Record-breaking wind production in Belgium – 4C Offshore

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Belgium experienced recordbreaking wind energy production in February 2020 with increased capacitycoming online in the North Sea. According to the Belgian Offshore Platform(BOP), 804 GWh was produced which corresponds to the annual consumptionof 230,000 households.

The installed capacity of offshore wind in North Sea increased this monthby 60 MW, due to the commissioning of the first wind turbines at the Northwester2 offshorewind farm. Overall capacity increased from 1556 to 1616 MW. Compared toFebruary 2019, installed capacity increased by 430 MW, or 36.5%. This included370 MW from Northerand 60 MW for Northwester2.

Wind conditions also lent a hand in increasing production. The averagecapacity factor in February 2020 was 74% compared to the previous recordset at 70% in December 2015. Over the last five years, the average capacityfactor for February was 53%. BOP stated that with a capacity factor of53%, a production of 570 GWh can be expected production in Februarywas therefore approximately 40% higher this year than expected accordingto the five-year average.

Belgium plans to have installed 2.3 GW of offshore wind power by the endof 2020 at is on track to meet this target with the construction of theNorthwester2, Mermaidand Seastarprojects underway. Tenders for additional capacity are expected to be launchedfrom 2023.

The BOP is a non-profit association of investors and owners of wind farmsin the Belgian part of the North Sea. It was founded in 2011 to advocatethe development of wind energy in the Belgian waters of the North Sea.

For more information on offshore windfarms worldwide, clickhere.

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Record-breaking wind production in Belgium - 4C Offshore

Netherlands to fund program to train offshore… – Taiwan News

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TAIPEI (Taiwan News) The Netherlands will fund a program to train Taiwanese in the field of offshore wind energy, a rapidly developing industry on the island that is part of the governments effort to promote green energy.

More than 30 Dutch enterprises have been drawn to Taiwan towards the offshore wind farms to be developed in the coming decades, but they all face [a] shortage of talents, said Guy Wittich, representative of the Netherlands Trade and Investment Office in Taiwan, on Monday (Mar. 2) at the programs kick-off ceremony in Taipei.

Although some Dutch companies decided to cancel their trips to Taiwan this time over concerns of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), our determination to help Taiwan cultivate talents is not deterred, with the support from companies such as Van Oord, Boskalis, Damen, and IHC IQIP, he added.

A total of 20 seed talents in the initial stage of the program will be trained in maritime engineering, data analysis, and the operation and maintenance of offshore wind farms. The program is funded by the Dutch government and designed by Dutch universities and institutes, such as the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, Delft University of Technology, and water research institute Deltares, in partnership with their Taiwanese counterparts.

Since signing a memorandum of understanding on energy innovation in September 2015, Taiwan and the Netherlands have exchanged several high-level official visits and held a number of bilateral meetings, remarked Weng Su-chen (), secretary-general of the Ministry of Economic Affairs' Bureau of Energy. Talent incubation is the most crucial area of cooperation between the two countries as Taiwan strives to develop its offshore energy, she said.

This program of Train the Trainers will include courses such as seabed analysis, turbine design, installation of offshore wind turbines, and operation and maintenance, said Chiang Mao-Hsiung (), director of National Taiwan Universitys Energy Research Center. We welcome all trainers from academia and the businesses sector to establish a platform with us, said Chiang, who will lead the program.

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Netherlands to fund program to train offshore... - Taiwan News

The Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy but these local troops are unscathed – Williamsburg Yorktown Daily

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Boy Scouts of America Issue June 30, 1950 (Wikimedia Commons)

Although with the Boy Scouts of America recently said theyre filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the organization made it known in a recent news release that the move to create a Victims Compensation Trust will not affect troops in local communities.

Local councils, which provide programming, financial, facility and administrative support to Scouting units in their communities, have not filed for bankruptcy. They are legally separate, distinct and financially independent from the national organization, according to the news release.

The Boy Scouts of America Troop 94 (Yorktown) and BSA Troop 103 (Williamsburg) did not immediately respond to comment for this story.

In Hampton, Justin Stewart, committee chairman for Cub Scout Pack 151, said the same about the local councils financial independence: We really have control over whats going on in our pack.

If we dont fundraise, if we dont do things inside of our pack, our program lacks in that aspect, he said. So when you talk about in the sense of the BSA and theres going to be a flow down of all this stuff were a speck on the map.

Stewarts Cub Scout pack is one of many groups in the regional Hampton and Newport News areas designated as the Monitor-Merrimac district. And the district is one of five spanning from Gloucester and Mathews County to Suffolk and even Brunswick County, encompassed by The Colonial Virginia Council.

Filing for bankruptcy comes after more than 300 men sued the Boy Scouts of America with claims they were sexually assaulted while they were scouts in the organization. In an open letter to victims, BSA National Chairman Jim Turley encouraged others to come forward and file claims.

Turley also expressed regret on BSAs policies, saying measures werent always in place or werent always enough.

Safety policies like implementing mandatory background checks for volunteers and staff in the organization have come a long way as knowledge on sexual abuse prevention has advanced, Turley wrote.

On a national level, the BSA now requires Youth Protection trainingfor staff every two years though Stewart said locally its required annually, noting in his five years with the program, he hasnt personally heard any accounts of sexual abuse in local troops.

[Youth Protection] is training that everybody has to go through as a leader. It goes over [topics like] grooming, bullying, the requirement for there to always be two adults, and it talks about the boys always having to be together in a buddy system, he said.

Stewart said before his pack takes the summer off, theyll raise funds for awards or gifts like compasses, pocket knives, and survival packs scouts can take with them when they start in the next level of the organization.

Nani Cawthray, committee chairwoman for Pack II in Newport News,, said the group was not affected, adding most of the support comes from the district or council level.

While the cub master did notify parents of the bankruptcy, she said the pack is still moving forward with their programming, including its summer camps.

Scouting has really worked hard to improve their policies to make sure everyone is protected and safe, she said, adding leaders are trained and scouts have youth protection with families. Scouts and leaders are never alone together.

Other troops and packs did not immediately respond for comment. Some were not interested in commenting or referred a WYDaily to the Boys Scouts of America Colonial Virginia Council in Newport News.

Clinton Hammett, scout executive and CEO of the Boys Scouts of America Colonial Virginia Council, said the local Boy Scout councils are legally and financially separate from the national organization, which is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Local programs will still continue to go on, he said. Were excited about scouting and to continue our programming.

The Saturday after the national organizations announcement, there was a record turnout of more than 500 scouts and leaders at the Council Camporee Lumberjack event at Endview Plantation, Hammett said.

Were certainly here to stay and are excited about the future of scouting, he said. We certainly know scouting is safer today than it ever was.

WYDaily multimedia reporters Lucretia Cunningham, Julia Marsigliano and Alexa Doiron contributed to this story.

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The Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy but these local troops are unscathed - Williamsburg Yorktown Daily

Bankruptcy Basics: When Should You File for Bankruptcy …

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Bankruptcy is a scary proposition. The word "bankruptcy" itself sounds so ominous. The media bombards us with nightmare tales of seemingly solid business giants going from bedrock to bankrupt. The list of the bankrupt runs the spectrum from personal to corporate bringing together the likes of Donald Trump with Enron.

And gossip columns never tire of dishing on the latest celebrity inches from bankruptcy whether it's Gary Coleman or Mike Tyson having to part with his pet tigers. You might even fear that you're a few steps from going under. After all, we live in an economy in which credit card offers clutter our mailboxes. And living in debt is an accepted norm. But, just how can you tell when it's time to throw in the towel and declare bankruptcy?

Here are a few questions to help you assess your financial danger zone:

Assess Your Situation

If you answered yes to two or more of the questions above, you at least want to give your financial situation a little more thought. Simply put, bankruptcy is when you owe more than you can afford to pay.

To determine where you are financially, inventory all of your liquid assets. Don't forget to include retirement funds, stocks, bonds, real estate, vehicles, college savings accounts, and other non-bank account funds. Add up a rough estimate for each item.

Then, collect and add up your bills and credit statements. If the value of your assets is less than the amount of debt you owe, declaring bankruptcy may be one way out of a sticky financial situation. However, bankruptcy shouldn't be approached casually. After all, it's not a simple, easy cure-all for out-of-control debt.

How do I Declare Bankruptcy?

You can go bankrupt in one of two main ways. The more common route is to voluntarily file for bankruptcy. The second way is for creditors to ask the court to order a person bankrupt.

There are several ways to file bankruptcy, each with pros and cons. You may want to consult a lawyer before proceeding so you can figure out the best fit for your circumstances.

Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

There are lots of reasons people file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. You're probably not the only one, whatever your reason is. Some common reasons for filing for bankruptcy are unemployment, large medical expenses, seriously overextended credit, and marital problems. Chapter 7 is sometimes referred to as a "straight bankruptcy." A Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidates your assets to pay off as much of your debt as possible. The cash from your assets is distributed to creditors like banks and credit card companies.

Within four months, you will receive a notice of discharge. The record of your bankruptcy will stay on your credit report for ten years. But even that doesn't have to mean doom. Lots of Chapter 7 filers have bought homes with recent bankruptcies on their record. For many people, Chapter 7 offers a quick, fresh start.

But Chapter 7 bankruptcies aren't right for everyone. Almost all assets are taken and sold to repay creditors. If a debtor owns a company, a family home, or any other personal assets which he or she wants to keep, Chapter 7 may not be the best option.

Chapter 13 Bankruptcy

For people who have property they want to keep, filing a Chapter 13 bankruptcy may be the better choice.

A Chapter 13 bankruptcy is also known as a reorganization bankruptcy. Chapter13 enables people to pay off their debts over a period of three to five years. For individuals who have consistent, predictable annual income, Chapter 13 offers a grace period. Any debts remaining at the end of the grace period are discharged.

Once the bankruptcy is approved by the court, creditors must stop contacting the debtor. Bankrupt individuals may then continue working and paying off their debts over the coming years, and still keep their property and possessions.

Declaring Bankruptcy: Scary, But Sometimes Necessary

It can be hard to admit you need help getting out of debt, or that you can't do it alone. But that's why our government has bankruptcy laws to protect not only the creditors, but you! If you have a nerve-racking debt-load, it may be time to face financial facts. Perhaps you've been trying to ignore the ringing phone and the pile of unpaid bills that won't go away.

