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LEGO logic rocks marketing automation – Marketing Land

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

I love watching my son mastera LEGO set. Logic is the key ingredient in putting a set together, especially the super complexmodels that require many hours to assemble.

The LEGO company is smart. For the complex sets, the company breaks the whole into units, which are packaged to be built separately. The assembled sections are then added together to create the overall object.

The unit approach makes it much less overwhelming, while also making it easier to find the right pieces. It also helps kids realize success as each section is completed.

An added bonus is that the sections become a pathway to producing something different and creative. Many times my son has reused those units by putting togethermodules from a variety of sets to create something different and original,thereby expanding his enjoyment of the toy.

Marketing automation has a lot in common with building LEGOs. Complexmarketing automation campaigns designed and built unit by unit areeasier and more effective than anentire campaign implemented as a single unit.

[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

The Latest Planet of the Apes: The Exodus Story without God Is Bleak – National Review

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

Conservatives may neglect Hollywood, but it retains the power to shock. Example: War for the Planet of the Apes depends on the moral rhetoric used by the Puritans and then Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. This is all about Exodus: God liberates the chosen people from bondage, and they attain the Promised Land. Appealing to Millennials while recalling the Boomers Sixties heyday, the rhetoric of civil rights is nowadays both on sale and on trial at the movies. And America emerges from them tarnished at best.

The Planet of the Apes story was originally a Sixties sci-fi allegory. It questioned our human nature, to humble our pride. It warned, Science will doom us. Proud American men, looking to discover the universe and the future in their spaceships, the very spearhead of the enterprise of modern science, discover a future worse than any past: a nature impervious to artificial powers. Apes enslaving humans, who are bereft of mind or speech: This allegory was part of the New Lefts politics and liberalisms holier-than-thou attitude. The question was slavery itself, and how would you like to be on the receiving end, white America!

Well, its dej vuall over again two generations later, with far more polish and more hysteria about science dooming us. This matters because Americans hold, or once held, their rights to come from Nature and their Creator. The goodness both of science and of man had divine sanction. From their nature, men could scientifically deduce their equal freedom and then strive to live well in light of that knowledge. They had natural rights, as we used to say. Science, natural and political, was supposed to help us secure them.

People changed their mind when they thought natural science proved that there was no human nature, or that it was nothing good or special. That is why the cinema of violence now dominating young Americans imagination forever rehearses the question Is life providential? Or cannibalistic? Does God defend us from the worst in ourselves and in our world? Or are we evil incessantly, from youth? Human nature looks so depressive at the movies because the meaning of science has changed.

For the Boomers, science meant both spaceships and atom bombs. Kennedy was sending Americans to the moon at the beginning of the Sixties! Confidence and power still pointed to something good and noble for mankind. But there were doubts: What if mans cosmic destiny was really the consequence of his self-destruction by the atom bomb? America had already used nuclear weaponry pressed by necessity, but in Kennedys time, America herself was threatened with Soviet missiles from Cuba. What would America do in case of a nuclear attack? America would launch rockets not to reach the moon but to render the earth uninhabitable. Gradually, the ambiguity of the rocket was resolved in favor of despair and fear: Think not Mars, but MAD.

Cold War hysteria about nuclear energy had the same origin. The atom bomb was a symbol. It spelled the end of the age when men would wage war in person, risking their own lives without risking the survival of all of mankind. The atom bomb rendered heroism or honorable war obsolete. But this would not lead to peace except, as the moral rhetoric of unconditional pacifism suggested, in death, and well deserved! With no more future for human beings, the movies went for a post-human future, in a desperate attempt to save some kind of life or morality from this scientific predicament.

Thats how we got to, among other things, the new Planet of the Apes movies, in which mankind is wiped out by a medical mistake a disease created by science. Scientific confidence becomes hubris, and mankind in his endeavor to conquer viruses defeats himself instead. The effort to build the most sophisticated power, immortality, out of the simplest life form, endlessly mutating viruses, turns out to ruin mans own complexity. Our fear of death, which drives medical advances, also turns to paranoia. At the movies, proud American men are not going back to the stars. Science for Millennials means biology, not physics, and it creates monsters as much as men. Scientific power no longer carries moral conviction for us, so we get the fantasies of self-destruction we deserve. At least we find them plausible: We would not keep showing up for such dark stories if we did not secretly fear that we were our own undoing.

But couldnt all this darkness be limited by the luminous part of the story civil rights and its Biblical rhetoric? The writer-director team say theyre looking to dignify their apes by giving them a founder: a Moses. Their movie really is Exodus redux, and its worth learning what has come of that once-proud feature of American political rhetoric. Only the movies make use of it anymore. Certainly no politician dares quote the old Biblical stories once considered part of Americas political imagination.

Blacks embraced Christianity in America and organized as Christians. They found the Old Testament an important source of hope and wisdom in the civil-rights struggle, which was a happy reprise of the theme of the chosen people, liberated from Egyptian slavery. As much as the adventure of scientific innovation is about individualism, the rhetoric of the chosen people is about community. So this should be a great occasion to tell both the particular story of liberation from Jim Crow and the broader story of Americas destiny. How come it all ends up tarnished? Something in this rewriting of civil-rights rhetoric is strange: God is absent.

Without God, mankind in this movie is left to plague itself. America is now Egypt. Man, not God, brought on the virus-plague that wiped out mankind. The only human ruler in this story plays a kind of Pharaoh, starting with the shaved-head, anti-natural aesthetic of Egypt and ending with his killing his son: the plague of the death of the firstborn. The hardening of hearts is here the loss of the power of speech. The afflicted can no longer communicate.

Meanwhile, the moral actors, the apes, are passively caught between warring human factions, witnesses to our species suicide. They only want to escape to the Promised Land, led by a Moses who has to learn to kill and to refrain from killing his utmost enemy, to save the lives of his kind and to die without entering the Promised Land. Even the swallowing of the armies of Pharaoh is reenacted, though without much cohesion to the plot.

But this Moses is without Commandments. In Exodus, he led the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery by the long way, to avoid the land of the Philistines. That was his judgment on their character. But, Hollywood tells us, Were all Philistines now, and we pay the price: Not even our hero-apes can evolve from slavery to freedom. They just have a real-estate problem: The war could have been avoided had they been a few dozen miles from their arbitrarily determined current location. The apes have no new revelation; they confront no ancient threat. Their story lacks moral seriousness and the potential for high drama.

This leader should evoke MLK or Mandela, whose moral rhetoric was stentorian, all about delivering freedom to an oppressed people. Yet, in a show of breathtaking blindness to the very civil-rights rhetoric he evokes, the Moses figure in War of the Apes never gives one good speech. Apparently his peoples epic migration does not require intellectual effort to comprehend and express. These writers who play with Americas most dignified rhetoric about liberating slaves have nothing worth saying, having never reflected on American history in light of the very principles and precedents that Lincoln and MLK referred to. Having chosen to go down another path, they reveal to us, at the end of a long trilogy, a dead end. We have learned nothing new about human dignity, whatever we may have forgotten meanwhile.

Titus Techera is a Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute, a contributor to Ricochet, and a writer at the Federalist.He is affiliated with the American Cinema Foundation.

Continued here:

The Latest Planet of the Apes: The Exodus Story without God Is Bleak - National Review

Koko Pimentel open to studying abolition of PCGG – Rappler – Rappler

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III says the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) should have achieved its objective after existing for 30 years

Published 6:00 PM, July 29, 2017

Updated 6:00 PM, July 29, 2017

'REVISITING' PCGG. Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III is open to reviewing the existence of the Presidential Commission on Good Government. File photo

MANILA, Philippines Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III is open to "revisiting" the role of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), the agency tasked to hunt the ill-gotten wealth of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his family.

