found that a lot of key terms kept coming up," Thomas said. "Those terms included things like 'Southern,' 'friendly' and 'natural,' for example. The researchers found both some affirmations from the interviews and differences."
In the more quantitative second phase, researchers analyzed five segments: Business leaders, the business community at large, residents, visitors and regional economic development leaders. Thomas said more than 500 surveys among those groups were completed.
"These phases gave the research team the input needed to develop a creative platform for the Bluffton brand," Thomas said. "We want the brand to represent the community across all marketing components, be it residential, business or tourism."
Once the brand is revealed, the chamber will market it aggressively through television, radio, digital media and billboard platforms throughout the Southeast.
"We're going to be hitting cities like Columbia, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Charlotte and Greenville, etc.," Thomas said. "So we're excited about having that widespread exposure. We think we will have a brand that will speak to all those segments and be timeless in its message about the overall appeal of Bluffton."
Mayor Lisa Sulka said she was impressed with the preview of the branding she saw.
"It hits on everything we're trying to get out about Bluffton - not just to the local public, but regionally and even nationally as well," Sulka said. "It focuses on our May River, the economy and our lifestyle to help draw people and businesses here, and it communicates what makes our community unique."


A head injury can happen to anyone — from a slip on the ice or car crash. Head injuries caused by falls are especially common in children who are learning about the world, to walk, or ride a bike.
Most injuries are minor, resulting in bumps or bruises. A mild brain injury that causes a concussion is more serious and can temporarily affect the way the brain processes information and controls the body. For children who have young developing brains and small necks, this is especially true. Thankfully, severe traumatic brain injuries that render a person unconscious for hours and days are rare.
As a physician who treats children and youth with traumatic brain injuries of all severities, I can’t stress enough how important it is to recognize a concussion and realize that every child’s concussion experience is unique.
Evaluating a child’s recovery from concussion must be personalized. We can best assess recovery if we have good information about them before the concussion.
Baseline Testing: Evidence in adult concussion care has proven the effectiveness of using baseline testing in ensuring that high-performance athletes return to competition safely. Up until now, there has been little research into its effectiveness in pediatrics practice.
The most current guidelines from the Fourth International Consensus Conference on Concussion from Zurich in 2012 suggest baseline testing be done for elite athletes. When we need to accurately assess full recovery, we must know how they were functioning mentally and physically before they had the injury.
To offer the best care possible, many health care and sports programs now offer baseline testing to their athletes at the beginning of each season. This ensures there is data on hand that can be used by their doctor to assess their recovery if they experience a concussion.
The variety and quality of these tests are now being evaluated. Tests of balance, co-ordination, reaction time and basic grip strength are done along with tests looking at aspects of a person’s memory, attention, problem solving and visual processing.
These tests must be done in a supervised and controlled manner and be reliable.
People who give these baseline tests must ensure the results are an accurate reflection of the athlete’s skills and not fudged, so that if they have an injury during the season it would be easy for them to pass the repeat test to get back to play sooner than advisable.
In the case of children especially, testers must have age-appropriate guidelines to use.
Do all children need to have baseline testing? Absolutely not.
For those who are at high risk of sustaining a concussion in competition, baseline testing makes a compelling argument, and the investment of time and money can be helpful in guiding clinical “return to learn and play” decisions.
Seek immediate medical attention if your child has experienced a significant injury.
If a concussion is diagnosed, then manage the symptoms as directed by your health-care professional.
Return to school, work and play gradually after approval is given. Share information about the injury with your teacher, school administrator and coaches. School boards in Ontario have each developed a concussion recovery protocol to help students properly return to learn and to play.
Once the initial phase of recovery has been completed, gradually increase activity levels to improve strength, endurance and confidence.
Recovery times can vary from days to weeks, and sometimes months. Allowing your child to do too much too soon can prolong this time.
To guide parents and kids in managing a concussion, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital recently developed a concussion handbook offering practical advice.