However, you could be doing yourself a disservice by not filing for bankruptcy. With a good lawyer and the right information, filing bankruptcy could give you the financial footing you need to get a fresh start. In other words, throwing in the towel may just be the beginning you need.

If you're considering bankruptcy, it's important to understand your options. Receive a free bankruptcy evaluation from a bankruptcy attorney through LegalZoom and take the first step toward a financial fresh start.

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Hong Kong recognises administrators appointed under the Enterprise Bankruptcy Act of the Peoples Republic of China – JD Supra

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On 15 January 2020, we published a newsflash regarding the decision of the Hong Kong Court of First Instance dated 13 January 2020 (Decision) on the recognition of the appointment of bankruptcy administrators of CEFC Shanghai International Group Limited (Company) in the mainland of the People's Republic of China (Mainland). This was the first and so far only application in Hong Kong made by Mainland administrators for recognition of their appointment and judicial assistance at common law.

This follow-up client bulletin seeks to analyse the Decision in greater depth and to put into context not only its immediate significance but also its importance in furthering judicial co-operation between the Hong Kong and Mainland courts in the granting of reciprocal recognition of insolvency office holders appointed under the different insolvency regimes.

The Company is incorporated in the Mainland, an investment holding company, and part of a conglomerate whose business includes capital financing, petroleum refining and infrastructure. The Company went into insolvent liquidation in the Mainland and bankruptcy administrators (Administrators) were appointed by the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate Peoples Court (Shanghai Court) on 24 November 2019.

The Companys assets included a HK$7.2 billion claim (HK Receivable) against its Hong Kong subsidiary. The Administrators discovered that one of the Companys creditors had obtained a default judgment against the Company and was seeking to enforce it against the HK Receivable by obtaining a garnishee order absolute from the Hong Kong court (Court) after a garnishee order nisi was obtained in August 2019.

The Administrators therefore made an urgent application, supported by a letter of request issued by the Shanghai Court, to the Court for recognition and assistance in Hong Kong. An order of recognition and assistance (Recognition Order) was made by the Court on 18 December 2019 which included the standard stay on proceedings against the Company in Hong Kong and thus preserved the status quo.

The Decision provides:

In the Decision, the Court applied two well-settled criteria, both of which must be satisfied before recognition and assistance will be granted in Hong Kong:

If these criteria are satisfied, the Court may recognise insolvency proceedings opened, including in a civil law jurisdiction such as the Mainland[3].

However, the powers that can be granted to foreign office holders under the common law power of assistance are subject to the three, equally well-settled, limits[4]:

Accordingly, the ability under common law to grant assistance applies only to the extent that (a) the foreign insolvency regime is similar to the insolvency regime in Hong Kong, and (b) in granting any specific power sought, a substantially similar power is available in both regimes[5].

The Court found that the Mainland insolvency regime fulfilled the criteria for recognition and assistance set out above. In particular the Court found that:

a. Article 25 of the EBL which sets out the Administrators powers and duties, which correspond to a Hong Kong liquidators powers and duties;

b. Article 19 of the EBL which imposes a stay, corresponding to the Hong Kong liquidation stay; and

c. Article 113 of the EBL which sets out the requirement of pari passu distribution of the debtors assets, which is consistent with the Hong Kong insolvency regime.

The Court noted that it was not a requirement under common law principles that recognition and assistance be reciprocal. Rather, the principle behind recognising and assisting a foreign liquidation is to make it possible for there to be one bankruptcy. Therefore, in addition to the requirement for the foreign jurisdiction to operate an insolvency regime which is similar to the Hong Kong insolvency regime, that foreign jurisdiction must also, if faced with the insolvency of a company with assets and creditors in other jurisdictions, aim to promote one bankruptcy with the aim of avoiding the need for separate liquidations in multiple jurisdictions.

It was noted in the Decision that the issue of whether the Mainland insolvency regime promotes one bankruptcy in a transnational context is uncertain given the lack of any statutory provision of law or decision on point of the Supreme Peoples Court. However, the Court expressly noted that the EBL clearly envisages the possibility of recognising foreign liquidators given the extent to which transnational business is conducted by Mainland businesses.

The key effect of the Recognition Order is that administrators of companies in insolvent liquidation in the Mainland can now apply to have the Mainland insolvency moratorium extended to Hong Kong and to exercise their investigative powers in Hong Kong.

But of particular note is that, while these powers include requests for document production and information from third parties, if the Recognition Order is read together with the decisions of The Joint Provisional Liquidators of China Lumena New Materials Corp (In Provisional Liquidation)[6] and Bay Capital Asia Fund, LP v DBS Bank (Hong Kong) Ltd[7], it would now seem that Mainland administrators (like foreign insolvency office holders generally) have the power to request documents and information in Hong Kong without the need for a recognition order from the Court. This is obviously an important tool for Mainland administrators to conduct cross-border investigation in Hong Kong.

The Recognition Order is also of effect to enable the Administrators to proceed to locate, protect, secure and take control of all assets and property within Hong Kong to which the Company is, or appears to be, entitled. But one unsettled question is the extent to which, given that the priority for distributions under the Mainland insolvency regime is different from that in Hong Kong, an administrator appointed in the Mainland will be entitled to remit the proceeds of assets realised in Hong Kong to the Mainland for distribution in accordance with the Mainland insolvency regime (see Lord Hoffmans decision in Re HIH Casualty & General Insurance Ltd[8] to allow certain remittance of proceeds of assets realised in Hong Kong to the Mainland notwithstanding these differences).

While there are on-going discussions between the Hong Kong Government and the Central Government on mutual recognition and assistance in insolvency-related proceedings, no formal arrangement has as yet been entered into between Hong Kong and the Mainland.

Even so, Article 5 of the EBL provides for the possibility of foreign insolvency proceedings being recognised in the Mainland in accordance with the principle of reciprocity, and it is on this point that the Decision has implications beyond its facts.

The importance of the Decision in this context should not be underestimated: the Hong Kong Court has demonstrated its commitment to the principle and has, in effect, invited the Mainland Courts to respond in kind. It would now seem simply a matter of time before an application, supported by a letter of request, is made to the Mainland courts for an order granting recognition of and assistance to Hong Kong liquidators of a Hong Kong company.

It is difficult to predict whether and to what extent the Mainland courts will respond to the Decision and modify their approach towards recognition of a Hong Kong insolvency process. Whilst it may still be unlikely for Hong Kong insolvency office holders to be granted unfettered access to assets located in the Mainland, it may at least become possible for them to be recognised as having standing to request documents and information from third parties, apply for a Hong Kong moratorium to be extended to the Mainland, or perhaps even to commence a Mainland bankruptcy in the name of the company being wound up in Hong Kong.

This decision is a long awaited one and a milestone in the administration in Hong Kong of cross border insolvencies and shows that the Hong Kong Court is committed to applying the doctrine of modified universalism and assisting insolvency practitioners appointed in foreign jurisdictions.

Hong Kong has for over 20 years been looking to update its laws on insolvency and it is nothing short of ground breaking that, without any statutory basis, the Hong Kong Court has, through incremental developments in jurisprudence, reached a position where there is in Hong Kong a simple and robust process for recognising foreign insolvency processes, which has now been extended to Mainland insolvencies and opened the door for reciprocal recognition. Something for which, it almost goes without saying, considerable credit should be given to the present Hong Kong Companys Judge, the Honourable Mr Justice Harris.

For insolvency practitioners, possibility of mutual recognition of insolvency processes between Hong Kong and the Mainland offers a number of interesting options for creditors in terms of choice of insolvency regime and access to possibly otherwise remote lines of recourse, but also for the very same reasons, a number of new challenges in credit analysis, all of which are, as ever, amenable to creative solutions.

Allen & Overy is advising a major creditor of Shanghai Huaxin Group (Hong Kong) Limited, the Hong Kong subsidiary of the Company which was the catalyst for the application for recognition being made and which is now in liquidation in Hong Kong.

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Hong Kong recognises administrators appointed under the Enterprise Bankruptcy Act of the Peoples Republic of China - JD Supra

How two years of changes in dairy led to two major bankruptcies – Food Dive

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Within two months, two of the largest milk processors in the U.S. filed for bankruptcy. First came Dean Foods, which made the announcement in November. By January, Borden Dairy was doing the same. So what happened?

For at least two years, the dairy giants have increasingly struggled with competition from milk alternatives, innovative startups and deeply discounted private label dairy.

Its going to take some disruptors to wake up some of the folks who havent made those decisions to invest in the future. If youre not investing in the category today, youre going to have a major challenge to survive, Paul Ziemnisky, EVP of global innovation partnerships at Dairy Management Inc., told Food Dive.

Consumer preferences shifted, but Borden and Dean didnt change enough, leaving them in dire financial straits and facing significant debt. Dean Foods net income dropped from $61.6 million in 2017 to a loss of $327.4 million last year. And while Borden once had a presence in all 50 states, as of last summer, it offered only 35 products in parts of the Midwest, South and Southeastern U.S.

The company continues to be impacted by the rising cost of raw milk and market challenges facing the dairy industry, Bordens CEO Tony Sarsam said in a statement when it filed for bankruptcy. These challenges have contributed to making our current level of debt unsustainable.

Although for Dean and Borden, the troubles date back further than just 24 months, the issues have accelerated to a breaking point.

Eric Snyder, partner at law firm Wilk Auslander and chairman of the firms bankruptcy department, told Food Dive that for both Borden and Dean, debt was building as people were drinking less traditional milk. He said that dairy processing facilities are also extremely cost intensive, and it can be very difficult to scale down businesses like these.

Its just too much debt on the books for businesses that can no longer support it, he said.

For decades, milk consumption has been declining while new innovations and plant-based options have taken away some consumers who once turned to the popular drink. Non-dairy milk sales in the U.S. increased 61% from 2013 to 2017, while overall sales of dairy milk dropped 15% from about $18.9 billion in 2012 to $16.12 billion in 2017, according to Mintel.

Despite our best efforts to make our business more agile and cost-efficient, we continue to be impacted by a challenging operating environment marked by continuing declines in consumer milk consumption, Dean Foods CEO Eric Beringause said in a statement when the bankruptcy filing was announced.