Pimentel, whose father was a staunch fighter of Marcos and Martial Law, said the PCGG should have achieved its objective after existing for 30 years

The agency was established by former president Corazon Aquino in 1986 after Marcos was overthrown. (READ: What you should know about the agency hunting Marcos' ill-gotten wealth)

"PCGG is a single function agency. I am open to revisiting the reason for its continued existence. Mga 30 years na po 'yang single objective niya. Dapat by this time, achieved na 'yan (Its single objective has been going on for 30 years. It should have been achieved by this time)," Pimentel told repoters in a text message.

"It makes one wonder, bakit 'di pa tapos? So puwede na ipasa 'yan sa ibang agency na hindi single function agency. The assumption is nasa tail-end na rin ang PCGG sa work nito after 30 years," Pimentel added. (Why is it not yet achieved? We can pass it to an agency that has no single function. The assumption is that the PCGG should be at the tail end of tis work after 30 years.)

Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno earlier said that the PCGG can already be abolished as it is not productive. The PCGG, however, attributed the delays to the "slow grind of the justice system, coupled by dilatory tactics employed by the defendants," specifically the Marcoses.

Malacaang has said that the Office of the Solicitor General could take on the functions of the agency. House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez has filed a bill seeking to put the PCGG under the OSG presently headed by Solicitor Jose Calida, a known Marcos supporter. (READ: In charge of recovering ill-gotten wealth? But Calida is pro-Marcos)

'We want to see accountability'

Senator Francis Escudero, for his part, called for a full inventory of all the assets the agency has sequestered before deciding on the PCGG's fate.

It would be too much to bear to find out that recovered assets pilloried from the state is squandered the same by the agency tasked to run after it. We want to see accountability, as with any other government institutions," Escudero said in a statement.

"If there is failure to protect and preserve sequestered assets, then abolition this time may lead to the unintended consequence of hiding misdeeds committed by the agency in the past," said Escudero, citing a Commission on Audit report about 6 sequestered paintings that have gone missing since 2012.

In his second State of the Nation Address, President Rodrigo Duterte asked Congress to pass the Rightsizing the National Government Act of 2017 to remove redundancies and overlapping functions in the executive branch.

Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto, however, questioned if Congress should delegate its power to determine which offices may be abolished or merged to the executive.

"The real issue is, should Congress delegate its authority to the executive to determine which offices may be abolished or merged and the power to create other executive offices and departments without debate," Recto said.

In its current version, we are giving the executive maybe too much powers, he added.

The House of Representatives has approved the measure on Wednesday, July 26, while a counterpart bill remains pending in the Senate. Rappler.com

The rest is here:

Koko Pimentel open to studying abolition of PCGG - Rappler - Rappler

USS Ford makes history: Launches, lands fighter jet with magnetic technology – Fox News

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

The USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navys newest aircraft carrier, successfully launched and landed an aircraft with advanced digital, magnetic technology, which replaces the older steam-driven catapult system.

The successful missions Friday came less than a week after President Trump commissioned the nearly $13 billion ship in Virginia.

"Today, USS Gerald R. Ford made history," said Adm. Phil Davidson, commander of the U.S. Fleet Forces. "Great work by the Ford team and all the engineers who have worked hard to get the ship ready for this milestone."

Trump suggested last spring that the Navy continue to use the steam-based catapult system to launch and snag aircraft on and off ships flight decks, amid the continued concerns about the cost to complete the USS Ford.

Prior to Fridays missions, the new technology had been successfully tested ashore at Lakehurst, N.J., according to the Navy.

This is the first shipboard recovery and launch of a fleet fixed wing aircraft, said Capt. Rick McCormack, Fords commanding officer.

The aircraft used were A-18F Superhornet fighter jets, based at the naval base at Patuxent River, Md.

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USS Ford makes history: Launches, lands fighter jet with magnetic technology - Fox News

Technology That Turns Obama’s Words Into Lip-Synced Videos to Be Featured at SIGGRAPH – Variety

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

A paper set to be delivered at next weeks SIGGRAPH 2017 conference has garnered a lot of pre-confab attention because the technology could possibly be used to produce fake news videos. But the technology described in the paper, Synthesizing Obama: Learning Lip Sync From Audio, could have many more beneficial uses, especially in the entertainment and gaming industries.

Researchers from the University of Washington have developed the technology to photorealistically put different words into former President Barack Obamas mouth, based on several hours of video footage from his weekly addresses. They used a recurrent neural network to study how Obamas mouth moves, then they manipulated his mouth and head motions as to sync them to rearranged words and sentences, creating new sentences.

Its easy to see how this could potentially be used for nefarious purposes, but the technology is a long way away from becoming widely available and it would be fairly easy to detect in fake videos, according to Supasorn Suwajanakorn, the lead author of the study. It would be relatively easy to develop a software to detect fake video, he says. Producing a truly realistic, hard-to-verify video may take much longer than that due to technical limitations.

SIGGRAPHs conference chair Jerome Solomon, dean of Cogswell Polytechnical College, notes that any new technology can be used for good or bad. This is new technology in computer graphics, he explains. Were making things that might not be believable believable and worlds that dont exist exist. And I think people potentially using any technology out of our industry could use it for bad purposes or good.

Plus, Solomon says echoing Suwajanakorn, I think its a ways away from being available to everybody. Our conference is really a place where new technology comes in through our technical papers program, but it takes awhile for the technology to appear in the tools. Developers have to go and create the software to actually take this research and get it into the tools.

And there are a wide variety of uses for this particular technology.

Automatically editing video to allow accurate lip-sync to a new audio track is a novel advance on a very hot topic with many practical applications, says Marie-Paule Cani,SIGGRAPHs technical paper chair. It could be used, for instance, to seamlessly dub a movie in a foreign language, or to correct what people said in video footage and no cost.

A number of papers and exhibits of new technology will be on display at SIGGRAPH 2017, to be held July 30 through Aug. 3 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Among the many new technologies will be a presentation by brain-computer interface company Neurable. They make a cap that you put on your head and it reads your brainwaves so you can use it instead of a mouse or a keyboard to do different things, says Solomon. Theyre coming to SIGGRAPH with that technology to show how you can use it to play a game. Imagine playing a game without have a controller in your hand.

A new addition to SIGGRAPH this year is a VR theater with ongoing programming. Were going to show VR films, Solomon explains. Well have high-end VR headsets and can actually demonstrate VR storytelling. With the sound and the high-end digital, its a really different experience.

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Technology That Turns Obama's Words Into Lip-Synced Videos to Be Featured at SIGGRAPH - Variety

How technology can play a role in home healthcare services – The Sunday Guardian

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

Not only is the Home Healthcare market growing in standard services of providing medical staff at home, it is also now growing up the value chain of providing Critical Care in the home environment. The benefits of such services are numerous: from being able to set up ICU facilities inclusive of relevant medical equipment to services of competent nursing and other staff. Today, a number of ailments that fall under the category of Critical Care are being treated at home.

For Critical Care to be implemented, it is imperative that various elements of technology are leveraged to successfully achieve the following:-

Positive patient experiences

Creating an environment for better outcomes of the treatment

Building efficiency in operation-intensive business to provide significant scaling up of the endeavor

While Information Technology is pervasive and ubiquitous in various fields and industries, there have also been a lot of advances in technology related to healthcare. Today, there are a number of devices that allow monitoring of the patients functions and emergencies and also integrate with IT devices such as mobile devices. They help to create a system where information can be captured in near real-time, assimilated and collated for distribution to the stake holders for appropriate actions. A few of such modern technologies that are making way in the Healthcare domain are as follows:-

ECG embedded in the smartphone case that helps interpret test results via an App and facilitates secured sharing of data with clinicians (NICE Evidence Review)

Tremor spoon for Parkinsons incorporating sensors and data analytics on how Tremor characteristics and severity change over time

Smart Inhalers that sense the location and surrounding air providing insights into Asthma attacks

All of the above technologies help in monitoring various parameters as relevant to the patient so that timely intervention can be made for better outcomes.

In addition to the above, there are also various sensor-based devices in the market that detect situations in an ongoing treatment and emergencies, for e.g., detection of a fall along with the precise location. It was estimated in 2014 that remote patient monitoring technologies accounted for over $ 30 billion.