The third floor of Voute Hall offers a combination of four-person apartments and large common areas for residents committed to speaking the same target language, either French or Spanish. Like other spaces on campus, each apartment has two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and a bathroom.
La Casa Hispanica enables approximately 20 students interested in the Spanish language and culture to live together, and provides residents with the close personal guidance of a native-speaking graduate student. Laura Mir, the graduate student resident for La Casa Hispanica and GMCAS ’16, lives in one of the apartments on the floor and, in coordination with the undergraduate resident assistant, facilitates the planning and execution of activities designed to improve students’ language skills, enrich their knowledge of the Spanish culture, and generally contribute to their intellectual and personal development. Mir is responsible for the linguistic and intellectual functions of the program, and as such is available to the students as needed.
La Casa Hispanica’s mission statement is: learning a language through the culture. Residents commit to speaking Spanish on the floor and take an active part in the planning and execution of activities, many of which they design themselves. Students take an active role in house events throughout the year, planning at least one occasion and attending at least two each month.
Various events are held in the common space of the floor, such as traditional Spanish meals, as well as in other locations on and off campus for concerts, readings, lectures, film screenings, and discussions in collaboration with classes in the romance languages and literature department.
Mir tries to integrate various department programs into La Casa’s schedule because she wants the residents to interact with other Spanish-speaking people on campus, both students and faculty.
Students are able to apply for residence in Voute Hall in the spring of their freshman, sophomore, or junior years. The application is available on the Boston College housing website and it is suggested that applicants have at least moderate proficiency in Spanish. While native speakers are considered for the program, preference is given to non-native speakers. Interested candidates are strongly encouraged to participate in La Casa’s activities open to the public during the year before they apply. In order to complete their application, students must be interviewed by the graduate fellow-in-residence, which is Mir for La Casa Hispanica, and final selection is made before the start of the routine housing lottery.
According to Mir, La Casa Hispanica is generally composed of two types of students—native speakers who do not want to lose their ability to converse in the language and want to feel more involved in the Latin American community at BC—and intermediate level Spanish students who are interested in furthering their studies and may want to live abroad in the future. “Normally I prefer juniors and seniors because they are more integrated in the school and they are more set up and Voute is mostly senior housing,” Mir said.
Mir said the feedback she has received from students is that they really like La Casa because it feels like a family. It’s tricky because usually in their third or fourth year students live with their friends and in La Casa, students have to live with somebody who wants to be a part of this community, she said. However, Mir encourages students to apply for this unique opportunity because, in her experience, it’s a very accepting and nurturing atmosphere.


Earlier this year engineer Dr Craig Labovitz testified before the US House of Representatives judiciary subcommittee on regulatory reform, commercial and antitrust law. Labovitz is co-founder and chief executive of Deepfield, an outfit that sells software to enable companies to compile detailed analytics on traffic within their computer networks. The hearing was on the proposed merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable and the impact it was likely to have on competition in the video and broadband market. In the landscape of dysfunctional, viciously partisan US politics, this hearing was the equivalent of rustling in the undergrowth, and yet in the course of his testimony Labovitz said something that laid bare the new realities of our networked world.
To those of us who were accustomed to thinking of the internet as a glorious, distributed, anarchic, many-to-many communication network in which anyone could become a global publisher, corporate gatekeepers had lost their power and peer-to-peer sharing was becoming the liberating norm, Labovitz’s brusque summary comes as a rude shock. Why? Because what he was really saying is that the internet is well on its way to being captured by giant corporations – just as the Columbia law professor Tim Wu speculated it might be in The Master Switch, his magisterial history of 20th-century communications technologies.
In that book, Wu recounted the history of telephone, movie, radio and TV technologies in the US. All of them had started out as creative, anarchic, open and innovative technologies but over time each had been captured by corporate interests. In some cases (eg the telephone) this happened with the co-operation of the state, but in most cases it happened because visionary entrepreneurs offered consumers propositions that they found irresistible. But the result was always the same: corporate capture of the technology and the medium. And the most insidious thing, Wu wrote, was that this process of closure doesn’t involve any kind of authoritarian takeover. It comes, not as a bitter pill, but as a “sweet pill, as a tabloid, easy to swallow”. Most of the corporate masters of 20th-century media delivered a consumer product that was better than what went before – which is what consumers went for and what led these industries towards closure.
At the end of his book, Wu posed the 64-trillion-dollar question: would the internet also fall victim to this cycle? For years, many of us thought that it wouldn’t: it was too decentralised, too empowering of ordinary people, too anarchic and creative to succumb to that kind of control.
Labovitz’s testimony suggests that we were wrong. We believed that the internet was, in the words of Elisabeth Murdoch, a “sit-up, not a lean-back” medium. It would supplant the old media ecosystem in which powerful corporations decided what content would be produced and then beamed that content down channels that they controlled to essentially passive consumers. That was the world embodied by the couch potato, a world in which the phrase “user-generated content” was an oxymoron.
What we failed to appreciate was the passivity of most of humanity and its inexhaustible appetite for consumption, entertainment and “infotainment”. The spread of high-speed broadband connections did not liberate human creativity but instead created Couch Potato 2.0, a creature that sees the internet mostly as zillion-channel TV. In that sense, it’s no accident that the corporations which now dominate network traffic are outfits like Google and Netflix, beaming YouTube and movies to you in the comfort of your own settee.
Of course the internet of our (utopian) dreams hasn’t ceased to exist. It’s just that it’s becoming a minority sport. You can still create your own website, or start a blog, become a global publisher – and join the long tail of largely unnoticed content, while stuff from Netflix et al swamps the net. You can still make LOLcat videos and screen them via YouTube, Vine or Vimeo; tweet your views and post your status updates to your heart’s content. But you can only do so courtesy of the giant corporations that own and control the platforms on which this user-generated content appears and which – as Labovitz’s testimony shows – are reconfiguring the network for their purposes rather than ours. Sad, isn’t it? We had our chance, and we blew it.