Although the economy is strong, certain industries have seen increased bankruptcies because of changing consumer demands, Snyder said.

Its a function of the times, its a function of the cause and its a function of the debt. So it doesnt look good for dairy just like it doesnt look good for coal and it doesnt look good for retail, Snyder said. There are certain businesses that just dont have bright futures and we know what they are.

Snyder said that about 90% of bankruptcies end in a sale today.

In February, Dairy Farmers of America agreed to buy a substantial portion of Dean Foods business for $425 million. If the deal is approved by the bankruptcy court and the U.S. Department of Justice, DFA will acquire 44 of the companys fluid and frozen facilities, but could still face the same issues that have weighed down Dean for years.

Kenneth Rosen, a partner focused on bankruptcy and financial reorganization at Lowenstein Sandler, previously told Food Dive that Dean is facing a lot of problems that likely wont just be resolved with a change in ownership.

Ziemnisky, however, believes there is a bright future for dairy when looking at the growing international market and the players that are adapting, finding innovative ways to produce and sell the staple beverage.

New Zealands a2 Milks products, for example, lack a protein that can cause stomach discomfort, and more than doubled its retail count in 2018. Meanwhile, Fairlife, a joint venture with Coca-Cola, produces ultra-filtered milk, a higher-protein and lower-lactose product that has seen substantial growth.

Retailers themselves are launching their own products into the space.

In 2018, Walmart held a grand opening for its first U.S. food production facility, a milk processing plant that produces whole, skim and chocolate milk under its own Great Value brand a move that led Dean to cancel its contracts with more than 100 dairy operations across eight states. Kroger and Albertsons have also introduced private label lines.

So retailers today, if youre a mainstream product and youre not bringing innovation in the market, theyre asking what are you going to do to drive a category, Ziemnisky said.

Below is a compilation of some of the major events that happened over the last two years, offering the big picture of how Borden and Dean got here and whats next for the industry.

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How two years of changes in dairy led to two major bankruptcies - Food Dive

Restaurant bankruptcies are increasing, and more could be on the way – Restaurant Business Online

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Photograph courtesy of Steak 'n Shake

This has been a good year for bankruptcy attorneysat least those that work with the restaurant business.

Five restaurant operating companies withnine chains in all have sought out debt protection so far in 2020, following this weeks filing by Logans Roadhouse and Old Chicago owner CraftWorks Holdings. Go back to November, and there have been seven bankruptcies accounting for13 restaurant chains. Thats not including the filing by big Sonic Drive-In franchisee SD Holdings.

Others are likely coming, too. According to a report Wednesday by Fitch Ratings, burger chains Checkers & Rallys and Steak 'n Shake are among the names facing a greater risk of a Chapter 11 filing.

In addition, big Pizza Hut and Wendys franchisee NPC International is considering a bankruptcy filing.

In its report, Fitch cited reasons for the industrys challenges that will surprise nobody reading this post: along period of declining sales due to heightened competition, shifting consumer tastes, rising competition from food delivery options and the inability to maintain brand relevancy, along with higher labor costs due to increasing minimum wages.

Its not just the companies that have filed for bankruptcy that are feeling those effects. Numerous restaurant chains have struggled, period, Fitch noted, from large concepts such asSubway, which has closed about 8% of its units over the past two years, toOCharleys, TGI Fridays and Fuddruckers, among others. These restaurants have closed units and overhauled operations.

Imagine what might happen in a recession.

The challenges reflect an operating environment thats simply unfriendly to weaker competitors with a lot of debt, costly leases or both.

There are a lot of competitors: Restaurant companies have been adding locations at a rate exceeding population growth every year since the end of the recession. Even with a growing economy, that has left consumers picking winners and losers. So we get situations likePopeyesLouisiana Kitchen generating 40% same-store sales growth while Krystal ends up filing for bankruptcy.

Despite a strong economy and modest same-restaurant sales growth in 2019, traffic trends remain weak, a dynamic that is expected to persist in 2020, Fitch wrote in its report. It noted that shifts in consumer preferences, as baby boomers eat out less and younger Gen Z and millennial consumers eat out more, is making more restaurant chains irrelevant.

Retail shifts are also influencing behavior, because consumers arent shopping all that much.

There are other factors, too. Labor represents about a third of many operators costs, and higher minimum wagescoupled with intense demand for workers that itself is driving up wagesare wreaking havoc for many restaurant operating companies. Fitch noted that 20 states raised their minimum wage this year and 32 states now have minimums that exceed the federal level.

Lease costs are also causing problems. With so many restaurant chains vying for the same type of location, rents have increased, adding additional costs to operators shrinking bottom line.

All of which means we can expect more restaurants to go under, particularly large-scale operators likeNPC that have spent much of the past decade amassing restaurants, remodel obligations, development commitments and the debt needed to do all that.

Checkers & Rallys recently named Frances Allen CEO, takingover for longtime CEO Rick Silva. The company has struggled of late with weak sales and profits.

Steak 'n Shake is a more interesting case. The company is throwing a Hail Mary at its problems this year by planning to convert most of 107 closed units tocounter servicerather than a full-service model.

The burger chain has $181.5 million outstanding in a loan that comes due in more than a year. Yet parent company Biglari Holdings does not guarantee that debt.

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Restaurant bankruptcies are increasing, and more could be on the way - Restaurant Business Online

Theres a better way out of the PG&E bankruptcy – San Francisco Chronicle

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Pacific Gas and Electric Co.s lawyers recently submitted a revised plan to take the company out of bankruptcy, masterfully sprinkling billions among the companys most powerful stakeholders hedge funds, shareholders and bondholders along with perhaps $1 billion in fees to consultants, banks and, yes, attorneys. All will cheer the companys procession out of bankruptcy court and over to the California Public Utilities Commission, again and again, for rate hikes.

But 73,000 wildfire victims and 16 million California ratepayers should not be cheering.

The wildfire victims deserve better. The utility will pay those claimants from a $13.5 billion fund financed half in cash and half in stock PG&E stock. Thats right: The current plan tethers the victims financial futures to the performance of the company that burned down their homes. It also saddles those families with the risk of any future wildfires started by PG&Es failing equipment. Thats chutzpah.

If the victims are worried about uncertain PG&E stock valuations, they should be. In the 23-month span over which the companys wires ignited 18 wildfires killing 107 people and destroying 15,700 homes the companys shares plummeted 90%. What about the next wildfire season?

Last year, a federal court monitor found evidence of shoddy work, poor record-keeping and falsified documents in the companys vegetation maintenance efforts. More recently, PG&E resisted a judges efforts to tie executive bonuses to safety improvements.

The company must compensate wildfire victims entirely in cash, just as it pledged all-cash payments to insurance companies and other claimants. Opportunistic hedge funds gobbled up insurance claims at steep discounts and will reap steep profits on their $11 billion payout in cash, not stock.

PG&Es plan also unfairly dilutes the victims claims by committing to secure bondholders claims over theirs and by allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other government agencies to recover funds from the victims allocation.

Millions of customers dont fare much better under PG&Es plan, which stands to leave us depending on a company with a junk-level credit rating to provide our power. The plans generous distribution of assets to powerful stakeholders will encumber the utility with heavy debts, and many observers doubt it will emerge with the financial soundness to issue investment-grade bonds. Junk-rated PG&E bonds would not only inhibit PG&Es access to capital but also inflate its financing costs a worrisome prospect for a company whose exit plan requires it to take on $38 billion in debt and pay billions of dollars a year in interest.

The result would be hefty rate hikes that force customers to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more to Wall Street through their monthly utility bills. PG&E optimistically projects that electricity rates will increase by a third over the next three years, but more realistic assumptions would push energy bills even higher. Company executives have little to fear, however: By turning wildfire victims into shareholders, they will have created a sympathetic bulwark against customer objections.

There is a better way: transforming PG&E into a customer-owned private company. A customer-owned utility has the best chance of restoring safe, reliable and affordable power delivery by aligning the companys financial interest with the public interest and sharply reducing capital costs. The leaner capital structure of a customer-owned company would avoid billions of dollars in expenses for dividends, high-yield bonds and federal taxes. It would reinvest those savings in grid safety and reliability, compensating victims and dampening rate increases. And unlike a public takeover, a customer-driven buyout would avoid exorbitant costs to taxpayers and endless legal battles.

Getting there wouldnt be easy. We would need a bankruptcy court willing to force shareholders and institutional funds to absorb the losses that any investor should incur in a bankruptcy. We would need a Public Utilities Commission willing to stand up to incessant industry pleas for excessive rate increases. And we would need Sacramento lawmakers to continue resisting company efforts to jam an inadequate plan through bankruptcy.

But we should not waste this crisis or the opportunity it presents to transform PG&E into a responsible, responsive utility. Financial institutions stand ready to effectuate a buyout. We need the states leaders to embrace it as nearly 200 local elected officials, representing more than 9 million Californians, have urged them to do.

Regardless of the outcome, ratepayers collectively face a burden of many billions of dollars in long-overdue investment in maintenance, upgrades, and microgrids. If customers are going to pay for PG&E, we ought to own it.

Sam Liccardo is the mayor of San Jose, the largest city in PG&Es service area. He leads a coalition of 195 mayors, supervisors and other elected officials urging that PG&E become a customer-owned utility.

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Theres a better way out of the PG&E bankruptcy - San Francisco Chronicle

Heres Why Ford Motor Company Still Cant Avoid Bankruptcy – CCN.com

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Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F) stock has tanked since I last wrote about the companys unavoidable bankruptcy. After reporting depressing fourth-quarter earnings, the stock is trading near 11-year lows.

The automakers revenue fell 5% to $39.7 billion and losses for the quarter were $1.7 billion. Ford struggled to grow market share in all of its key regions. Its expansion plans didnt bear fruit, and the failed execution led to massive losses.

Yet Ford Credit Company, the companys financial arm, posted its best results in nine years. Profits jumped to $3 billion before taxes, meaning its responsible for 50% of Fords profits up from 15 to 20% in the past.

Ford Credit Company has subsidized Fords losses and enabled the company to maintain a high dividend yield.

But judging by the data released by the New York Fed, the superior performance of Fords financial arm may not last long.

The damning data released by the New York Fed showed that the volume of 90+ days delinquent loans had risen sharply.