Other important aspects to note are that services being delivered at home for Critical Care are in remote places as compared to a centralized facility in a hospital. While Home Healthcare increases the focus on the patient, it has been recognized that monitoring of services at these remote locations can be achieved through implementation of technologies. Data can flow through a network connecting these remote locations to hubs of centralized facilities where patient specific dashboards can be created and shared with relevant stakeholders in the ecosystem. The most effective model for delivering Critical Care at home is an integrated approach that involves the hospital, physician/the treating doctor, nursing and care staff at home and the family members of the patient.

With the use of inter-operable technologies, only bytes of relevant information can be shared with the stakeholders. It is well known that physicians and treating doctors lead very busy lives and do not have sufficient time to browse through mounds of data in reports.This integrated approach also allows for instant communication between the treating doctor and the nursing staff at home, resulting in better outcomes for the patient. Therefore, a well-engineered system that combines Telehealth and Mobile-health will create a big impact in delivering streamlined Critical Care at home.

Home Healthcare is also very effective for treatment of chronic diseases like Diabetes, Hypertension, Congestive Heart failure, COPD and Fractures to name a few. Use of Telehealth can significantly reduce admissions and re-admissions to the hospital and at the same time at a much lower cost. For E.g. Monitoring weight of a patient with a condition of Congestive Health Failure can alert clinicians to eminent worsening of condition so that appropriate and effective action can be taken in time. Usage of technologies in an integrated manner allows for evidence based medical care that helps in aligning staff, standardization of core processes around clinical best practices and therefore, implementation of focused training for clinicians around those processes.

Technology will play a pivotal role in the implementation and growth of Critical Care at home. There are already technologies available that provide monitors that are internet enabled and when combined with mobile and telemedicine can provide an effective framework for Critical Care at home.

Social media is also playing an important role in Home Healthcare. According to Pew Research, 46% of seniors who go online also use social media. This has spurred growth of some private social networks such as efamily and Family Crossings that allow social interaction and information sharing over the internet.

With patients getting more involved and taking charge of their healthcare needs, the market for Critical Care at home is poised for rapid growth. This will positively allow care to be delivered at home, with grace and dignity, apart from the economic benefit and ripple effect on the family and caregivers.

Author is Founder of CCU

Link:

How technology can play a role in home healthcare services - The Sunday Guardian

Gizmodo Attacks Artificial Womb Technology, Claims It Threatens Women’s Rights – The Daily Caller

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

A new breakthrough in medical technology could enable prematurely born infants to survive outside of the womb, greatly improving their chances of survival and reducing risks for mothers unable to reach full term. Naturally, some feminists are upset by the prospects it offers and have tied its development to the end of abortion rights.

The technology, which was unveiled in April, allowed for eight premature lambs to spend four weeks of development in an artificial womb called the Biobag. The lambs survived and have been developing normally.

One would think that such a lifesaving technology, which can potentially save the lives of the 30,000 prematurely born babies each year, would be hailed as a net positive. Not so, argue feminists at Gizmodowho claim that the medical advancement could also complicateand even jeopardizethe right to an abortion.

Speaking to Gizmodo, Harvard Law School bioethicist Glenn Cohen said that the constitutional treatment of abortion was pegged to the viability of a fetus survival. This has the potential to really disrupt things, first by asking the question of whether a fetus could be considered viable at the time of abortion if you could place it in an artificial womb.

It could wind up being that you only have the right to an abortion up until you can put [a fetus] in the artificial womb, Cohen told Gizmodo. Its terrifying.

Gizmodos Kristen V. Brown takes issue with the possibilities offered by the technology, as a fetus can now be transplanted into an artificial womb instead of being aborted. The technology, if it works on humans, could improve the chances of survival for countless prematurely born infants and drastically reduce the risks to mothers with preexisting medical conditions that make it dangerous for them to give birth. In other words, the artificial womb will make medically necessary late term abortions unnecessary.

Developing technology also tests the rhetoric surrounding the right to choose, wrote Brown. A womans right to control her own body is a common legal and ethical argument made in favor of abortion. Under that logic, though, the law could simply compel a woman to put her fetus into an external womb, giving her back control of her own body but still forcing her into parenthood.

Instead, its now a question of whether its existence would deprive a woman of her rights to control her body. In reality, most late-term abortions happen due to medical reasons.

The scientists behind the artificial womb intend to create a version that will work for premature babies born as early as 23 weeks, and hope to test it on human babies within the next five years.

Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter.

Original post:

Gizmodo Attacks Artificial Womb Technology, Claims It Threatens Women's Rights - The Daily Caller

Alderweireld admits to ‘zero’ progress in Tottenham contract talks – Goal.com

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

The Belgium international defender remains tied to Spurs until 2019, but no breakthrough has been made in discussions regarding an extension

Toby Alderweireld admits that zero progress has been made in discussions regarding a new deal at Tottenham.

The Belgium international has established a reputation as one of world footballs finest centre-halves during his time at England, on loan at Southampton and then with Spurs.

Spurs to finish above Arsenal in PL - 4/5

His current club are eager to reward that standing with fresh terms, while removing a 25 million release clause which is due to kick in if they take up a 12-month option through to 2019.

Alderweireld, though, says that no breakthrough has been made as he waits on updates from the club and his representatives.

Poch: Dier rumours are positive

The 28-year-old told Sky Sports when quizzed on the extension talks: No news that I know of so nothing zero.

Alderweireld has formed part of a settled defensive unit at Tottenham, with Mauricio Pochettino having pieced together a Premier League title-challenging squad.

There has been one departure from the ranks this summer, though, with Kyle Walker moved on to Manchester City for 50 million.

Spurs have a ready-made replacement in Kieran Trippier, but Alderweireld is disappointed to have seen another England international leave the club.

Levy: Prem spending unsustainable

He added on Walker, who he could face in an International Champions Cup clash in Nashville: Everybody is sad that he left.

He is one of the best full-backs in the world and unfortunately he goes to another [Premier League] team, but we have to focus ourselves to win the game.

Alderweireld joined Tottenham from Atletico Madrid in the summer of 2015 and has made 80 appearances for the club over the course of two seasons, netting five goals.

Alderweireld admits to 'zero' progress in Tottenham contract talks - Goal.com

Civeo: Some Nice Progress But It’s A Long Road – Seeking Alpha

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

As of the time of this writing, one of my holdings happens to be Civeo Corp. (CVEO). As a niche accommodation business servicing the commodities industry (oil sands in Canada, coal and other products in Australia, and some oil and gas in the US), the company is well-diversified, flexible, and a nice fit, in my opinion, for my energy-centric portfolio. Given that it has been nearly three months since my last piece on the company and given that its share price has fallen a hefty 30.6% since the publication of said piece, I figured it would be interesting to look back at the business and give an update on my thoughts.

I approach investing from a long-term perspective. This means I look for a return thats in excess of the market over a period of 5 to 10 years (depending on the opportunity). As such, it doesnt matter too much to me if a holding is down for 4 of the 5-year minimum that I look at. Even so, seeing shares drop so much, such as Civeos 7.3% decline on July 28th, is never easy and makes me wonder if Im right in my evaluation of the firm. To see if this is the case, I dug into some of the data recently provided.

One thing I noticed about Civeo is that management has turned a bit more bullish as of late. Previously, the firm had expected revenue for this year to come out to between $337 million and $353 million. However, after landing four different accommodation contracts for Canadian pipelines, valued at 20 million Canadian dollars, this sales figure for 2017 was raised to be between $354 million and $363 million. Not only does this increase revenue as a whole, it also decreases the range from $16 million down to $9 million for the year. Thats quite a nice move.

Despite the increase in revenue expectations, EBITDA expectations havent moved that much. Truth be told, I really dislike EBITDA, but thats all management gives so thats what I need to deal with. If current forecasts are accurate, the business should generate EBITDA this year of between $61 million and $66 million, an increase for the floor and ceiling of just $1 million compared to prior forecasts.