The value of the overall auto loan and lease balances has surged to $1.33 trillion. Worse, subprime loans reached $66 billion in the final quarter of 2019.

Ford Motor Credit Company doesnt lend to high-risk subprime borrowers. So, it doesnt have a high delinquency rate. But Ford Motors increasing dependence on its financial arm is a cause for concern.

Since not all Ford debtors are prime borrowers, the imminent pop of the sub-prime bubble will hurt the company. The auto loan lending business has thin margins. Even a slight increase in delinquencies can have a severe impact on profits.

Many investors buy Ford for its high dividend yield. But the high yield has been unable to prevent the stocks free fall. This may be because investors know Fords dividend is unsustainable, and a dividend cut is right around the corner.

And a subprime loan crisis, combined with an auto industry recession, can trigger a steep dividend cut.

U.S. car sales have witnessed no growth over the last few years. For 2019, sales topped 17 million units, but still edged lower compared to 2018.

Whats worth noting is that car sales have remained flat despite the rise in auto-loans.

It seems like the only thing supporting car sales and automaker profit margins is the rise in subprime loans. The situation is reminiscent of the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007.

Clearly, the U.S. auto market is in terrible shape. Lenient lending practices have kicked the can further down the road, but that wont last forever.

In addition, the situation in China, which is another key market for auto manufacturers, is dire. To contain the spread of coronavirus, hundreds of millions of people in China have been living under some form of quarantine.

This has taken a toll on the Chinese car market. Sales plunged 92% for the first two weeks of February. The situation forced the hand of carmakers, who are set to cut production by 15%.

The outlook for the automobile industry looks gloomy. And with subprime loans already at record levels, the next downcycle in the automobile industry will be worse than the last one.

Given that Ford barely survived the last recession, the chances of it surviving the next one are close to zero.

This article was edited by Josiah Wilmoth.

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Heres Why Ford Motor Company Still Cant Avoid Bankruptcy - CCN.com

The Year in Bankruptcy: 2019 | Jones Day – JD Supra

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American Astronomical Society Announces First Class of AAS Fellows, Including three from the SETI Institute – SETI Institute

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The American Astronomical Society (AAS) announced its first class of AAS Fellows, including three from the SETI Institute: Jill Tarter, SETI Institute co-founder and Trustee, Andrew Fraknoi, SETI Institute Trustee and Melissa McGrath, SETI Institute Astronomer.

AASs mission is to enhance and share humanitys scientific understanding of the universe, and its membership includes members of the astronomy community who are actively involved in advancing astronomy or a related branch of science.

Jill Tarter is the co-founder of the SETI Institute, Chair Emeritus for SETI at the SETI Institute and serves on the SETI Institutes Board of Trustees and Science Advisory Board. Tarter is a pioneer, both in advancing SETI science as well as the role of women in science. She has earned wide recognition in the scientific community and beyond for her work. She is deeply involved in the education of future citizens and scientists and may be familiar to people as portrayed by Jodie Foster in the movieContact.

This is a special honor because, in its announcement, the AAS highlighted the contributions of Margaret Burbidge, a member of this inaugural class of Fellows, said Tarter. Prof. Burbidge has long been one of my heroes; with quiet determination, she opened up the mountain top observatories to women astronomers.

Andrew Fraknoi retired in 2017 as the Chair of the Astronomy Department at Foothill College and has served on the SETI Institute's Board of Trustees since its inception in 1984. Fraknoi was named Professor of the Year for the state of California in 2007 and served as Executive Director of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for 14 years. Fraknoi continues to teach, moderate the popular Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures series and write, both educational and science fiction books.

"I am so honored to be in the inaugural class of AAS Fellows," said Fraknoi. "Especially in the company of renowned scientists like Jill Tarter, 2016 Drake Award winner William Borucki, Nobel Laureates Adam Riess and John Mather, and many other people I have admired over the years.And it's wonderful that the Society recognized work in not just astronomical research, but also education and outreach in selecting the Fellows."

Melissa McGrath began her career at the Space Telescope Science Institute, then moved on to NASA, where she served in various positions at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and NASA Headquarters. Her expertise includes planetary and satellite atmospheres and magnetospheres. In particular, McGrath has been interested in imaging and spectroscopic studies of Jupiter's Galilean satellites. At the SETI Institute, McGrath has worked on an instrument on the ESA JUICE mission to Ganymede and two proposed instruments for NASA's Europa Clipper mission.

"It has been gratifying to work with the AAS throughout my career as a professional astronomer, said McGrath. What an honor to be recognized in the inaugural group of AAS Fellows!

The AAS Board of Trustees designated this initial group of more than 200 Legacy Fellows in recognition of their research, contributions to astronomical techniques or instrumentation, contributions to education and public outreach, and for noteworthy service to astronomy and AAS. In the future, there will be an annual call for nominations of new AAS Fellows. Full details are available fromAAS.

Congratulations to Jill, Andrew and Melissa!

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American Astronomical Society Announces First Class of AAS Fellows, Including three from the SETI Institute - SETI Institute

7 Things in Our Universe That Have Astronomers Scratching Their Heads – Interesting Engineering

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Our universe is big, like really big and it is very old. Now, if you were to go back, and we mean all the way back to the big bang that birthed our universe scientists would go on to estimate that the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old. How did they come up with this number? The European Space Agency's Planck space mission back in 2013 basically mapped the universe giving researchers the most detailed look at our Universe that we have ever seen. Using this map, the ESA calculated the age by analyzing the cosmic microwave background.

And, as for the size of the universe? After centuries of speculation, and the use of modern technology researchers have been able to estimate the size of the observable universe, which comes out to the massive number of 93 billion light-years in diameter. This simply means that if you were to travel from one edge of the observable universe to another, at the speed of light, it would take you about 93 billion years to reach your destination. However, this is not the end of the story.

Now thinking about the great beyond is already a sublime experience. As stated by Kartik Sheth, a program scientist at NASA, Everything that we've learned about the Universe how big it is, all the amazing objects that are in it we do that simply by collecting these photons of light that have traveled millions and millions of light-years only to come and die on our detectors, our cameras or radio telescopes.

"It's rather humbling. Astronomy has taught us that we're not the center of the Universe, we're not even at the center of our Solar System or the center of our galaxy. However, even these researchers believe this idea of the universe is a little rough. Some have even gone on to say that the overall universe could be 250 times as large as the observable universe or perhaps truly infinite.

In our human words, this means 13.8 billion light-years in all directions, the Universe doesn't repeat. Light has been traveling towards us for 13.8 billion years this way, and 13.8 billion years that way, and 13.8 billion years that way; and that's just when the light left those regions.

The expansion of the Universe has carried them from 47.5 billion light-years away. Based on this, our Universe is 93 billion light-years across. That's an "at least" figure. It could be 100 billion light-years, or it could be a trillion light-years. We don't know. Possibly, we can't know. And it just might be infinite, says Fraser Cain in his Phys.org article.

So you can agree that the universe is both big and old, but what is out there? Well, the first thing that pops into your mind is aliens. However, in scientific terms, there are even stranger things out there in the massive universe that occasionally have scientists scratching their heads. Today that is what we're going to explore, as some of these strange objects may give us more insight into our universe.

Lets start with something that you are probably a little familiar with, dark matter. In short, dark matter is composed of particles that do not absorb, reflect, or emit light. It is believed that dark matter makes up about 80% of the matter in our universe and as much a of its overall density. However, because of its darkness, it cannot be detected by observing electromagnetic radiation, or let alone be seen. However, researchers do know that dark matter exists because of the effect it has on objects that we can observe. Understanding dark matter may give scientists more insight into our complex and vast universe.

We are not saying that Oumuamua had anything to do with aliens, but we are not saying that it did not. First spotted by Dr. Robert Weryk, he noticed an odd object zooming through our universe at incredible speeds while using thePan-STARRS telescope at Haleakal Observatory, Hawaii. Now Oumuamua is weird for a couple of reasons. First, it is extremely elongated, like an oversized cucumber and could be as big a kilometer long.

Even more so, the object was not affected by the gravitational pull of our sun and that is a bit strange. Researchers have gone on to speculate about this object that entered from another solar system, stating it could be everything from a comet, to an asteroid, to even an alien space probe. The reality is that it is probably something much more natural.

You have probably heard the excitement around Tabbys star. First discovered by Tabetha Boyajian of Louisiana State University, KIC 846285 is another oddity that we are not too sure about. KIC 846285 does this weird thing that causes the start to dip in brightness occasionally for odd lengths of time and sometimes as much as 22 percent. Now, there are many theories on why this might happen that ranges from a massive and abnormal cloud of dust to an alien megastructure, known as Dysons Sphere.

If the physics behind black holes kept you up at night, then mini-black holes might do the same. If the new braneworld theory of gravity is accurate, these little guys are scattered across the universe. The mini-black holes are tiny, about the size of an atomic nucleus. Even more so, the black holes have a tiny lifetime which is about one octillionth of a nanosecond, meaning as soon as they are formed they are destroyed. These mini-black holes affect space-time much more differently than their big brothers and might have some effect on the fifth dimension.

Source:NRAO Outreach/T. Jarrett (IPAC/Caltech); B. Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Fast radio bursts, also known as FRBs have scientists scratching their heads. Researchers have been picking up these sudden chirps of radio waves since 2007, and astronomers are still trying to figure out why. Even more so, they are coming from outside the Milky Way or hundreds of millions of light-years away. For these radio waves to even reach out to our planet, they would need to release as much energy in a fraction of a second as the Sun does in 80 years. Who or what could be sending these radio waves?

Source:ESA/Hubble and NASA

We have seen Nebulas in all shapes and sizes but never really in a rectangular shape.The Red Rectangle Nebula is almost perfectly geometric situated in the constellation of Monoceros or about 2,300 light-years away. Researchers are not completely sure what caused its odd shape but they do have some ideas. The shape itself could be due to the fact that two stars sit at the heart of the nebula.

As stated before, dark matter plays a vital role in our understanding of our universe, thats why our next entry is so odd. The galaxy called NGC1052DF spotted in March 2018, seems to contain almost no dark energy at all. However, after another study that aimed to disprove dark matter researchers were able to prove that the galaxy does, in fact, have dark matter, but are still not entirely sure.

What odd things do you know about our universe?

The rest is here:

7 Things in Our Universe That Have Astronomers Scratching Their Heads - Interesting Engineering

March 2020 will be a sky-watcher’s delight: An astronomer on where to catch the celestial events in Canada – CBC.ca

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The popularity of astrotourism has skyrocketed in recent years, and Canada is a particularly great place from which to gaze toward the cosmos.

Our country is home to the world's largest dark-sky preserve, Wood Buffalo National Park a stretch of land larger than some countries, running from northern Alberta into the Northwest Territories. Large swaths of Canada also sit beneath the northern auroral oval, a halo of light circling the geomagnetic North Pole (yes, there ismore than one North Pole), where the Northern Lights are most visible.

"We're pretty lucky in that most Canadians can get out of the big city into a very dark area pretty easily, so we're in a really good area for naked-eye stargazing," says astronomer Michael Reid, an associate professor in the University of Toronto's department of astronomy and astrophysics. "We also have a hugely active amateur astronomy community relative to a lot of places in the world. The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada operates chapters all over the country. That means there's a lot of programming available for people who are interested in having someone guide them in how to view the sky."

March 2020 will be an especially exciting month for stargazers, he says, with elusive planets shifting into view and aurora borealis activity potentially ramping up around the vernal equinox.

While celestial observation may traditionally be associated with the summer months, Reid explains that cooler temperatures can actually make for improved viewing conditions. "You can have this cold, dry air that just sits there, and so it gives you very clear skies," he says. "You get these really crisp, clear nights that allow you to see everything."

The following heavenly March events, recommended by Reid, are worth bundling up for. Here are the best places to view them, plus places to stay if you'd like to plan a well-rounded stargazing vacation.

The Northern Lights throughout March

"Canada is well known for being a great place to see the Northern Lights," says Reid. "The idea is that particles from the sun flow toward the Earth, and they get trapped in the Earth's magnetic field, funnelled toward the poles and smash into atmosphere and light it up." He explains that the odds of seeing Northern Lights are higher around the vernal or spring equinox, which will fall on March 19 or 20 for countries in the northern hemisphere, when aurora activity ramps up as the magnetic fields of the sun and Earth align.

For a great view head to: Northern British Columbia. The Northern Lights are such a big deal in this part of the world that there's an entire festival dedicated to celebrating them, which runs from March 12 to 21 in the community of Fort Nelson. Muncho Lake Provincial Park, situated at the northern tip of the Rocky Mountains, is a particularly special place to enjoy the aurora borealis. Just off the Alaska Highway, the secluded shores of this park's namesake lake beautifully showcase the Northern Lights dancing between limestone peaks.

Set your stargazing alarm for: The three hours before and after midnight. Reid recommends monitoring spaceweather.com, which offers live aurora updates.

Settle in at: Northern Rockies Lodge. This lovely family-owned property on the edge of Muncho Lake is the perfect place for an adventurous stargazing retreat. Enjoy some serious comfort food at the on-site restaurant, pop into the property's wood-fired sauna, then take an invigorating snow bath to prime yourself for a night of aurora-spotting.

The evolution of Betelgeuse throughout March

"There's this kind of neat thing going on with the star Betelgeuse," says Reid. "Orion is a constellation a lot of people know; it's got this famous belt, and I think it's probably the one most people know after the Big Dipper. [Orion has] got this great, big, bright red star in it that has been bright red for as long as anyone can remember, but not anymore." Reid explains that what was once one of the brightest stars in the sky rapidly started dimming in December 2019. This occurrence had many astronomers speculating that it might be on the verge of going supernova. However, instead of blowing up, Betelgeuse strangely started perking up at the end of February.

For a great view head to: Central Ontario. While Betelgeuse is visible from nearly everywhere on Earth, Torrance Barrens Dark-Sky Preserve made up of around 1,900 light pollutionfree hectares of Crown land is a particularly great place to study this fascinating star's transformation. Its Gravenhurst location also makes it easily accessible for Toronto-area sky-watchers.

Set your stargazing alarm for: Anytime after sundown.

Settle in at: JW Marriott The Rosseau Muskoka Resort & Spa. This cottage-country resort, located roughly 40 kilometres from Torrance Barrens, offers luxurious accommodations and stargazing excursions with local naturalist Robin Tapley. Tapley runs tours from the resort to both the dark-sky preserve and the Echo Valley Observatory in nearby Huntsville.

Saturn, Mars, Jupiter and the moon together March 18

"Around March 18, roughly, the moon will be crescent, and Saturn, Jupiter and Mars will all be smack-dab together in the sky in the southeast when there are three of them together in the sky [they're] much more obvious. They're bright much brighter than most stars and they're a little bit more colourful," says Reid. "Mars is noticeably red, and Saturn and Jupiter are kind of more white-ish but sufficiently bright that you definitely notice that they are brighter than everything else around them."

For a great view head to: Southern Quebec. "Mont-Mgantic National Park in Quebec [contains] probably the nation's best public-outreach telescope facility," says Reid. "It's [in] a beautiful location and it's got a ton of programming." The Mont-Mgantic International Dark Sky Reserve is the first international dark-sky reserve to be certified by the International Dark-Sky Association and has been called one of the best places on Earth to observe the night sky.

Set your stargazing alarm for: Just before dawn (roughly 6 a.m.).

Settle in at: Auberge et Chalets sur le Lac. Located between 40 and 50 kilometres from Mont-Mgantic National Park, depending on which route you take, this charming lakeside property offers an Earth to the Stars package that includes a one-night stay and a ticket for an evening experience at the park's popular ASTROLab.

Mercury's greatest elongation March 24

"[It's] greatest elongation is when the angle between the planet and the sun is biggest," Reid explains. "It's usually quite difficult to see Mercury because it's so close to the sun But if it's at its farthest extent away from the sun, then just after the sun dips below the horizon, Mercury will still be up and you can spot it before it also goes below the horizon, or the reverse in the morning it will come up a little before the sun comes up."

For a great view head to: Coastal Nova Scotia. Reid recommends facing the sunrise and picking a spot with an unobstructed view. "Nice clear views to the east make it easier to see," he says.

Set your stargazing alarm for: Just before sunrise.

Settle in at: White Point Beach Resort. With beachfront cottages looking straight out into the Atlantic, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better vantage point for viewing the sky at sunrise. In addition to offering seaside bonfires and winter surf lessons, this year-round resort also has March Break programming, which includes an outdoor journey to explore the night skies hosted by a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

Venus's greatest elongation March 24

Compared to Mercury, Reid says Venus is quite easy to spot. "It's the sort of thing that makes people phone in UFO sightings a lot because it's so crazy bright. If you've never paid attention to it, you look at it and think, 'What on earth is that?' So it's completely unmistakable."

For a great view head to: Western Alberta. Venus will appear on the western horizon, and Jasper National Park's Dark-Sky Preserve the second-largest dark-sky preserve in the world, measuring more than 11,000 square kilometres is perfectly situated for observation of the shimmering refracted light of Earth's beautiful sister planet.

Set your stargazing alarm for: Sunset.

Settle in at: Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge. With an on-site planetarium, dark skyfriendly lighting and regular astronomical programming, this luxury mountain resort is among Canada's premier stargazing destinations. Resort guests and planetarium visitors will have access to guided virtual tours of the galaxy by an astronomy expert.

"If you go to these parks, you'll get spectacular sights," says Reid. "One thing that's essentially impossible to see in the city is our galaxy. Most people have never seen the Milky Way, and it's glorious and wonderful. It's a huge band of light across the sky."

But Reid is quick to point out that all of the sights above, minus the Northern Lights, can be seen from just about anywhere in the country if your view is unobstructed, you're in a sufficiently dark location and your timing is right so staycation-ing stargazers need not be discouraged. For optimum viewing, he recommends packing binoculars on your trek, putting smartphones away, and giving your eyes at least 10 minutes to adjust to the darkness.

Jen O'Brien is an award-winning editor and freelance writer based in Toronto. Follow her @thejenobrien

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March 2020 will be a sky-watcher's delight: An astronomer on where to catch the celestial events in Canada - CBC.ca

2019 Activity Report of the SETI Institute – SETI Institute

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Download the SETI Institutes 2019 Activity Report here.

This is the SETI Institutes fourth annual activity report. It details the achievements of our 100+ scientists, along with our educators and outreach professionals throughout the year. More importantly, it chronicles the progress we made last year in advancing our mission to explore, understand and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe and the evolution of intelligence. The numbers are impressive: 242 publications in peer-reviewed journals, 356 abstracts and conference proceedings, hundreds of articles and broadcast stories about the work we do, public appearances throughout the world and so much more.

But what's most interesting are the stories behind the numbers. On January 1, 2019, we were there when New Horizons successfully executed its flyby of Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU 60, now known as 486958 Arrokoth. Thanks to SETI Institute scientists:

The SETI Institute also embarked upon an ambitious 3-year initiative to revitalize the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) to increase the sensitivity of its receivers and permit the development of a new digital processing system.

Frontier Develop Lab (FDL) teams used machine learning and AI to tackle significant challenges in the areas of heliophysics, disaster prevention, astronaut health and lunar resources. Three more Girl Scout space science badges were released and the SETI Institute was on hand when the first badges were earned at the Girls Scouts Astronomy Destination Camp. Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors (AAA) teachers received professional development training and flew on NASAs SOFIA, bringing curriculum on infrared astronomy back to their classrooms. Our scientists mentor future researchers and science educators through summer internships with Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) and STEM Teacher as Researcher (STAR) programs.

SETI Institute scientists conducted fieldwork in such far-reaching places as Antarctica, Chile, Alaska and the High Arctic. They also observed the universe through telescopes at the Arecibo Observatory, the Green Bank Telescope, SOFIA, the Hubble Space Telescope and more. And they received honors and recognition for their accomplishments from organizations including NASA, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Canadian Astronomical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

At the SETI Institute, we strive every day to answer the question, Are we alone? Our scientists are unlocking the secrets of the universe while at the same time our Center for Education is fostering future leaders to further our work and our Center for Outreach inspires millions.

Learn more about what we did in 2019 here. And stay tuned for what well be doing in the coming year.