Its hard to say precisely what cash flow will be based on this. During the first two quarters, the company reported total operating cash flow of just over $14 million. With sales more than halfway done for the year, you would expect operating cash flow for this year to be around $28 million, give or take a bit. However, if you annualize interest expense from the first half of this year and dont consider taxes since the company is likely to report a net loss because of its high depreciation and amortization expense for this year, youre looking at operating cash flow of around $43 million for the year at the mid-point. With capex of $12 million to $15 million thrown in, free cash flow would be $29.5 million. This means that either the rest of this year will be more cash accretive or investors should expect some downward revisions.

The last thing I noticed is a mix of good and bad relating to the company. Right now, its debt, according to management, stands at $320.2 million, which is a decrease of $3.7 million from the prior quarter. This is great to see and is great compared to the $353.3 million in debt seen at the end of last year. However, currency fluctuations have been moving against the business. During the last quarter, an uptick in the Canadian dollar relative to the US dollar hurt the firms debt repayment of $4 million. This is something that needs to be watched. On the other hand, due to a share issuance earlier this year, the company does have a nice $27.3 million in cash on hand and still has $117.5 million in borrowing capacity under its revolving credit facility. That provides it some nice flexibility so long as things dont materially worsen from where they are today.

Although many in the energy space are bearish about the future, it appears as though Civeos management team believes that better days are around the corner. For instance, if you look at the table below, you will see that, over the past three years, the company has continued to add available rooms to its physical footprint (this excludes other aspects of their business). Between 2014 and 2016, room count rose by 2,160 rooms, which is an increase of 9.9%. So far this year, the room count between Canada and Australia has grown by 118 rooms to 24,106 rooms. This is despite cash flow at the firm suffering during this energy downturn as demand for its services have plummeted.

*Created by Author

One thing I noticed is that, on the plus side, at least in Canada, the surge in the oil and gas rig count for the nation has been beneficial for Civeos occupancy rates there. Today, the rig count in Canada is estimated at 220 units, up from 118 the same time last year. As a result, the occupancy rate for Civeos Canadian operations during its latest quarter came in at 81% compared to last years 62%. While this is great news, there were some caveats here, such as the percent of available rooms that were rentable. Adjusting for this actually saw a small reduction in overall rooms occupied. Whats more, the companys average rate per room decreased from 108 Canadian dollars to 89 Canadian dollars. As you can see in the image below, occupancy rates for Australia remained flat, but it managed to see a very modest increase in how much it can charge.

*Taken from Civeo

This data appears to be rather mixed and highlights continued risk in its existing markets. While management has continued adding rooms to its set of operations, business remains weak. On the other hand, the companys strengthened balance sheet and revised estimates for this year is a positive that suggests the market may be getting better for the firm. The reason why I bought into Civeo is because I like its operations and cash flow potential, but it has always been among my smallest holdings (its my second smallest stock) because I know that while the firm does have impressive flexibility, it benefits, if my theory is correct, from more intensive commodity investments.

What do I mean by this? Well, the entire purpose of Civeo is to set up accommodation facilities in areas where alternatives are either too costly or simply dont exist. This means that many of its operations are set in regions that may not have the same kind of clustering ability that others might have for the businesss customers. As such, you would imagine that the real win for the business is when commodity prices are high enough that their customers can afford to spend more on projects that might otherwise be suboptimal. Because of this, my plan for Civeo has been to have a small stake to benefit from the run-up in energy and other commodity prices, but the real payday is like when oil prices hit around $70 per barrel.

Based on the data provided, I must say that recent developments involving Civeo are mostly encouraging. The firm does still have some trouble with its occupancy rates and the amount that it charges its customers, but the overall financial picture, because of the firms flexibility, appears fine for now. Eventually, to get a nice payday, we will need commodity prices to rise further, but I believe that in the next year or two, theres a pretty good chance of that taking place. Until then, I am likely to hold my stake, unless I find some other prospect that makes more sense for me.

Disclosure: I am/we are long CVEO.

I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Civeo: Some Nice Progress But It's A Long Road - Seeking Alpha

Power and Progress Music Festival back for sixth year – Columbus Telegram

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

COLUMBUS Area performers are tuning up for an annual showcase of musical talent.

Twenty-five acts will take the stage Aug. 4-6 during the Power and Progress Music Festival at Camp Pawnee.

For the sixth year, the event is presenting a lineup of bands covering a variety of genres.

We try to include more diverse acts every year. We reach out to musical acts all across the state, said Tom Adelman, one of the event organizers.

Adelman, a member of The Midland Band, said the event has grown over the years, in both attendance, which reached around 800 in 2016, and the number of musicians who want to participate.

We get a lot of submissions every year. Its hard to choose. We have to pick and choose who we want. I wish we could have everyone, Adelman said.

The festival focuses on displaying the talent of area musicians. The lineup typically includes acts from Columbus, Omaha, Lincoln and Norfolk. This year, there are also regional bands from Kansas and Minnesota.

We really try to have a broad spectrum, Adelman said of the type of music played, which ranges from bluegrass, 80s and tribute tunes to punk, funk, jazz and electronic music performed by bands and DJs.

A couple of bands Adelman expects to be big draws are tribute bands Rock and Roll Suicide from Omaha and Lincoln-based Jerry Pranksters. The Omaha group will perform songs by David Bowie and the Lincoln band will play music from the Grateful Dead.

The event is open to people of all ages and camping space is available, including a separate area for families. Music will be played on two stages with live performances taking place until the early morning hours.

The event starts at 5 p.m. Friday and runs until noon the following Sunday.

The lineup includes the following performers: The Midland Band, Kind Country, Funk Trek, Linear Symmetry, Rock and Roll Suicide, Jerry Pranksters, 3 Son Green, DJ Blac, Chemicals, Pure Brown, Slow Stoics, Floppydisco, JMNM, Dr. Webb, Zed Midland (Midland Band tribute to Zed Tempo), Dudes Gone Rude, The Grand Poobah, Soul Tree, Ruegazz, Levi and Hammersaw.

Along with the music, a number of art and food vendors will be on site. There will also be a costume contest Saturday night with prizes awarded.

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Power and Progress Music Festival back for sixth year - Columbus Telegram

Battery progress, diesel approvals, Toyota solid-state cells, CAFE rules, Bollinger B1: The Week in Reverse – Green Car Reports

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

Which new electric vehicle wowed a crowd that didn't expect it to be as cool as it turned out?

What environmental regulation is the NHTSA seemingly getting ready to roll back under Trump?

This is our look back at the Week In Reverseright here at Green Car Reportsfor the week ending on Friday, July 28, 2017.

Friday, we covered two separate EPA approvals for diesel vehicles: the agency approved modifications to 326,000 of the oldest, dirtiest VW diesels, and it finally certified 2017 Ram 1500 and Jeep Grand Cherokee EcoDiesel vehicles for sale.

In 2019, Formula E racing will gain two new, prestigious competitors, as both Mercedes-Benz and Porsche said they will enter the electric-car racing series for its sixth season, joining Audi, BMW, and Jaguar.

2016/2017 Team ABT Schaeffler Audi Sport Formula E race car

On Thursday evening, we attended the global debut of the Bollinger B1 all-electric utility truckwhich wowed more than a few people not expecting much from an electric truck designed by a tiny company in upstate New York.

(Our colleagues at the sports and luxury car site Motor Authority were far more effusive: they called the Bollinger B1 "the coolest electric car you've never heard of.")

If you're expecting regular, radical, revolutionary advances in batteries for electric cars, take a deep breath. Battery evolution will largely come via incremental improvements, rather than transformative leaps.

We also warned against the anti-electric-car propaganda in a new video, which was roundly debunked by pointing out numerous errors in actual facts. Facts are hard.

Wednesday, an EV driver explained why he added solar panels to the family house after one used electric car became five separate plug-in vehicles.

Photovoltaic solar panel installation on house, Fremont, California [image: Shiva Singh]

The NHTSA under Trump will review future fuel-economy standards, and could roll back increases to freeze the 2021 standards through 2025.