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2019 Activity Report of the SETI Institute - SETI Institute

The Morality Of Eugenics – New University

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World renowned biologist Richard Dawkins tweeted on Feb. 16 that eugenics could be implemented for humans on a practical level, if one disregarded the moral and ideological controversies that surround the idea.

Its one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political and moral grounds. Its quite another to conclude that it wouldnt work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs and roses. Why on earth wouldnt it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology, Dawkins said.

As expected, his tweet drew attention and criticism surrounding his definition of a working model of eugenics. Many argue that it is impossible for it to work when the idea of more desirable traits is embedded in morality itself; what makes one trait more desirable than another?

One user tweeted in response, Eugenics doesnt work with humans because of the moral dimension, a dimension which is largely missing when we breed dogs, horses, roses, etc. You cant separate morality from human eugenics.

Several other people cited the negative consequences that selective breeding has had on species such as dogs and horses. M.D. Eugene Gu said, We turned magnificent wolves into pure breed dogs with severe genetic defects causing joint and heart problems and cancer Eugenics does not create superior species We weaken the gene pool selecting for traits desirable for us but not for the subject.

These claims are not wrong. It is true that we have selectively bred many dogs into genetic disorders and disabilities simply for the aesthetics and other superficial human reasons. Even turkeys have been selectively bred so much that they are unable to reproduce on their own. The ethics of eugenics are more lenient when applied to species under us in the food and evolutionary chain. But its different when its within our own species.

CRISPR Technology is a gene editing technology that has been under fire for many years in the media, with many people concerned over the moral dilemmas it poses with choosing the genes we want to have or get rid of. As a result, the idea of a designer baby was cultivated; people would use CRISPR to choose their unborn babys hair color, eye color and possibly even influencing their height and weight. There are larger social problems that arise from this possibility, over privacy rights and class rights would a technology such as CRISPR enable a dystopian society where the rich are genetically advanced, and the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves?

In this instance, it is clear why eugenics for humans wouldnt be desirable. But that does not take away from the fact that it could morally work. CRISPR has been used to improve genetic defects, treat and prevent the spread of diseases and even improve crops. There are many benefits to having a technology that allows us to edit the genomes of living organisms and its being done.

What teeters on the edge of immorality and the argument that eugenics would not work for humans, is human nature. It is easy to say simply that eugenics practically works. But that is not practical in itself. Believing that humans will use eugenics to only cure genetic defects and disorders is an unrealistic position to take on. Humans will always have to consult the ethics of a practice if it is to be practical.

Alana Tse is an Opinion Staff Writer. She can be reached at alanat3@uci.edu.

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The Morality Of Eugenics - New University

Eugenics and Scientific Racism – Slugger O’Toole

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In early January 2020, Dominic Cummings, the Prime Ministers chief Special Adviser, wrote a blog piece in which he advertised for advisers to work in No 10. One of the groupings was for weirdos and misfits. Andrew Sabisky was appointed. The media trawled through Sabiskys own blog for his thoughts, finding that hed said, for example:

There are excellent reasons to think the very real racial differences in intelligence are significantly even mostly genetic in origin

One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty.

Eugenics are about selecting for good things. Intelligence is largely inherited and it correlates with better incomes; physical health, income, lower mental illness. There is no downside to having IQ except short-sightedness.

The first of these three comments is an example of scientific racism, the second is an example of eugenics. The first comment is factually incorrect. Human eugenics is wholly discredited, both morally and scientifically. The third comment misunderstands what IQ is. Shortly after these and other, similar, comments became public knowledge, Sabisky resigned. What are the origins of such thinking?

Differences in skin pigmentation and facial structure have been obvious for millennia. The earliest form of racism seems to be anti-semitism. Jews have been stigmatised and persecuted from ancient times, even before Christianity when Jews could be held responsible for the death of Jesus. They lent money at interest, then called usury, when Christians were forbidden to do this, and were said to indulge in practices that sound more like black magic. The Jews were expelled from England in 1290, not returning until Cromwells time. They were expelled from Spain in 1492 when many found refuge in the tolerant Moslem Ottoman Empire.

More generally, the scientific study of race began during the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason. This was also the time of European colonisation and empire building, when the whites became more aware of other races. These classifiers were Western Europeans. The various human races were described in relation to skin colour, physiognomy (the science of judging peoples character from their facial appearance), and type of hair with an admixture of ignorance and prejudice. Linnaeus thought there were five types, Africans, Americans, Asians, Europeans and monsters. Johann Blumenbach described five races:

De Gobineau believed in three races, black, white and yellow. Blacks, he thought, were the strongest but incapable of intelligent thought; the yellows were physically and mentally mediocre, while whites (of course) were the best because they were capable of intelligent thought, could create beauty, and were the most beautiful. Overall, though, there was no settled agreement about the number of races. (Human facial beauty has subsequently been studied; most people prefer faces that are symmetrical. Faces with proportions in the Golden Ratio are considered beautiful. Early thinkers used Greek statues as a comparator; such statues are often the personification of beauty. And originally they were painted in bright colours to make them wear-resistant; they werent white.)

These classifications and other similar ones still find echoes today. I need hardly say that there is no biological, that is genetic, basis for such classifications, or for the attributes attached to them. The differences we can observe between different populations are a result of different cultures and environments. Race is a social construct.

Charles Darwin publishedOn the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selectionin 1859. His cousin, Francis Dalton, was intrigued and became convinced that all human characteristics and particularly intelligence were the result of inheritance.Thus, the ruling classes were the elite because of their genetic inheritance, and not because of wealth and privilege. Likewise, insanity and mental degeneracy were a result of genetic determinism. He collected data by measuring physical characteristics (anthropometrics), and mental abilities (psychometrics). He also made major developments in statistics, as did his successor Karl Pearson; it is for this that they are remembered today rather than their racism.

Convinced by such arguments, in the early 20thcentury, mental degenerates were rounded up in the UK, and kept in asylums. Programmes of forced, involuntary sterilisation were introduced in Sweden and in the US. In Germany, Nazi ideology encouraged extramarital breeding from racially pure and healthy parents to raise the birth rate of Aryans, a wholly specious race. Further, those whom the Nazis viewed as degenerate peoples, Jews, homosexuals, the Roma and others were not only segregated and sterilised, but murdered in what is now known as the Holocaust. Eugenics was (mostly) abandoned after World War II; eugenicists rebranded themselves as geneticists.

Its clear that artificial breeding works in plants, producing standardised, disease-resistant but heavy cropping varieties. In animals, selective breeding produces pedigree animals, ones that conform to what experts expect. But this comes at a cost; such animals are produced by inbreeding, and these animals are prone to hereditary defects. Inbreeding in humans is also associated with congenital diseases such as haemophilia.

Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, experimented with peas, and from this formulated his ideas of dominant and recessive genes. Although he published in the middle of the 19th century, his ideas werent widespread for half a century. Less well known is that he didnt use just any peas; he inbred peas, producing seven strains that bred pure for various characteristics; and it was from these that he experimented; his results would otherwise have been lost in the noise. No humans are purebred we are all mongrels.

Mongrels? A generation is conventionally taken to be 25 to 30 years, and the number of our ancestors doubles every generation. On this basis about 1000 years ago we have one trillion ancestors; this is clearly impossible, as the best estimate is that around 107 billion is the total number of people who have ever lived. Thegenetic isopoint is when the entire population are the ancestors of todays population. For Europe this was around 1400CE; for the world population, it was around 3400BCE. Every one of us is descended from all the global population then. There are genetic similarities within populations; but there are no sharp boundaries between populations, rather a gradual merging or blending of the two. And there are greater genetic differences within populations than between populations. Racial purity is an impossible fantasy. Sorry, Gaels and Planters; you arent pure and neither would you want to be because of recessive genetic disease.

Intelligence combines reason, problem-solving, abstract thought, learning capacity and the understanding of ideas. The first rigorous attempts at measuring and quantifying intelligence were by Binet just over a century ago, and was calculated by dividing the mental age by the chronological age, and multiplying by 100. This produced an intelligence quotient or IQ; the average for a population was 100. About two-thirds of people (one standard deviation) are in the range 85 115, and 95% (two standard deviations) lie between 70 and 130. Todays tests (attempt to) measure reason, mental processing speed, spatial awareness and knowledge.

IQ scores for populations have been found to be rising at about 3 points per decade; this is known as the Flynn effect. For example, the average IQ in Ireland was 85 in 1970 by comparison to the UK where it was 100; in Ireland today it is 100. This is far too short a time scale for a genetic effect. The generally accepted explanation relates to the environment including better nutrition and health, an increased standard of living and general socio-economic development. Does this accurately describe the changes in Ireland in the past half-century? Has Ireland gone from a poor, impoverished, even backward country to one which is wealthy, well educated and which has a vibrant economy?

While its difficult to assess accurately, todays best estimate is that genes account for 40% to 60% of a persons intelligence, with the environment, including nurture, accounting for the rest; crudely, about half nature and half nurture. Its clear that genetics does not account for all or even the great majority of intelligence. The short-sightedness associated with intelligence may be genetic, but its known that close study, such as reading, has a very significant effect. I was told that myopia is common in Jewish boys but not girls; only boys study the Talmud in exquisite detail.

Scientific racism is a pseudoscientific attempt to show that certain races, that is white races, are genetically superior to others. It uses comparisons of IQ in this venture. It does seem correct that peoples in sub-Saharan Africa have IQs 20 points less than those in the UK (taken as 100). Its also true that they are developing rather than developed countries. However, the highest IQ scores, again by comparison with the UK, are in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Japan and China, where scores are in the range 105 108. There is a culture of study and learning in these countries. Characteristically, researchers in this field such as Richard Lynn, previously a Professor of Psychology at the Ulster University, are described as controversial.

Its surely clear that eugenics and scientific racism are thoroughly discredited, both morally and scientifically. The comments Mr Sabisky made are simply wrong in every detail; it is concerning that there does seem to be a recrudescence of such ideas today, and alarming to think that these ideas might be at the heart of government. Neither Dominic Cummings nor the Prime Ministers spokesman have distanced themselves from these comments.

Angela Saini and Adam Pearson presented a two-part documentary calledEugenics: Sciences Greatest Scandalon BBCTV last year. It is not available on iPlayer at present.

Angela Sainis bookSuperior: the Return of Race Science(2019) and Adam RutherfordsHow to Argue with a Racist(2020) are up to date accounts, and well worth reading.

There is a list of further reading here.

My thanks to SeaanUiNeill, Dr Madeleine Morris and Professor Sen Danaher for their comments.

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Eugenics and Scientific Racism - Slugger O'Toole

The history of time capsules has a dark side linked to eugenics. But their future is brighter – ABC News

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Updated March 01, 2020 09:30:40

There's more to time capsules than fond childhood memories of burying hand-written notes.

University of Iowa history expert Nick Yablon has traced the origins of time capsules back to the late 1870s, and uncovered a murky history.

He says they were used in the early promotion of eugenics the idea of improving the human race through "scientific breeding".

In his observations of the early 1900s, he says, the link to eugenics "comes up in almost every time capsule I found".

The conception of the modern time capsule seemed innocent enough.

The term was first officially coined by George E Pendray, a PR consultant for Westinghouse Electric Company, to describe the company's exhibit for the New York World's Fair in 1939.

"He was going to call it the 'time bomb'," Dr Yablon tells ABC RN's Late Night Live.

"But in 1939 that probably wouldn't have gone down too well."

The Westinghouse capsule is bequeathed to Earth's inhabitants in 6939AD, so it will be a long time before anyone knows what's inside.

But a plaque on the capsule lists some of its contents: 22,000 pages of microfilm, 15 minutes of newsreel, an alarm clock, bifocals and believe it or not carrots.

Like the Westinghouse effort, time capsules were often created by people of influence, who had the money and means to construct and commission them.

Many seemed to be more about commemorating an individuals' own achievements than sending a meaningful message to the future.

And museums were just a little bit miffed about them.

"The time capsule was definitely a kind of riposte to the museum," Dr Yablon says.

"Museums were seen as inadequate memorialisations of the present. They tended to be full of relics of other civilisations or they were collections that were massed haphazardly without any sense of how they illuminated the present.

"So the time capsule would be a narrower selection for future audiences or future historians to view."

According to Dr Yablon, one of the first people to create a time vessel was Chicago photographer Charles Mosher, an early advocate of eugenics.

Mosher created a "Memorial Safe" time vessel for the American Centennial Exposition in 1876, celebrating 100 years since the country's signing of the Declaration of Independence.

In his book Remembrance of Things Present, Dr Yablon writes that Mosher appears to have had "fears about the contamination of Anglo-Saxon Protestant stock".

To memorialise that stock, Mosher filled a safe with some 10,000 portraits of notable Chicagoans and their wives, as well as literature on "progenerate" schools and colleges.

Mosher invoked eugenics pseudoscience in "vaguely expressed hopes that the 'healthy' could be encouraged to reproduce ... and the 'unfit' discouraged", Dr Yablon says.

He writes that Mosher "gave physical form to his racial visions, rendering his eugenicist utopia concrete through the vessel".

Time capsules attracted others like Mosher, who included eugenicist pamphlets in their vessels.

Dr Yablon says there's a more altruistic element to the tradition of time capsules that could be embraced as we face the global challenge of climate change.

At the turn of the 20th century, Louis Ehrich, a Jewish American from Colorado Springs, created a time capsule intended for today's citizens of his city.

According to Dr Yablon, Ehrich was concerned about environmental degradation and other developments in America, such as class conflict.

"He used the time capsule there to kind of create and instil a sense of duty to future generations," he says.

As students across the world protest for climate change action, Dr Yablon believes time capsules could help create a sense of responsibility to future generations and negotiate a way forward.

"We need more than just a philosophy or a ... legal theory of the rights of future generations," he says.

"We actually need to create a sense of emotional connection. Time capsules are a very powerful way of creating that."

Simply by existing, time capsules acknowledge future generations because what's the point of creating a time capsule, if it won't have an audience?

In that way, they connect the future with the present.

"The time capsule expanded our idea of how we communicated through time," Dr Yablon says.

Take Scottish artist Katie Paterson's Future Library, a time capsule reimagined.

Paterson's large-scale art project began in 2014, when a thousand spruce trees were planted in a forest just outside of Oslo.

The trees will be allowed to grow for a hundred years before they are cut down and turned into paper, which will be used to print 100 previously unseen manuscripts, by authors such as Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell and Karl Ove Knausgrd.

Dr Yablon says it's a project that is about more than just the books.

"It's that idea of exercising stewardship over the forest that will create the wood for the paper that will print these books," he says.

"The book is the lure, but the real message is the need to... cultivate those forests and preserve them, and preserve the larger environment."

And in so doing, maybe time capsules can counter their darker past, by helping to create a brighter future.

Topics:history,19th-century,20th-century,race-relations,human-interest,united-states,australia

First posted March 01, 2020 07:00:00

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The history of time capsules has a dark side linked to eugenics. But their future is brighter - ABC News

S. Craig Zahler and the Art of the Podcast – Filmmaker Magazine

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We have a solution to Hollywoods development hell which I am pleased to share with everyone. This was how Dallas Sonnier, or at least his marketing department, announced the introduction of the original audiostate, the neologism Cinestate (Sonniers Dallas-based indie production company) coined to avoid the dread word podcast. Through marrying the grandiosity of Hollywood films with the intimacy of audio, the audiostate is meant transform that most beloved of objects, the unproduced screenplay, into multi-platform pitchable content. Since Sonniers 2017 statement, only one audiostate has been produced: the same years The Narrow Caves, a story of eldritch horror, eugenics and explicit fucking adapted by S. Craig Zahler from his own screenplay.

Zahlers recent career is deeply intertwined with Cinestate. As detailed by Scott Tobias, Sonnier made a personal bet on Zahlers first film Bone Tomahawk (2015), financing it partially through the mortgaging of his house. Tomahawk, which saw a motley band of Western stock characters plodding across a desert to rescue a couple of 19th Century normies from some metal AF subhuman cave dwellers, proved to be of enough interest, to both critics and gorehounds, to fund the creation of Cinestate, which Tobias aptly describes as a renegade outfit between the coasts. Since then, Cinestate has produced four other films, only one without a script by Zahler.

Previous to Tomahawk, Zahler had twenty-odd screenplays in various stages of Zenos Entertainment Complex Paradox, save for the Belgian Asylum Blackout (2011.) As the above Sonnier quote suggests, this is not an entirely unusual career for a screenwriter, although most professionals agree that said career type used to be more lucrative. Zahlers writing, however, is what certain producers might call tonally complex, and Zahler himself unenthusiastic to the notes process. As Zahler says of his films, Some people can get bored. And thats fine. But thats not what studios want to hear. Cinestate, however, has seen fit to leave Zahler, as writer and director, a relatively free hand, which has led to three films which are, to again quote Tobias, as challenging in their unusual longueurs as they are in their shocks.

The corrupt cop drama Dragged Across Concrete (2018) features a now semi-infamous scene in which Vince Vaughn does nothing but eat an egg salad sandwich for one minute and thirteen seconds. In Tomahawk, Richard Jenkins launches a digressive explanation about saloon musician economics. Zahler has stated the intent of such passages is to draw the audience into his characters world more fully, so that when the horror hits (and it always does), it smacks flesh harder. However, these films deliberation, duration, and pace, which isnt leisurely but instead has the rhythm of a lengthy march across enemy territory, differentiate Zahlers work tonally and formally from pulp forebears such as John Carpenter, Charles Willeford, and Don Siegel. As a director, Zahler is many things, but derivative only of himself.

Though Zahler asserts that his prose is clearly the prose of a novelist, his fiction is less successful. In a medium where the creator cannot control duration, only suggest it, pacing comes with voice. Zahlers voice marries laconic hard-boiled to the flourishing gothic, which often results in prose purpled like a much loved bruise. An early suicide in Mean Business on North Garrison Street (2014) is described thusly: W. Robert Fellburn swallowed the steel cylinder, thumbed the safety, and squeezed the trigger until his shame covered the ceiling in gray and red clumps. In A Congregation of Jackals (2010), a character speaks [i]n a quiet voice that begat a coiled serpent of smoke. Zahler the novelist also has a number of unfortunate tics, including race-baiting, gross-out spectacle and referencing characters by their descriptors. In Jackals, the bartender becomes the rapidly-aging drink slinger; later a rancher and his wife are referred to as bipedal intruders. In Mean Business, the protagonist introduces himself as Jules Bettinger, just before the authorial voice refers to him as the man from Arizona, two sentences after designating him the detective. Refusing to use pronouns is not a style, even if youre an Oulipian.

Despite their relative obscurity (Mean Business being the only title to have a mainstream publisher, Thomas Dunne), many of Zahlers novels have been optioned for film. Though none have yet made it to production, it makes sense to attempt the same outcome with a Zahler podcast. Adapting existing IP into pitch material, or reverse-engineering the process, is a strategy currently much in vogue. You prove the content has an audience, then you leverage it into a more lucrative medium. Podcasts seem to be the ideal form, as theyre (relatively) cheap, have a (seemingly) large potential market and have (limited) success making the long trudge towards television. However, narrative-fiction podcasts have a unique challenge. The vast majority of the living residents of overdeveloped nations have never experienced a time when narrative was not primarily consumed via the medium of the screen. Even those who read analogue books still take in their narrative visually. The eye of the podcast-listener is, thus, constantly restless, searching for content but finding only bare life.

This is why most successful podcasts are this historical periods talk radio, best experienced as background chatter, the ideologies of their hosts seeping into your unconscious. (As podcast-host Caroline Busta recently said of podcasts on the podcast New Models, as youre listening, youre not thinking as hard about exactly whats being said.) Vernacular rhythm, catch-phrases, vocal fry: these are the content that the podcast-listener comes to desire. Narrative-nonfiction podcasts (and Im thinking specifically of Serial and its spawn) often deal with this issue by returning to the same foundational scenes with new, previously-withheld facts or from divergent POVs, so that the listener who is browsing Instagram or doing kettle-bell reps will get multiple chances to be reminded of the narrative.

Many narrative-fiction podcasts mimic the tone, rhythm, and formal constraints of the narrative-nonfiction. BBCs H.P.-Lovecraft-is-now-public-domain series The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (2018) and The Whisper in the Darkness (2019) revel in this artifice, posing as narrative-nonfiction. The prehistory of the podcast includes, of course, Orson Welles oft-referenced War of the Worlds false flag/radio broadcast, so its not like theres no precedent for such formal fuckery. However, the continued built-in excuses for why the narrative in question has to be experienced solely through audio begins to feel like a pathological need on part of the creators to explain, if not apologize. The answer cant be, The meeting with Netflix didnt go so well.