On Tuesday, a report indicated that Toyota will launch an electric car with a solid-state battery, though not until 2022. We updated that story later in the week as a handful of new details emerged.

And in a relatively rare editorial piece, we suggest that a few electric-car owners should get off their high horses and adopt a gentler tone toward new electric-car drivers.

We kicked off the week on Monday by updating our glossary of green-car terms from four years ago to include the latest terms to keep track of.

Staff at the powerful California Air Resources Board, meanwhile, recommended approval of VW's "Electrify America" plan for increasing zero-emission vehicle infrastructure in the state. (The approval came on Thursday.)

We also came across an oddball story that's one of our favorites: the oldest Toyota Prius hybrid in the world was made in 1946. Confused? We explained (with video).

Those were our main stories this week; we'll see you again next week. Until then, this has been the Green Car Reports Week in Reverse update.

________________________________________________

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Battery progress, diesel approvals, Toyota solid-state cells, CAFE rules, Bollinger B1: The Week in Reverse - Green Car Reports

Marin County gets another smug reprieve from housing quotas – Sacramento Bee

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

Sacramento Bee

Marin County gets another smug reprieve from housing quotas
Sacramento Bee
... George Will wrote, a Baedeker guide to a desolate region, the monochromatic inner landscape of persons whose life is consumption, of goods and salvations, and whose moral makeup is the curious modern combination of hedonism and earnestness..

Apple Removes Apps From China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship – New York Times

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

Sunday Yokubaitis, president of Golden Frog, a company that makes privacy and security software including VyprVPN, said its software, too, had been taken down from the app store. We gladly filed an amicus brief in support of Apple in their backdoor encryption battle with the F.B.I., he said, so we are extremely disappointed that Apple has bowed to pressure from China to remove VPN apps without citing any Chinese law or regulation that makes VPN illegal.

He added, We view access to internet in China as a human rights issue, and I would expect Apple to value human rights over profits.

In a statement, Apple noted that the Chinese government announced this year that all developers offering VPNs needed to obtain a government license. We have been required to remove some VPN apps in China that do not meet the new regulations, the company said. These apps remain available in all other markets where they do business.

This is not the first time that Apple has removed apps at the request of the Chinese government, but it is a new reminder of how deeply beholden the tech giant has become to Beijing at a moment when the leadership has been pushing to tighten its control over the internet.

The removals signal a new push by China to control the internet. In the past, the Great Firewall has used technology to disrupt VPNs, and Beijing has shut down Chinese VPNs and even aimed a huge cyberattack at a well-known foreign site hosting code that circumvented the filters.

But they also mark the first time China has successfully used its influence with a major foreign tech platform, like Apple, to push back against the software makers.

While internet crackdowns often peak every five years, ahead of a key Chinese Communist Party congress, this years efforts cover fresh ground, a likely indication that stricter controls of things like VPNs will persist after the congress this autumn. Earlier this month, China also began a partial block of the Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp.

Greater China is Apples largest market outside the United States. That has left the company more vulnerable than almost any other American technology firm to a Chinese campaign to wean itself off foreign technology and tighten control over foreign tech companies operating there.

In response, Apple has made a number of moves to ensure that it stays on Beijings good side. Last year, the company complied with what it said was a request from the Chinese authorities to remove from its China app store news apps created by The New York Times.

This month, the company said it would open its first data center in China to comply with a new law that pushes foreign firms to store more of their data in China.

Apple has operated its app store in China for many years with only the occasional run-in with the government. The VPN crackdown and Beijings move in December to target news sites indicates that Chinas internet regulators have taken a deeper interest, and are exerting more control, over what is available on Apples China app store.

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the software produced by Golden Frog. It is VyprVPN, not VyperVPN.

Carolyn Zhang contributed research from Shanghai.

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Apple Removes Apps From China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship - New York Times

Activists Say Censorship in North Korea Will Not Last – VOA Learning English

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

North Korea has increased efforts in recent years to prevent outside information from entering the country.

But international activists say technology and outside forces will one day lead to the end of state censorship.

North Korea is one of the most disconnected nations in the world. The country has a ban on foreign media. Most people do not have access to the Internet. The Transitional Justice Working Group reports that the government has even executed citizens for sharing media from South Korea. The group researches human rights abuses in North Korea.

North Korea is following a similar method to other authoritarian governments, observers in Cuba and Myanmar say. Cuban and Burmese leaders of organizations that have fought censorship in their own countries recently met in Seoul to share their experiences with Koreans doing similar work.

Cuba

In Cuba, as in North Korea, there is a growing demand for foreign movies and television programs. This has made the business of illegally bringing in outside information increasingly profitable.

Rafael Duval is with Cubanet, an independent news organization that fights government restrictions in Cuba.

Cubanet uses devices such as USB drives and DVDs to spread a weekly collection of foreign videos and other materials. The collection is called "El Paquete" "the package" in English. Cubanet delivers the materials through the black market a system through which things are bought and sold illegally.

Duval says it is the job of some Cuban officials to prevent foreign media from entering the country. But many of them accept illegal payments in exchange for not reporting the sharing of media. And many officials often use foreign media themselves, he adds.

Another project helps Cubans who have email accounts find out information from the Internet. About 25 percent of Cubans have access to email.

The project, called Apretaste, connects Cubans with volunteers in places like the U.S. state of Florida. Cubans can email questions to the volunteers. The volunteers then send them the Internet search results. The organization responds to more than 100,000 requests for information each month.

Myanmar

Myanmar is another country where the free exchange of information has increased. Before the countrys democratic reforms in 2011, the military government closely controlled the Internet.

But its loose border with Thailand, along with a rise in satellite television receivers in the country, brought change. This change made it easy for exiled opposition groups to get around the governments restrictions on media.

North Koreas growing black market

The North Korean economy has grown in recent years, even with international sanctions placed on the country because of its continued missile tests.

In the past year, the countrys gross domestic product rose 3.9 percent. The Bank of Korea in Seoul says the increase was driven in part by the exports of coal and other minerals.

But there is also a private market in the country that is driving economic growth. The communist government lets it operate, but does not officially approve of it.

A recent study says that most North Koreans now earn about 75 percent of their money from the black market. The study was done by the Beyond Parallel project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

The illegal export of North Korean fish, shoes, cigarettes and cooking oil has given has given people new buying power. This power makes it possible for them to bring in outside information and technology.

Nat Kretchun is deputy director of the Open Technology Fund. The project is supported by Radio Free Asia, or RFA. RFA and VOA are each part of the U.S. government-supported Broadcasting Board of Governors.

Kretchun says technology like televisions and DVD players are now ubiquitous -- or seemingly everywhere -- in North Korea.

The number of legal North Korean mobile phone users has also grown in recent years. Many North Korean cell phones were able to spread unapproved media and information. But recent changes to the phones operating systems added censorship and surveillance technology.

Kretchun says the technology blocks unapproved media files from being used on North Korean phones.

However, activists are developing technology of their own in response to government actions.

Kim Seung-chul is a North Korean who fled to South Korea. He created North Korea Reform Radio, which sends anti-government messages to the North.

Kim feels the South Korean government should offer more support to groups working to get into North Koreas closed information environment.

The South Korean government, conservatives, veterans and famous people have a lot of money, but they do not use the money for this. They get angry about North Koreas situation, but they do not act, Kim said.

Im Pete Musto. And I'm Ashley Thompson.

Brian Padden and Youmi Kim reported this story for VOA News. Pete Musto adapted it for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

We want to hear from you. How long do you think it will be before North Korea becomes more open? Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

________________________________________________________________

censorship n. the system or practice of examining books, movies, or letters in order to remove things that are considered to be offensive, immoral, harmful to society

authoritarian adj. not allowing personal freedom

black market n. a system through which things are bought and sold illegally

account(s) n. an arrangement in which a person uses the Internet or e-mail services of a particular company

sanction(s) n. an action that is taken or an order that is given to force a country to obey international laws by limiting or stopping trade with that country, by not allowing economic aid for that country

gross domestic product n. the total value of the goods and services produced by the people of a nation during a year not including the value of income earned in foreign countries

communist adj. used to describes a person or people who believe in a way of organizing a society in which the government owns the things that are used to make and transport products and there is no privately owned property

ubiquitous adj. seeming to be seen everywhere

surveillance n. the act of carefully watching someone or something especially in order to prevent or detect a crime

veteran(s) n. someone who fought in a war as a soldier or sailor

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Activists Say Censorship in North Korea Will Not Last - VOA Learning English

The wrong way to preserve free speech on campus | TheHill – The Hill (blog)

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

Americans are fighting a new war on college campuses this time over free speech and no one is winning.

On the left, aggressive protesters have silenced speeches by conservative thinkers, using intolerance to demand tolerance. On the right, conservatives condemn the suppression of free speech with equally ill-conceived tactics. A recent model policy from the Goldwater Institute urges state legislators to not only intervene in the campus disciplinary process for public universities but also mandate punishments, such as one-year suspensions or even expulsions for any student twice found responsible for infringing the expressive rights of others.

ProfessorWatchlist.org, launched in November of 2016 by Turning Point USA, lists close to 200 instructors who, it maintains, advance a radical agenda in lecture halls. At Cornell University, a conservative measure to increase ideological diversity by mandating hiring practices was defeated by one vote in the student assembly in February.

We can do better than this. Protecting free speech and academic freedom is not a liberal or conservative issue. Its an American issue. And its a problem we must solve together. For colleges and universities, this requires policy changes (e.g., eliminating censorship codes) as well as cultural changes (i.e., convincing more members of the campus community, from faculty to students to administrators, that free speech and open discussion is not only desirable, but worth defending).

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), at least 42 colleges and universities withdrew invitations to controversial speakers in 2016 double the number that were withdrawn in 2015. FIREs research also shows that 40 percent of U.S. colleges and universities have speech codes, or regulations that prohibit expression normally protected by the First Amendment.

This goes on all over the country on campuses, Bill Maher recently commented, criticizing his fellow liberals for preventing Ann Coulter from speaking at Berkeley. I feel like this is the liberals version of book burning. And its got to stop.

Some institutions and academics are responding to the challenge. In May, Middlebury College disciplined 67 students for their role in suppressing a speech by author Charles Murray (although none of the students was suspended or expelled). Ideological opposites Cornel West and Robert George, both professors at Princeton, issued a joint statement after the Middlebury incident, supporting truth seeking, democracy, and freedom of thought and expression. The Association for Governing Boards, an organization that advises boards of trustees, strongly endorsed free expression and tolerance in its recent statement on Campus Climate, Inclusion, and Civility.

Yet there are still challenges to overcome at other campuses. Recently, campus police couldnt guarantee Professor Bret Weinsteins safety at Evergreen State College after he raised concerns and asked for discussion around a day of absence officially sanctioned by the school. The students protesting and threatening Weinstein, however, were given an audience with their colleges president. Meanwhile, conservative lawmakers, in misguided attempts to curtail censorship, are responding with calls to eliminate federal funding for schools that restrict speech.

At their best, college campuses are safe havens for intellectual freedom places to confront and explore our differences and learn from the interactions. At their worst, they can become battlegrounds where political tribes fight for territory. Publicly shaming speakers on ideological grounds or targeting professors based on their political affiliation does not challenge their ideas. By unleashing politically motivated bullying, from the left or the right, the nation takes an intellectual risk that imagination will be replaced by fear, innovation by intimidation.

Free speech is a shared American value. Protecting it requires forming unlikely allies not unnecessary enemies. Our uncivil war needs to end.

Sarah Ruger directs the Charles Koch Institutes free expression initiatives.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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The wrong way to preserve free speech on campus | TheHill - The Hill (blog)

‘It’s a Massive Assault on Free Speech’: Australian Leaders React to Proposed ‘Jesus Ban’ in Schools – CBN News

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

Government officials in the Australian state of Queensland have introduced a policy that would ban Christmas cards, references to Jesus, and anything that could be classified as evangelization from public schools, the Daily Mail Australia reported.

A recent Department of Education report voices concerns that unbridled freedom of religion has led to non-religious children being forced to entertain the Christian beliefs of their peers.

According to these officials, schools are expected to take appropriate action if they find that students who receive religious instruction are evangelizing to those who do not. Evangelization covers a range of speech and actions, including distributing Christmas cards with photos or words referencing Jesus birth and life, making religious-themed ornaments, and handing out bracelets to share the good news about Jesus.

If such evangelization is left unchecked, the report claims that it could adversely affect the schools ability to provide a safe, supportive and inclusive environment.

According to the Daily Mail, the recent initiative comes after Queensland Education Minister Kate Jones promised to crack down on religious practices. The report has received negative reactions from religious freedom advocates and political leaders who fear Jones has gone too far.

Speaking to The Australian, Neil Foster, a religion and law professor, called the Department of Educations requests deeply concerning and possibly illegal.

Centre for Independent Studies research fellow Peter Kurti said the report constitutes a massive assault on freedom of speech and freedom of religion and believes that the governments concerns are completely unwarranted.

I dont think that children have the maturity to comprehend let alone evangelize, he told The Australian.

On Thursday, Education Minister Jones assured that there have been no officials changes to state policy regarding the issue, stressing that no one is telling a child what they can and cant say in the playground, Sky News reported.

Still, a number of Queensland members of parliament, including Fisher MP Andrew Wallace and Fairfax MP Ted OBrien, have called the mere suggestion of such a policy ludicrous, and have called for the government to officially denounce the ban.

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'It's a Massive Assault on Free Speech': Australian Leaders React to Proposed 'Jesus Ban' in Schools - CBN News

Comedian Adam Carolla Testifies on Free Speech Abuse Before … – Capital Research Center

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

On July 27, Comedian Adam Carolla testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the threat to free speech and diversity of thought across Americas college campuses.

Carolla was invited to the congressional hearing, entitled Challenges to Freedom of Speech on College Campuses, because of his partnership with conservative radio talk personality Dennis Prager in their upcoming feature film,No Safe Spaces.

In the film, Prager and Carolla journey to colleges and universities to uncover the war on freedom of speech and diversity of thought, exposing the threat so-called safe spaces pose to our nations future. In the testimony, Carolla offers his own take on the issue of identity politics:

When a Democratic congresswoman raised the subject of race and diversity on college campuses, Carolla chimed in.

Geez. I want to talk about my white privilege so badly, the comedian said. I graduated North Hollywood High with a 1.7 GPA and could not find a job. I walked to a fire station. I was 19 and living in the garage of my family home and my mom was on welfare and food stamps. I said, Can I get a job as a fireman? and they said, No, because youre not black, Hispanic or a woman and well see you in about seven years.

The testimony was picked up in the media, and was featured on the Washington Examiner, Washington Free Beacon, and the New York Times. Carolla also penned an op-ed featured in the Daily Beast explaining why he was invited to speak before Congress:

Ive been asked to testify before Congress Thursday morning on the topic of free speech on college campuses. I talk for a living. Words matter to me. I earn my paycheck from making people laugh, but whats going on across the country at many of our nations universities is anything but funny. (See what I did there!)

What kind of preparation is being provided if we are avoiding discussions on tough subjects? Are true facts and best research being sidelined because its taboo to someones feelings?

Watch the complete hearinghere:

No Safe Spaces was successfully crowd-funded more than $500,000. CRCs Dangerous Documentaries has supported it with another $500,000 of matching funds.

No Safe Spacesis set to release in 2018, and will be directed by Justin Folk and produced by Mark Joseph. CRC president Scott Walter and Dangerous Documentaries founder Joseph Klein are the films executive producers. See the trailer forNo Safe Spaces here:

Dangerous Documentaries is a project of the Capital Research Center.

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Comedian Adam Carolla Testifies on Free Speech Abuse Before ... - Capital Research Center

From the Enlightenment to the Dark Ages: How new atheism slid … – Salon

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

The new atheist movement emerged shortly after the 9/11 attacks with a best-selling book by Sam Harris called The End of Faith. This was followed by engaging tomes authored by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and the late Christopher Hitchens, among others. Avowing to champion the values of science and reason, the movement offered a growing number of unbelievers tired of faith-based foolishness mucking up society for the rest of us some hope for the future. For many years I was among the new atheism movements greatest allies.

From the start, though, the movement had some curious quirks. Although many atheists are liberals and empirical studies link higher IQs to both liberalism and atheism, Hitchens gradually abandoned his Trotskyist political affiliations for what could, in my view, be best described as a neoconservative outlook. Indeed, he explicitly endorsed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, now widely seen as perhaps the greatest foreign policy blunder in American history.

There were also instances in which critiques of religion, most notably Islam, went beyond what was both intellectually warranted and strategically desirable. For example, Harris wrote in a 2004 Washington Times op-ed that We are at war with Islam. He added a modicum of nuance in subsequent sentences, but I know of no experts on Islamic terrorism who would ever suggest that uttering such a categorical statement in a public forum is judicious. As the terrorism scholar Will McCant noted in an interview that I conducted with him last year, there are circumstances in which certain phrases even if true are best not uttered, since they are unnecessarily incendiary. In what situation would claiming that the West is engaged in a civilizational clash with an entire religion actually improve the expected outcome?

Despite these peccadilloes, if thats what they are, new atheism still had much to offer. Yet the gaffes kept on coming, to the point that no rational person could simply dismiss them as noise in the signal. For example, Harris said in 2014 that new atheism was dominated by men because it lacks the nurturing, coherence-building extra estrogen vibe that you would want by default if you wanted to attract as many women as men.

This resulted in an exodus of women from the movement who decided that the new atheist label was no longer for them. (I know of many diehard atheist women who wantednothing to do with new atheism, which is a real shame.) Harris attempted self-exoneration didnt help, either it merely revealed a moral scotoma in his understanding of gender, sexism and related issues. What he should have done is, quite simply, said Im sorry. These words, I have come to realize, are nowhere to be found in the new atheist lexicon.

Subsequent statements about profiling at airports, serious allegations of rape at atheist conferences, and tweets from major leaders that (oops!) linked to white supremacist websites further alienated women, people of color and folks that one could perhaps describe as morally normal. Yet some of us mostly white men like myself persisted in our conviction that, overall, the new atheist movement was still a force for good in the world. It is an extraordinary personal embarrassment that I maintained this view until the present year.

For me, it was a series of recent events that pushed me over the edge. As a philosopher someone who cares deeply about intellectual honesty, verifiable evidence, critical thinking and moral thoughtfulness I now find myself in direct opposition with many new atheist leaders. That is, I see my own advocacy for science, critical thought and basic morality as standing in direct opposition to their positions.

Just consider a recent tweet from one of the most prominent new atheist luminaries, Peter Boghossian: Why is it that nearly every male whos a 3rd wave intersectional feminist is physically feeble & has terrible body habitus? If this is what it means to be a reasonable person, then who would want to be that? Except for the vocabulary, that looks like something youd find in Donald Trumps Twitter feed. The same goes for another of Boghossians deep thoughts: Ive never understood how someone could be proud of being gay. How can one be proud of something one didnt work for? Its hard to know where to even begin dissecting this bundle of shameful ignorance.

More recently, Boghossian and his sidekick James Lindsay published a hoax academic paper in a gender studies journal (except that it wasnt) in an attempt to embarrass the field of gender studies, which they having no expertise in the field believe is dominated by a radical feminist ideology that sees the penis as the root of all evil. Ive explained twice why this hoax actually just revealed a marked lack of skepticism among skeptics themselves, so I wont go further into the details here. Suffice it to say that while bemoaning the sloppy scholarship of gender studies scholars, Boghossian and Lindsays explanation of the hoax in a Skeptic article contained philosophical mistakes that a second-year undergraduate could detect. Even more, their argument for how the hoax paper exposes gender studies as a fraud contains a demonstrable fatal error that is, it gets a crucial fact wrong, thus rendering their argument unsound.

The point is this: One would expect skeptics, of all people, who claim to be responsive to the evidence, to acknowledge this factual error. Yet not a single leader of the new atheist movement has publicly mentioned the factual problems with the hoax. Had someone (or preferably all of them) done this, it would have affirmed the new atheist commitment to intellectual honesty, to putting truth before pride and epistemology before ideology, thereby restoring its damaged credibility.

Even worse, Boghossian and Lindsay explicitly argue, in response to some critics, that they dont need to know the field of gender studies to criticize it. This is, properly contextualized, about as anti-intellectual as one can get. Sure, it is a fallacy to immediately dismiss someones criticisms of a topic simply because that person doesnt have a degree on the topic. Doing this is called the Courtiers Reply. But it decidedly isnt a fallacy to criticize someone for being incredibly ignorant and even ignorant of their own ignorance regarding an issue theyre making strong, confident-sounding claims about. Kids, listen to me: Knowledge is a good thing, despite what Boghossian and Lindsay suggest, and you should always work hard to understand a position before you level harsh criticisms at it. Otherwise youll end up looking like a fool to those in the know.

Along these lines, the new atheist movement has flirted with misogyny for years. Harris estrogen vibe statement which yielded a defense rather than a gracious apology was only the tip of the iceberg. As mentioned above, there have been numerous allegations of sexual assault, and atheist conferences have pretty consistently been male-dominated resulting in something like a gender Matthew effect.

Many leading figures have recently allied themselves with small-time television personality Dave Rubin, a guy who has repeatedly given Milo Yiannopoulos the professional right-wing troll who once said that little boys would stop complaining about being raped by Catholic priests if the priests were as good-looking as he is a platform on his show. In a tweet from last May, Rubin said Id like a signed copy, please in response to a picture that reads: Ah. Peace and quiet. #ADayWithoutAWoman. If, say, Paul Ryan were asked, hed describe this as sort of like the textbook definition of a misogynistic comment. Did any new atheist leaders complain about this tweet? Of course not, much to the frustration of critical thinkers like myself who actually care about how women are treated in society.

In fact, the magazine Skeptic just published a glowing review of Yiannopoulos recent book, Dangerous. The great irony of this intellectual misstep is that Yiannopoulos embodies the opposite of nearly every trend of moral progress that Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic, identifies in his book The Moral Arc.

Yiannopoulos is a radical anti-intellectual, often ignoring facts or simply lying about issues; he uses hyperbolic rhetoric (e.g., feminism is cancer) that stymies rather than promotes rational discussion; he holds some outright racist views; he professes nonsensical views, such as the idea that birth control makes women unattractive and crazy; he uses hate speech, which indicates that hes not a very nice person; he once publicly called out a transgender student by name during a talk; and he supports Donald Trump, who has essentially led a society-wide campaign against the Enlightenment. Oh, and need I mention that Yiannopoulos once said that if it werent for his own experience of abuse by a Catholic priest, he never would have learned to give such good head? The merger between the alt-right and the new atheist movement continues to solidify.

Perhaps the most alarming instance of irrationality in recent memory, though, is Sam Harris recent claim that black people are less intelligent than white people. This emerged from a conversation that Harris had with Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve and a monetary recipient of the racist Pioneer Fund. There are two issues worth dwelling upon here. The first is scientific: Despite what Harris asserts, science does not support the conclusion that there are gene-based IQ differences between the races. To confirm this, I emailed the leading psychologist Howard Gardner, who told me that The racial difference speculations of Herrnstein and Murray remain very controversial, as well as James Flynn (world-renowned for the Flynn effect), who responded that, Taking into account the range of evidence, I believe that black and white Americans are not distinguished by genes for IQ. However, the debate is ongoing.

The point is simply this: Scottish philosopher David Hume famously declared that the wise person always proportions her beliefs to the evidence. It follows that when a community of experts is divided on an issue, it behooves the rational non-expert to hold her opinion in abeyance. In direct opposition of this epistemic principle, Harris takes a firm stand on race and intelligence even receiving adulation for doing this from other white men in the new atheist community. A more thoughtful public intellectual would have said: Look, this is a very complicated issue that leading psychologists disagree about. A minority say there is a genetically based correlation between race and IQ while many others claim just the opposite, with perhaps the largest group holding that we simply dont know enough right now. Since I am rational, I too will say that we simply dont know.

The second issue is ethical: Is it right, wise or justified to publicly declare that one race is genetically inferior to another, given the immense societal consequences this could have? Not only could this claim empower white supremacists individuals who wouldnt be sympathetic with Harris follow-up claim that generalizations about a race of people dont warrant discriminating against individual members of that race but science tells us that such information can have direct and appreciable negative consequences for members of the targeted race. For example, stereotype threat describes how the mere mention that ones racial class is inferior can have measurable detrimental effects on ones cognitive performance. Similarly, teacher expectancy effects refer to this; if teachers are told that some students are smart and others are dumb, where the smart and dumb labels are randomly assigned, the smart students will statistically do better in class than the dumb ones.

To broadcast a scientifically questionable meme that could have serious bad effects for people already struggling in a society that was founded upon racism and is still struggling to overcome it is, I would argue, the height of intellectual irresponsibility.

Although the new atheist movement once filled me with a great sense of optimism about the future of humanity, this is no longer the case. Movements always rise and fall they have a life cycle, of sorts but the fall of this movement has been especially poignant for me. The new atheists of today would rather complain about trigger warnings in classrooms than eliminate rape on campuses. Theyd rather whine about safe spaces than help transgender people feel accepted by society. They loudly claim to support free speech and yet routinely ban dissenters from social media, blogs and websites.

They say they care about facts, yet refuse to change their beliefs when inconvenient data are presented. They decry people who make strong assertions outside of their field and yet feel perfectly entitled to make fist-poundingly confident claims about issues they know little about. And they apparently dont give a damn about alienating women and people of color, a truly huge demographic of potential allies in the battle against religious absurdity.

On a personal note, a recent experience further cemented my view that the new atheists are guilty of false advertising. A podcaster named Lalo Dagach saw that I had criticized Harris understanding of Islamic terrorism, which I believe lacks scholarly rigor. In response, he introduced me to his Twitter audience of 31,000 people as follows: Phil Torres (@xriskology) everyone. Mourns the loss of ISIS and celebrates attacks on atheists. Below this tweet was a screenshot of the last two articles I had written for Salonone about the importance of listening to the experts on terrorism, and the other about how the apocalyptic ideology of the Islamic extremists of ISIS is more likely to evolve into new forms than go extinct.

First of all, Dagachs tweet was overtly defamatory. I wrote him asking for a public apology and heard nothing back, although he quietly deleted the tweet. But even that did not happen until I had received a hailstorm of disturbing responses to Dagachs false statements, responses in the form of internet trolls aggressively defending Harris by asking me to kill myself and proposing new nicknames like Phil Hitler Torres (seriously!). This is the new atheist movement today, by and large. The great enemy of critical thinking and epistemological integrity, namely tribalism, has become the social glue of the community.

I should still be the new atheist movements greatest ally, yet today I want nothing whatsoever to do with it. From censoring people online while claiming to support free speech to endorsing scientifically unfounded claims about race and intelligence to asserting, as Harris once did, that the profoundly ignorant Ben Carson would make a better president than the profoundly knowledgeable Noam Chomsky, the movement has repeatedly shown itself to lack precisely the values it once avowed to uphold. Words that now come to mind when I think of new atheism are un-nuanced, heavy-handed, unjustifiably confident and resistant to evidence not to mention, on the whole, misogynist and racist.

And while there are real and immensely important issuesto focus on in the world, such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, food production, ocean acidification, the sixth mass extinction and so on, even the most cursory glance at any leading new atheists social-media feed reveals a bizarre obsession with what they call the regressive left. This is heartbreaking, because humanity needs thoughtful, careful, nuanced, scientifically minded thinkers more now than ever before.

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From the Enlightenment to the Dark Ages: How new atheism slid ... - Salon

Mars colonization – Android Marvel (blog)

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

Android Marvel (blog)

Mars colonization
Android Marvel (blog)
Mars would be a boring place to live according to Physicist Brian Cox · July 29, 2017 Abhin Mahipal 0 Comments Brian Cox, Mars, Mars colonization. According to popular physicist Brian Cox, humans will live in cities on Mars within the next 50 to 100 years.

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Mars colonization - Android Marvel (blog)

U.S., NATO Forces Train to Deter and Defend in Saber Guardian … – Department of Defense

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Danzig

CONSTANTA, Romania, July 28, 2017 The Danube River shore was shrouded in mist from smoke grenades as shells fired from naval guns burst in midair and legions of Romanian infantrymen, paratroopers and armored vehicles amassed on the beach. From behind them, a small contingent of U.S. Army Stryker vehicles cleared the way for the troops by raining gunfire down on the beach sands.

The event, a river crossing exercise that took place July 16 outside Bordusani, Romania, was one of dozens of combined combat-training exercises that U.S. Army Europe and the armed forces of 21 European partner nations conducted together as part of Saber Guardian 2017. The annual multinational combat-training exercise took place July 11-20 in locations across Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria and involved 25,000 troops -- 14,000 from the United States and 11,000 from Europe.

The exercise was the military's largest land-force exercise in Europe this year, said Marine Corps Col. Mark Van Skike, the chief of joint training and exercises for U.S. European Command. Saber Guardian is one of 18 exercises in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea that fall under the Eucom Joint Exercise Program.

Led by Bulgaria and the U.S., Saber Guardian was hosted by Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. 'Other participants include: Armenia, Croatia, Czech, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.

Realistic Training

The U.S. and European units work and train together in realistic combat scenarios that prepare them to respond in unison to any new security crisis that emerges on the continent. They practice coordinating air, land, and sea forces to launch multidomain assaults or defense operations. And they cooperate to mobilize and transport multinational forces to an area at short notice.

"This is a tremendous experience. We're getting better in interoperability and in establishing secure communications, secure fires and a common operational picture," said Army Col. Jeff Shoemaker, chief of training, readiness and exercises for U.S. Army Europe.

Deterrence is also a core component of the mission. Brig. Gen. Timothy Daugherty, deputy chief of staff for operations for USAREUR, said the United States demonstrates through these exercises that it will stand with its European partners, and that all the participating nations together show that they can be a powerful unified fighting force -- and that adversaries who see this may be much less likely to launch an attack in the first place.

"That is absolutely a viable deterrent. When an adversary sees that we can consolidate troops very quickly and relatively effectively, that is a deterrent. We're deterring them, because they know that it would be costly to attack," Daugherty said.

U.S. Army Europe and its partners conducted the first Saber Guardian exercise in 2013. It took on added importance in its organizers' eyes a year later with Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, said Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the commander of U.S. Army Europe. European military leaders needed assurance that they and the United States could act together to prevent warfare from erupting further west into Europe's heartland, he said.

Hodges noted that NATO nations held a summit in July 2016 in Warsaw, Poland, in which they called for building a stronger "forward defense force" in Central and Eastern Europe to counteract new regional threats.

"With its illegal annexation of Crimea, Russia changed the security environment in Europe. That's why the alliance made the decision that we had to reassure our allies and deter further aggression," Hodges said.

In the meantime, the exercises can better prepare the militaries of NATO member nations if new crises emerge, Shoemaker said. But he, too, foresees Saber Guardian offering NATO some pathways forward.

"The goal is to synchronize the NATO exercise program with the USAREUR exercise program so that they complement one another," he said. "We have a number of countries that will leave Saber Guardian at a much better level of training, and certainly NATO will benefit from that. It builds the entire multinational military capability."

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U.S., NATO Forces Train to Deter and Defend in Saber Guardian ... - Department of Defense

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