This has led to audience exhaustion, which the more successful narrative-fiction podcasts tend to side-step. The Horror of Dolores Roach (2018) adapts a one-person show into a monologue with background noise and inserted dialogue. Monologue with extras is also the format episode-of-the-week The Magnus Archives (begun 2016) uses as a base. Homecoming (2016-2017) threw money at the problem, using a large celebrity cast, contextless conversation, and location recording to keep the frame TV wide. (Homecoming, of course, now is a TV show.)

Zahler, unsurprisingly, feels no need to apologize or explain. The Narrow Cavesform can be best described as elevated table reading. Wyatt Russell and Lili Simmons head up the small cast, doing good work (neither can, I think, be blamed for the excessive, embarrassing sex scenes, one of which involves stick-fucking), and national treasure Vincent DOnofrio is hellbent on out-deranging the material. Zahlers own sub-Carpenter score differentiates the soundtrack from the usual Casio noodling, while The Narrator (Will Patton) reads chunks of Action. If that sounds a bit dry, remember that this is Zahler.

The prose tics reappear immediately. Protagonists Walter (Russell) and Ruby (Simmons) are referred to as the lanky youth and the pale woman respectively, while Walters buddy Jason is referred to as, uh, the Asian fellow. However, the referents do extra work in this format, helping listeners keep in mind physical characteristics and becoming touchstones in the narration. Zahlers baroque sentences are chewier for their relative scarcity. Standouts include, Beer cans gleam like oblong stars along the weedy front lawn, and Several hungry partygoers pick at nachos which look like the remains of an exposed animal; others contend for the fried chicken, potato chips, and pretzels nearby. Later, the Narrator christens a certain class of subhuman Crawler without further description. This forces the listener to do the work of creating the salient attributes of the Crawler, aided only by squelching foley work. The whiplash between what is (over)described and what is left to the imagination proves productive, especially in comparison to the genre offerings of the film industrys mainstream, wherein everything must be backstoried, categorized and explained.

To his immense credit, Zahler is uninterested in world-building. Invented in the cloistered yet drafty halls of SF fandom, world-building managed to survive being staked through the heart by M. John Harrison to be recuperated into a beloved entertainment industry standard. Instead, The Narrow Caves presents its protagonist (I lied, its just Walter, not really Ruby at all) with a not-really-intractable problem: what if the reason why you are so violently drawn to your lover is because of the brutal logic of genetic programming? And what if visiting her ancestral homestead and creepy dad leads to the two of you being dragged underground by members of a subhuman race who have interbred with humanity? And what if you yourself are in fact the eventual product of such ancient, unspeakable mating? Zahler isnt interested in detailing an underground civilization and its intersection with human history, but rather with Walters refusal to succumb to his own eldritch genetic engineering. Zahlers heroes, corrupted as they often are (Walters not that bad compared to most of them, although hes a pseudo-intellectual whiney little manipulative dick), consistently find themselves faced with the necessity of cutting through the obscuring mists of amorality and seeing the eternal battle of good and evil. This evil is, in The Narrow Caves, an inescapable fact hidden in our blood, not accidental.

Arguing about whether S. Craig Zahlers work is racist or merely racist-adjacent has become fashionable in circles which must be described, unfortunately, as film twitter. (My favorite of these pieces is by K. Austin Collins.) I made my own determination when I read the authorial voice of Mean Business compare a characters height to that of a Chinese woman. The Narrow Caves ancient race that mated with human beings appears to besurviving across time, space and content platformsTomahawks aforementioned race of cave-dwellers who enjoy splitting people apart with rocks. Tomahawk clearly delineates these cave-dwellers from local indigenous peoples. This is a rather obvious attempt to dodge the consequences of deploying the racist trope of riding-out-to-save-white-folks-from-the-savages. There are symmetries here with Lovecrafts short story The Horror at Red Hook (1925), a centerpiece in the history of cosmic horror and often regarded as one of Lovecrafts most racist works. However, Red Hook has a far more complex internal dialogue with immigration than its reputation would suggest. Its protagonist is an immigrant himself, Irish (which at the time was a category still in the process of being subsumed into White), while its villain, or at least the human who acts as vortical point for unspeakable, squamish evil, is of a long-standing Dutch family. The carriers of the inhuman cult which the latter delves into are a very unusual colony of unclassified slant-eyed folk who used the Arabic alphabet but were eloquently repudiated by the great mass of Syrians in and around Atlantic Avenue.This is the Zahler two-step from Tomahawk, a century beforehand: the real subhumans are the ones I made up from out of nowhere. Not that Lovecraft was performing wokeness, he was metaphorically aligning evil with brown people pretty explicitly, and theres a lot of free-floating hate for generalized duskyforeigners later in the text.

Zahler, of course, isnt Lovecraft. Hes not the inventor of an elaborate pulp cosmos which metaphorizes positivism in the form of incoming species annihilation due to his despair over the decline of the white race; hes a nostalgic neo-pulp multi-platform content creator whose defense of his films obvious racism is that they dont even consistently line up withthemselves. This, dear reader, is what we like to refer to as horseshit. Just come out and have The Narrator say it, bro.

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S. Craig Zahler and the Art of the Podcast - Filmmaker Magazine

Prejudice against Downs Syndrome is a form of eugenics Brian Wilson – The Scotsman

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NewsUK NewsThe law actively discriminates against unborn children with Downs Syndrome and other non-fatal disabilities, but a campaign aims to change that, writes Brian Wilson.

Saturday, 29th February 2020, 7:40 am

Those of us with a family interest in Downs Syndrome tend to notice positive stories about people with the condition.

The past few days have provided a good crop. Theres the girl in Boston who loves baking and, when nobody would give her a job, opened her own little bakery with help from her mother and sister.

The Boston Golden Goose Market placed a regular order. Publicity led to more business and they are now employing people with and without disabilities.

Then theres Arras in northern France where a young woman is about to become the countrys first local councillor with Downs Syndrome. The mayor said: She will be a councillor like no other but she will be a councillor in her own right.

Or how about the enterprising parents of little Odhran McLafferty in Easter Ross who have signed him up with a model agency. Odhran will also feature in a campaign called Nothing Down aiming to change pereceptions of Downs Syndrome.

These stories point to an important truth. The term Downs Syndrome covers a wide abilities range and as many personalities as there are individuals. Just like the rest of us.

Our own son, now aged 27, is not a baker, a prospective councillor or a model. Hes just a nice, gentle guy who enhances the lives of those he comes in contact with and costs the state very little.

So why is society so determined to get rid of all these people; to eliminate them en bloc? Why in some supposedly advanced, liberal European countries are they now on the point of succeeding?

These questions are brought into focus by the campaign supported by the actress Sally Phillips, herself a Downs parent, to amend the 1967 Abortion Act in order to equalise the treatment of all unborn children with non-fatal disabilities.

By far the biggest category of terminations beyond 24 weeks involve cases in which testing has taken place for Downs Syndrome. That is the product of a relentless campaign to persuade parents that the birth of a Downs child is a disaster which should, at all costs, be avoided.

Most astounding hypocrisy

For as long as our son has been alive, we have squirmed to read glowing reports of more accurate tests which identify Downs pregnancies for one purpose only. Nobody can question the campaigns success in the UK, more than 90 per cent of Downs births are pre-empted (along, inadvertently, with many non-Downs births).

Another Downs parent, happy with his lot, is the journalist Dominic Lawson. He made a valid point this week about justified outrage over a brief appearance in Downing Street of a bonkers special adviser with a record of eugenicist ravings.

Dominic wrote: Hidden in plain sight is the most astounding hypocrisy. Eugenics is practiced in this country, funded by the taxpayer... I am referring to the law governing the termination of pregnancy and the fact it actively discriminates against those unborn children who are likely to have subnormal IQs or physical disabilities.

If there is enough truth in that observation to give pause for thought in the UK, then consider what is happening in Scandinavia. Denmark and Iceland have official policies of eliminating Downs kids. At the last count, they are 98 and 100 per cent successful, respectively.

But why stop at Downs Syndrome? Are there not other troublesome conditions which might cost the state money and cause upset to perfect families? Once this form of eugenics is accepted and packaged as an undisputed advance for medical science, it is difficult to draw a line.

There is of course an alternative. It is to offer balanced information rather than eugenic prejudice to prospective parents. It is to create a climate of support and quality provision to help families adjust. It is to welcome diversity as an asset rather than a curse.

And if you disagree with any of that, just remember the baker, the councillor, the child model... Lumping a category of people together in order to get rid of them all is not a healthy trait in any society.

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Prejudice against Downs Syndrome is a form of eugenics Brian Wilson - The Scotsman

Dumbarton MP critical of Boris Johnson as he tells of brother who died from cerebral palsy – The Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter

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Dumbarton and the Vales MP has paid tribute to his late brother Graham while criticising the Prime Minister over the views of one of his advisors.

Martin Docherty-Hughes questioned Boris Johnson on why Andrew Sabinsky was employed despite discriminatory comments on eugenics which is the science of controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics.

The local MP shared how his late brother Graham died aged 15 from cerebral palsy. He was unable to walk, talk or feed himself, but Mr Docherty-Hughes told his colleagues in the Commons how he brought love and joy to all who knew him.

He asked the Prime Minister: To advise the house on behalf of every disabled person on this island, why Andrew Sabinsky was put at the heart of his government and was not removed from his position immediately, when his abhorrent views became apparent?

The former Downing Street adviser resigned one day after being appointed, when it was revealed he believed forced long-term contraception would rid the country of its permanent underclass, or as early eugenicists termed it, the residuum.

In response, Mr Johnson said: I certainly dont share those views and neither does anyone else in this government. And that individual no longer works for this government.

Mr Docherty-Hughes told the Reporter: The majority of my constituents who value the contribution of people with disabilities will be appalled that the Prime Minister has once again failed to unequivocally condemn such discriminatory views.

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Dumbarton MP critical of Boris Johnson as he tells of brother who died from cerebral palsy - The Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter