Finland Tourism: The Symphony of Extremes: Born from Finnish DNA – eTurboNews

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To honor the 100th Anniversary of the countrys independence, Visit Finland has launched an exciting new campaign: The Symphony of Extremes Born from Finnish DNA. As Finland is a nation of vast extremes, not only in its weather and seasons, but in its peoples adventurous lifestyles and taste for both headbanging metal and classical music as well, Visit Finland will delve into the nations distinct character by examining its heritage and culture and turning the Finnish genotype into music.

The Symphony of the Extremes Born from Finnish DNA delves deep into the Finnish psyche to introduce Finlandscultural core, by tracking the composition of a new piece by heavy metal band Apocalyptica, who use Finnish DNA samples as raw material for a genre-crossing track which will premiere later this year along with an visually-engaging music video to showcase the work of art globally. The campaign trailer is now available on its official website: http://www.visitfinland.com/symphonyofextremes/.

The campaign closely follows the creative process and highlights a group of noteworthy people behind the genes, each of whom exhibit some extreme and distinctively Finnish trait, such as sisu, their unique grit, or a strong bond with the Arctic.

A number of professionals at the apex of their fields will also be brought together, including Jonathan Middleton, visiting professor at the University of Tampere who has developed a program that can create sounds from the base pairs found in DNA; and Eicca Toppinen, a member of the Finnish cello metal band Apocalyptica formed in 1993, who will then compose a new piece of music based on DNA samples gathered around Finland by geneticists. The campaign starts with the collection of the genes, culminating in the works publication by late 2017.

The Symphony of Extremes will also focus on extreme freediver Johanna Nordblad; Tinja Myllykangas who lives with dozens of dogs in the wilderness of Lapland; and a group of children living in the extreme conditions of outer Finnish Archipelago. Their unique and personal stories will inspire international audiences and also draw attention to the mysterious wonders of Finland, drawing in tourism and visitors around the globe.

This cooperation involves extensive research, product development, and expertise from a number of key academic influencers including Paivi Onkamo, lecturer of genetics in The University of Helsinki; Jonathan Middleton, a composer based in Spokane where he teaches composition at Eastern Washington University; and Janna Saarela, research director of Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland.

Finland appeals to travelers searching for unique and extreme experiences in their destinations. For example, there are 500,000 summer cottages throughout the country, 188,000 lakes, over 3,000,000 saunas (more than the number of cars), 179,000 islands and over 70% of the land covered by forest. Its spectacular nature wonders has attracted travelers and lovers of the outdoors to visit Finland from all over the world.

Besides its stunning landscape wonders, Finlands seasons present extreme conditions that test the strength of its people, with freezing temperatures reaching -51C in the winter when the sun doesnt rise above the horizon for 52 days in Lapland, and 70 days of midnight sun in the summer; and these intense conditions seem to have given birth to an impressive 3,400 Finnish metal bands that rock the country with sound waves.

Over the year, Visit Finland will orchestrate this grand campaign of audio-visual stimulation to showcase the unique and authentic Finland in all its extreme adventure and glory, and to enhance the destinations brand awareness to markets across the globe. Audiences can expect a very real, firsthand look into the nations core DNA, from its peoples ancestry, love of extreme sports, to its rural communities passion for environmental sustainability.

Finland has also been named one of the top countries in the world for travelers, receiving the accolade in Lonely Planets Best in Travel 2017, the highly anticipated collection of the worlds hottest trends, destinations, and experiences for the year ahead

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Finland Tourism: The Symphony of Extremes: Born from Finnish DNA - eTurboNews

Akinator is a mind-reader game application that you need to try! – Inquirer.net

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DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the contributor/s and do not represent those of InqPOP! and INQUIRER.net.

All InqPOP! Creator Community submissions appear as is, without any editorial intervention. The InqPOP! staff assumes no liability for any error in the content of this material.

Submitted by: Vianca Antonette Catibog

Are you looking for a fun and exciting game application to try? You might want to download this app and get to know how this cartoon genie can guess whos on your mind.

Akinator is a mobile application and an internet game developed by French programmers and was released in 2007 is an app that can read your mind by asking series of questions to determine a real or fictional character you are thinking about.

Want to play the game? Know the basics first. In order to begin, the player must think of a popular character, may it be an actor, fictional film or TV character, politician, athlete, musician or any public figure. Then a cartoon genie will start asking series of question but the player need to answer Yes, No, Probably, Probably not and Dont know for the genie to guess whos on the players mind. It also lets the player add questions or even upload the pictures of the characters they are thinking if Akinator did not guess the character after the player finished the game.

If you want to have an online time-killer, you need to try this app and be amazed on how the cartoon genie will be able to nearly guess the exact person or character you have in mind. This sounds super interesting, right? Check and try the app now.

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Akinator is a mind-reader game application that you need to try! - Inquirer.net

Govt departments to upload project schedules on online portal – Times of India

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NEW DELHI: While the focus of opposition parties shifts to the 2019 polls, the government is drawing up projects and schemes that need to be completed by 2022 when India celebrates 75 years of independence. The cabinet secretary has asked all department heads to prepare details of works and timelines for their completion keeping in mind the 2022 target, sources said. Every ministry and department will upload their plans and tentative schedule for progress on the government's eSamiksha portal. "There will also be a meeting on this in the cabinet secretariat," said an official. 'eSamiksha' is a real time, online system for monitoring follow-up action on the decisions taken during presentations made by different ministries and departments to the PM. Every department has to update it as and when the status changes or at least once every month. PM Modi had set a five-year deadline for completing all pending projects (by 2022). One of the flagship schemes of the government, PM Awas Yojna, which aims to provide a roof to every household, has a 2022 deadline. "The government wants completion of all schemes in the next five years, the timeframe which the PM has talked about for a New India," a government source said.

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Govt departments to upload project schedules on online portal - Times of India

A Curb Your Enthusiasm for Millennials – The Atlantic

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It was pretty, pretty, pretty exciting to learn last week that one of cables favorite curmudgeons will return to television this fall. After six years off the air, Larry Davidthe Seinfeld co-creator known more recently for his Bernie Sanders impression on Saturday Night Livewill bring his hit HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm back for a ninth season on October 1. But if that release date seems too far off for those avid fans counting the days, theres another comedy that could fill the void until then.

Cazzie David, the 23-year-old daughter of the Curb creator, has teamed up with a friend from college, Elisa Kalani, to make a web series called Eighty-Sixed. Though just six episodes have been released on YouTube this year, Eighty-Sixed already fits well into a new generation of shows channeling the mockingly self-centered humor that defines Curb. When it premiered in 2000, Curb Your Enthusiasm was unlike anything on television, though some of Seinfelds comedic sensibility came through. Shot in a cinema-verit style and largely improvised, Curb followed a fictionalized version of Larry David as he managed to alienate just about everyone he ran into. With his obnoxious nitpicking and disregard for basic etiquette, Davids character was comfortable being self-righteous and offensive at the same time.

All Hail the Return of Curb Your Enthusiasm

Eighty-Sixed, which came out with its first four episodes in April and another two earlier this month, clearly comes from the Curb school of dry, cynical humor. The still under-the-radar series wryly comments on narcissistic, social-media-obsessed millennial life by following Cazzie Davids character, Remi, as she recovers from a break-up (hence the title). Remi lives in her own bubble in L.A., a world where work or interests outside her small circle of two friends, Owen and Lily, seemingly dont exist. The episodes, which are well-produced and mostly shorter than 10 minutes, so far feature Remi lounging about at home in pajamas, taking hikes, eating out, and going to parties. But at the center of this rather mundane existence is her fixation on portraying a deceptively carefree image of herself on social media in order to convince her ex shes over him. As Remi explains to a friend in the first episode: I care because Im kind of trying to curate an image of me not caring.

Like Curb, Eighty-Sixed delights in uncovering and ridiculing the subtle hypocrisies of social conventions. While the series may take a little while to grow on its audience, its clever, with plenty of entertaining and cringe-worthy observational moments. Some of the funniest bits cover the informal rules that dictate the digital habits of Remis age group: recreating certain moments to capture them perfectly for Instagram (its okay to re-light birthday candles if its for a Boomerang), taking the necessary steps when someone else accidentally posts something thats too revealing (driving over to demand access to their Facebook isnt overkill), and determining how many people per table can be on their phones at a restaurant. In one scene, Remi begs her friend to get off his phone, so that she can go on hers: Were literally a table of three millennials on their phones. Its, like, a really embarrassing stereotype Im not trying to perpetuate.

In a Vanity Fair article from last fall, Cazzie David detailed the similar balancing act that goes into maintaining her very popular personal Instagram. Photo captions, for example, should show how little thought went into posting the photo, even though a ton of thought went into it because you are following these rules, she wrote, offering a glimpse into her peers preoccupation with the illusion of social media and a preview of Eighty-Sixeds premise.

In the third episode, when David and Kalanis writing really starts to hit its stride, Eighty-Sixed parodies the delicate dance of who can upload what photo from what party on what platform (and what message that action sends). Not wanting to seem desperate by posting a party photo too soon after her breakup, and after her friends refuse to ruin their carefully arranged Facebook and Instagram profiles with such a posed, basic photo, Remi ends up asking a total stranger to upload and tag her in the photo. By taking it to ridiculous, but familiar, Curb-level extremes, Remis character is both critiquing the shallowness of a screen-centered existence and fully admitting to her own complicity in it.

Indeed, some scenes play like Curb redux: In one, the germaphobic Remi refuses to share her water with a thirsty hiking buddy: I just dont know why I should be punished because you forgot to bring water. In another, Remi scolds her friends Owen and Lily for not getting solidarity [ice cream] cones in sympathy as she grieves her breakup. Minutes later, as her friends console a friend whos just learned that her mom has a tumor, Remi stares straight-ahead, nonchalantly licking her ice cream cone.

This scene calls to mind a similar and classic Curb scene from Season 6: Larry David licks his own ice cream cone, while pausing to guilt a friend in mourning for not returning a condolence call, and to complain trivially about his ice cream melting. When the friend tries to pay back Larry some money he owes, Larry refuses to take itnot because of the nominal amount or because his friend is grievingbut because hes disgusted that the friend pulls the bill out of his sweaty running shoe. The younger David and Kalanis writing often seems inspired by a formula the Curb creator laid out for his show: I like to take the small things and make them big. And I like to take the big things, like disease and death, and make them small.

Remi, too, likes to flip social norms. While she obsesses over the filters she puts on her online persona, she lacks any in real life, often delivering lines in a dyspeptic monotone. Shes hyper-aware of how shes perceived online, but rarely notices how her actions affect others. Like Curbs Larry, Remi is blunt and pushy, with little consideration of boundaries. Larry David has said his character is how hed act if there were no social constraints, and that the caricature is a mouthpiece for all the things that we think about that we cant say.

A much younger misanthrope, Remi navigates a shifting, contentious relationship with those closest to her and doesnt hesitate to call others out for behavior shes also guilty of. When a friend pulls out of plans, she scoffs at his excuse: Oh you dont feel 100? Who ever feels 100? Ive never felt above 72 in my life. To leave a party early when her friends wont oblige, she tries to sabotage the mood by switching the music from Migos to classical. And Owens suggestion to call a Lyft offends Remi: Honestly, I cant believe you would just like throw me in a car with a pink mustache on it when Im this vulnerable.

Though Eighty-Sixed shares comedic DNA with Curb (as do a ton of other shows), its very much in line with the current comedy landscape. The genre has been particularly kind to web series by young female creators like David lately: Issa Raes Awkward Black Girl was developed by HBO into Insecure, whose second season returned Sunday. Curbs home network also picked up the web series Brown Girls, which is debuting its first season this fall. Next month will bring the fourth-season premiere of Comedy Centrals Broad City, formerly a popular web series by Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson; that shows self-absorbed millennial characters call to mind Eighty-Sixeds Remi, but also the leads of acclaimed shows like Girls and Youre the Worst.

While fans wait for Curbs returnand for two new episodes of Eighty-Sixed arriving in Septemberits fun to watch the two series together as a sort of generational box set. As David Sr. mines the humorous tension between propriety and brutal honesty, the entertaining tension in Remis character comes from her caring what people think of her online but not caring what they think of her in real life when, perhapsas Larry repeatedly finds outthat might be a good idea.

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A Curb Your Enthusiasm for Millennials - The Atlantic

Asian interest breathes new life into Yale professor’s course about death – New Haven Register

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NEW HAVEN >> When Yale University professor Shelly Kagans course on the philosophy of death was posted as one of Open Yales free online offerings, he couldnt anticipate what would happen next.

The course, followed by the 2012 publication of the book Death by Yale University Press, brought Kagan celebrity status in South Korea, and he has become popular in China as well.

Kagan was brought to Seoul to appear on South Korean radio and television 10,000 people requested tickets for a 3,000-seat studio and gave a series of lectures for which people would be lined up around the block, waiting for the chance to get in to hear me.

This summer, Kagan went to China to give an intensive weekend class at the Yale Center Beijing, which was streamed live by 25,000 people.

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Kagan has sold 13,000 copies of the English edition of Death, according to Yale University Press, but more than 230,000 copies in foreign editions, including translations in both mainland Chinese and Taiwanese characters, Korean and Japanese.

It was a level of fame that I never, ever anticipated, Kagan said the fact that people around the world know me and think about me and write me emails about the class, on a subject that Americans try to avoid thinking about much of the time, based on a course hes given about 10 times in his 22 years at Yale. The course is available at http://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-176.

Its been just extraordinarily gratifying and humbling, to be honest, said Kagan, 63, who lives in Hamden. I talk about a wide variety of subjects in this class and some of them are emotionally fraught.

Kagan has several theories about why the subject of mortality and what, if anything, happens after we die has become so popular in South Korea and China.

A part of the answer I think is both of these countries have reached a certain stage in their development where moral questions, questions about life, have come to the fore, Kagan said. You had a couple of generations who were devoted to rebuilding the economy.

Now, those in their 20s and early 30s, who are a large part of his fan base, are wondering, Whats it all about? Whats worth going after? he said. What makes one life more valuable than another? These questions became really important, but theyre not part of Korean education.

Kagan said that in both cultures, the educational system does not emphasize philosophical questions to the extent that the emphasis tends to be on classical Asian figures like Confucius. Here Im inviting people to think about philosophical questions on their own.

Also, Yale is the foremost university, I believe, from the point of view of the educated Chinese.

Finally, he speculates that his presentation may be appealing. Starting out by sitting cross-legged on his desk, I get excited and I jump off the desk and start bouncing around the room, he said.

In his course and book, Kagan asks, What conclusions might you reach about the nature of death? What can we know about death just from thinking about it, based on the available evidence? What conclusion would you come to if you were just using your basic reasoning capacity, religion aside.

He addresses the idea of the soul, or whats the possibility of surviving life without my body? Its the idea of dualism, that there are these two kinds of things, bodies and minds and that they are separate. In that case, the mind could continue to exist if the body gets destroyed.

Or perhaps the mind is just a function of the body. Using the analogy of a smile, which is a thing that your lips, your teeth and tongue can do, Kagan said, If were just bodies that can do these fancy tricks, then the mind must die with the body. In order to know if death is really the end, we need to think about what pieces are we made of, he said.

Another question Kagan raises is, Can you survive the death of your body? He suggests imagining that weve learned how to grow synthetic bodies and that weve also learned how to program the body so we could first upload your memories, your beliefs into a computer and download them into the newly created body.

The question we need to ask is, is that [you] that woke up? If you think that the key to personal identity is personality, then of course its [you].

Another part of the course asks, Does it make sense to be afraid of death?, Kagan said. I lay out some of the conditions that I believe fear has to meet if fear is going to be justified and then I try to persuade them that one of those conditions, or maybe more than one, isnt met when you talk about fear of death.

His conditions include that the thing youre afraid of needs to be dangerous or bad. Second, theres got to be a nontrivial chance that the bad thing will happen.

While it could be argued that death meets those conditions, Kagan said, The third condition is more controversial. Its a cousin of the second condition. Its that the bad thing cannot be certain. If its certain, then fear doesnt make sense. Fear of the fact that you will be dead at some point doesnt make sense because its certain that you will be dead at some point.

Finally, Kagan discusses suicide. He believes that there are cases in which suicide makes sense.

We all think that some lives are better or worse than others, he said. Wed all rather be healthy than sick. Could there be a life that is so bad that youd be better off not existing at all? Such people might be those who are in the late stages of a terminal illness or who are sinking into dementia and who see that the time will come where whats left of my mind or whats left of me will cease to exist.

He does add a caveat that even if suicide would make sense from a self-interested point of view, it might not be morally legitimate.

Of the thousands of messages hes received, Kagan said some of the emails that have moved me the most have been from people who have lost family members to suicide. They have often stumbled on my discussions and are thanking me for discussing it calmly.

One came from the family of a former soldier who had sought help, had therapy but ultimately committed suicide. As they were going through the brothers effects they came upon a journal where he was thinking about the pros and cons of killing himself.

The family discovered that the man had used Kagans book to weigh whether or not to take his own life. While Kagan feared the family would be angry at him, much to my surprise and gratitude the woman ended up by saying their brother had made his decision rationally He had thought it through carefully and they were grateful for that. She wasnt saying whether he had made the right decision or not.

Kagan provided tools to think about the question in a calm fashion If people of one kind or another have found the discussion helpful, I found that very humbling, he said.

Call Ed Stannard at 203-680-9382.

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Asian interest breathes new life into Yale professor's course about death - New Haven Register

Kickstarter for the Rocketbook Color Notebook: The Internet of Crayons – GeekDad (blog)

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The Rocketbook Color Notebook is on Kickstarter from now until September 2017. Image via Rocketbook.

In the bio below this article, Ive described my eight-year-old daughter as an art geek, but Im not sure it gives the right impression. An art geek implies someone who is interested in art as a concept, with their mind. My daughter is better described as a compulsive artist. From the moment she first held a crayon and realized, Hey, if I move this on something else, it makes a mark! she has been making her mark on every available surface: paper surfaces, sure, but also walls, floors, furniture, herself, and any other living creature that will stand still long enough. A few years back, as a mere reader of GeekMom, I won a giveaway of some awesome Stomp-N-Go cleaning pads by describing the intricate occult circles shed left on our carpet. Just a few weeks ago, as I headed off to Saturday work, my husband stopped me and said, You need to change your pants. Apparently, somebody wrote on your butt.

This past Christmas she got a roll of chalkboard wallpaper for her door, in the hope of curbing her graffiti-artist tendencies. Reusable surfaces of this sort are handy for channeling the energy, but they come with their own drawbacks: when she brought the kids back from their grandparents earlier this week, my mother sort of sighed as she said, She spent the whole time drawing on a dry-erase board, but then she erased it so I cant hang any of it on my refrigerator. I should have offered her a pick from the large pile of drawings on the floor behind my desk here, because theyre just going to get trampled on for a couple of weeks before theyre thrown away.

Two days later a Kickstarter launched that has the needs of someone exactly like my daughter in mind.

The Rocketbook Color Notebook comes from the creators of Rocketbook, and addresses this two-fold problem: how do we give compulsive young artists a surface to draw on that wont waste paper or build up as garbage around the house, while still allowing the results to be archived, displayed, and shared?

Part One is the Color Notebook itself. Each book has 12 pages of water-resistant, tear-resistant material that writes like paper but erases like white-board. Its formulated to work with any Crayola washable or dry-erase coloring supplies, whether crayon, marker, or colored pencil, so that the drawing wont smudge but will wipe off in seconds if you intentionally take a cloth to it (dry for dry erase, just a bit of water for washable), so as to be endlessly reused.

My daughter has destroyed enough white boards in her time to raise my skeptical-mom sensors at that word endlessly. I asked for clarification and heres what the creators had to say:

How endless is the endless reusability compared to, say, a typical dry-erase board?

Weve tested extensively with Crayola Washable and Crayola Dry Erase products, which we recommend to use with the Rocketbook Color. When using these markers, crayons, and pencils, the Color notebook can be used thousands of times. While the Rocketbook Color is subject to normal wear and tear, it is extremely durable and waterproof.

Do marks get harder to erase the longer they stay on the page? How much build-up over time?

In our tests, the notebook remains easy to erase even after Crayola Washable and Crayola Dry Erase writing has been on the page for several weeks. Given the breadth of products on the market, we can not guarantee that all washable and dry-erase products wipe clean and do not stain. Some formulations contain harsh solvents that could damage the Rocketbook Color, or that might be difficult to erase if left on for too long. More importantly, many non-Crayola products arent kid safe. While other dry erase products will work with the Rocketbook Color, our recommendation is to stick with the Crayola line. Finally, users wishing to test erasability may test new products on the inside front or rear cover, which feature the same coating as inside pages.

Yes, I definitely know someone who could put such a surface to good use. When I went to ask her what she thought of this product, I only got as far as Its like a dry-erase coloring pad that before her eyes went big and she shouted, I WANT THAT! But I didnt even get to describe Part Two of the project, the part that earns it its subtitle of The Internet of Crayons.

Part Two is the Rocketbook App. The Rocketbook was originally designed as a way for grownups to take paper notes and easily upload them to the internet. Sure, you can just take a picture of your page and upload it that way. But the Rocketbook app automatically crops the page, adjusts and enhances the color balance, and sends it immediately to whichever online destination(s) you indicate by marking a code of symbols at the bottom of the page. You can set one symbol for cloud storage, one symbol for a more social destination, and several symbols for specific email addresses or phone numberssay, for grandparents.

The Rocketbook Color Notebook combines the online functionality of the grown-up Rocketbook products with a child-friendly reusable notebook, and thats an innovation that cant come soon enough for someone whos been painstakingly scanning pictures to send to loved ones and/or popular YouTubers (my daughter draws a lot of fan art).

Oh, and heres another fun trick: you can bundle a series of pictures and have them delivered as one animated gif, instead.

The Kickstarter for the Rocketbook Color Notebook is accepting pledges until September 8, 2017, with expected delivery of the notebooks in November. A pledge of $20 or up gets you one Color Notebook (the final retail cost of the notebook will be $27); bigger pledges get you more notebooks at a discount (you can even pledge $850 and get a classroom supply of 50). Throw in an additional $5 and get a pack of six Crayola dry-erase markers, too.

Amy M. Weir is a public youth services librarian in SW Pennsylvania, and theres nothing she geeks out about more. Outside of work she obsesses over music (especially rock especially psychedelic pop especially The Beatles), sews clothes, gardens when the weathers nice, avoids housework, and generally is the poster-child for Enneatype 9, which she attempts to counteract with yoga when she remembers. She has an RPG-and-firearms-geek husband who asked her out by playing a Paladin-in-Shining-Armor devoted to serving her character in D&D; a LEGO-and-Minecraft-geek 10yo named after a hobbit; a My Little Pony-and-art-geek 8yo named after a SFF writer; and an Imaginary Husband named Martin Freeman, who isnt actually aware of this relationship.

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Kickstarter for the Rocketbook Color Notebook: The Internet of Crayons - GeekDad (blog)

UK Sports Medicine Welcomes New Shoulder Specialist – UKNow (press release)

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LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 24, 2017) The team at UK Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine has grown this summer. On May 15, Dr. Carolyn Hettrich became part of the staff that will see patients, take care of University of Kentucky athletes and conduct research.

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Hettrich has studied and worked across the country. After completing undergraduate studies in Los Angeles at Pomona College, she went on to medical school at the University of Washington, completed a residency at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, a fellowship at Vanderbilt University, and spent the past six years working in Iowa.

One of the reasons Hettrich decided to make the change to move to Lexington is because of the emphasis the University of Kentucky places on research. The increased focus on research at UK means Ill have the opportunity to do the research Im interested in, she said.Hettrichs research interests focus on three areas: clinical outcomes after shoulder surgery, computer modeling for shoulder replacement, and tendon and bone healing. In fact, Hettrich is the principal investigator on the largest prospective study in the world for shoulder instability surgery. The study has 950 patients currently enrolled and is operating at 12 sites nationwide.

Her research expertise meshes well with work already being done at UK Sports Medicine, particularly the work of Dr. Christian Lattermann. Hettrich and Lattermann were well acquainted before Hettrich joined UK Sports Medicine and are part of the Multicenter Orthopaedic Outcomes Network (MOON) and share a mentor. We are very proud Dr. Hettrich joined UK Sports Medicine, she brings an extraordinary expertise in shoulder related patient centered translational research which accelerates our efforts at UK to become a national leader in patient related outcomes research," Latterman said. Additionally, sheis an outstanding shoulder surgeon, he said.

When shes not conducting research, treating patients or working as a team physician for UK Football, Hettrich is looking forward to continuing her advocacy work. Her master's degree in public health focused in health policy gives her insight into how she can advocate for her patients and research funding. Each year, on Research Capitol Hill Days, Hettrich takes patients to meet with congressional leaders in WashingtonD.C. to show the direct impact of research funding. Hettrich is especially interested in musculoskeletal research because musculoskeletal conditions affect 50 percent of adults in the U.S., with expenditures accounting for 5.7 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP).

As a member of the team at UK Sports Medicine, Hettrich is looking forward to continuing to improve care of patients suffering from disorders of the shoulder and leading cutting edge research studies.

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UK Sports Medicine Welcomes New Shoulder Specialist - UKNow (press release)

City Council to hear more on Northwestern Medicine agreement … – DeKalb Daily Chronicle

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DeKALB After weeks of negotiations, the City Council is ready to vote on an agreement with Northwestern Medicine regarding the construction of a health and wellness center on Bethany Road.

The building will sit on unincorporated county land but requires access to they citys stormwater system and Bethany Road at the Northwest Loop Drive intersection, both of which have been topics of debate as an agreement was being reached.

A one-time connection fee was being requested by the city to allow Northwestern Medicine to connect to the stormwater system.

The city, however, agreed to waive the proposed $85,000 fee when Northwestern Medicine decided to improve the intersection with both left turn lanes and a traffic signal, which they had not initially agreed to.

Roadway improvements funded by Northwestern Medicine will include a traffic signal and opposing left turn lanes on Bethany Road, with signal interconnection with the signal located on Bethany Road to the west at Greenwood Acres Drive; alignment of the north leg of the intersection, including acquisition of necessary easements or rights-of-way; installation of all underground infrastructure for interconnection with Greenwood Acres Drive; and restoration of all sidewalks and parkways adjoining the project.

The health care provider is required to provide notice to the city for any alteration or modification to either the stormwater system or the Bethany Road right-of-way.

The City Council meeting will be at 6 p.m. Monday in council chambers of the DeKalb Municipal Building at 200 S. Fourth St.

How often to you go out on the Kishwaukee River?

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City Council to hear more on Northwestern Medicine agreement ... - DeKalb Daily Chronicle

Dr. David Katz, Preventive Medicine: The food is the toxin – New Haven Register

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Assuming you arent preoccupied with whether or not 30 million people have health insurance, then you know that the big medical news of the past week was aboutmac and cheese. We learned there was some bad stuff in it.

The particular bad stuff just brought to our attention is called phthalates. Nobody puts phthalates, which are used in the manufacture of soft vinyl products like backpacks, lunch boxes, and flooring, into food, mac and cheese or otherwise, on purpose. So how does it get in there? It leaches in from food manufacturing machinery, notably plastic tubing.

For starters, the image of food production, any food production, involving what sounds rather like IV tubing is a bit disturbing. But also, thoughts jump rather readily from somewhat sick food being pumped through something akin to IV tubing, to actual IV tubing running into sick people. So, yes, there are phthalates in IV tubing, and concerns about them, too.

The principal concern about these compounds is that they are endocrine disruptors, potentially contributing to infertility, and birth defects. But search the topic, and you find associations with everything from diabetes, to attention deficit disorder.

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So, is there cause for panic in the recent news that 29 of 30 samples of mac and cheese tested were found to contain phthalates? No. For one thing, the news about the exposure is new, but the exposure was there all along. Mac and cheese is no more, nor less, acutely perilous than it was last week, or the week prior.

For another, the concentrations of phthalates found were very, very low. For yet another, and for whatever its worth, we are exposed to phthalates in other ways, as noted. And lastly, the simple fact is we now live on a planet awash in chemicals of our own devising. They will find ways into us we have made that inevitable.

While we should do all we can to minimize such exposures, the idea of avoiding them is simply unrealistic now on this planet. I think the massive amount of plastic we keep dumping into the oceans is greater cause for our collective concern than trace amounts of plasticizing chemicals in our mac and cheese.

While some time ago, Kraft announced with fanfare that it was no longer making its iconic mac and cheese with artificial flavorings, preservatives, or dyes the obvious memo hidden there was that they had been making it with them all along. And thats just the tip of the cheesy iceberg. The pasta used is a macaroni product, and the cheese involved is a cheese sauce mix. In other words, if we are going to worry about stuff in packaged mac and cheese that might be bad for us, we neednt bother to search for it with a microscope. Its the questionable mac and dubious cheese.

We all know, or certainly should, that a dietary pattern of wholesome, whole foods, mostly plants, is monumentally good for us. Such a diet not only minimizes bad chemicals in the food we eat, it, more importantly, minimizes bad food in the food we eat. But are we there yet, or anywhere near there? Of course not. And part of the reason may very well be that we sequentially focus on the low-level toxin du jour as a means of practicing collective procrastination.

If there are toxic chemicals in our mac and cheese, we can go on eating it, while wagging our fingers, rolling our eyes, and looking around for someone to blame. If we acknowledge that the concern about feeding our kids mac and cheese is the mac and cheese well, then, we have to fix it ourselves, and thats inconvenient.

Consider that even as we wallow in appallingly high, and ever-rising rates of childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes, we stand by passively as major food companies introduce new products like Sprinkled Donut Crunch as the newest part of our 6-year-olds complete breakfast. This is more norm than exception in our culture.

Where is the outrage? Our childrens health is being poisoned for profit not with any chemical hidden from view, but with junk masquerading as food, hiding in plain sight.

If ever either of us has the terrible misfortune of being shot through the chest, I trust we agree it will come as scant comfort if the last words we hear, as we bleed into unconsciousness, are: good news! I used a lead-free bullet Lead is a very important public health problem, as all who bear witness to the terrible saga in Flint, Michigan have abundant cause to know. But in the situation described, its the bullet hole that warrants more immediate attention not the lead.

So, too, for trace toxins in junk food. Junk, where food ought to be, is the toxin.

Dr. David L. Katz; http://www.davidkatzmd.com; founder, True Health Initiative

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Dr. David Katz, Preventive Medicine: The food is the toxin - New Haven Register

Traditional medicine practitioners urged to register businesses – Citifmonline

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Traditional medicine practitioners have been urged to register and renew their licenses to ensure lawful operations of their businesses.

They must also uphold standards to help build confidence in their careers and ensure respect and acceptance on the international market.

Mallam Kofi Sumaila, a member of the Traditional Medicine Practice Council, under the Ministry of Health (MOH), said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at Tinkong in the Akuapem North Municipality.

He noted that standards were critical to promote the health and safety of their clients as well as preserve the environment.

In response to queries that his herbal centre was operating without license, Mallam Sumaila pulled out documents showing that the centre has been licensed as an Alternative Healthcare Facility/Premises, in compliance with the Traditional Medicine Practice Act 2000 (Act 575).

The documents show the centre has also been registered with the Registrar Generals Department with a certificate to commence business.

Mallam Sumaila said the activities of traditional medicine practitioners were prone to inspections and enforcement by statutory regulatory agencies under the MOH, mandated to supervise the affairs of wellness centres.

He said, in line with this, he ensured that he maintained high levels of standards in order not to fall foul of the law.

Our product must undergo rigorous scientific analysis and endorsed by the Food and Drugs Authority as food supplements approved for sale to the general public.

The 78-year-old traditional healer said if all the stakeholders abided by the ethics of the Traditional Medicine Practice Council the wrong perception about their herbal centres would change.

Mallam Sumaila tasked traditional healers to endeavour to use their profession to accelerate change and development and be role models who could inculcate moral values into their clients.

Source: GNA

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Traditional medicine practitioners urged to register businesses - Citifmonline

Army medicine saving and building lives – mySanAntonio.com

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Elaine Sanchez, For the Express-News

Photo: /U.S. Army Photo By Robert Shields)

Army medicine saving and building lives

This week, the Army Medical Department will mark its 242nd anniversary. The AMEDD has a proud history that dates to July 27, 1775, when the Continental Congress authorized a Medical Department Service for an Army of 20,000 men.

Since that time, countless military members, civilians and contractors have provided health care on and off the battlefield.

In the day-to-day rush of life, I sometimes forget how proud I am to be a part of Army medicine. It took a mini-reunion with a warrior last month to remind me.

I had just walked into the post gym when I ran into a friend breaking a sweat on a Jacobs ladder. We laughed and talked for a few minutes before I headed over to the elliptical machines. As the music blared through my headphones, I fought back tears as I thought about how far this soldier had come and how just a few years ago, he thought hed never talk or use his arm again.

Army Capt. John Arroyo had been severely wounded in the 2014 Fort Hood shooting. Hed just pulled up to brigade headquarters when he heard shots fired and stepped out of his car. The next shot Arroyo heard was the one that ripped through his throat and shoulder.

Spc. Ivan Lopez killed three soldiers and wounded 16 that day before turning his gun on himself. Arroyo barely survived and was told his voice box and right arm were damaged beyond repair. Yet two months later he was talking again, and after months of intense rehabilitation at the Center for the Intrepid, Brooke Army Medical Centers rehabilitation facility, he regained the use of his right hand.

He now serves as the plans and training officer in charge of the Basic Officer Leader Course here and often speaks to groups from inmates to students to fellow service members on the importance of making the most of second chances.

Arroyo is just one of the many warriors and civilians who have made tremendous strides in their recovery here and at other military treatment facilities.

Because of Army medicine, our ill and wounded warriors have been able to achieve amazing feats of courage and strength in their recoveries. Ive seen a quadruple amputee inspire others to achieve, a former burn patient win Dancing with the Stars, cancer patients receive a new lease on life, and warriors winning gold medals at competitions around the world.

Ive also witnessed Army medicine professionals enormous passion for helping others doctors trained at the finest civilian hospitals opting to stay in service and care for service members here and around the world rather than pursue higher salaries elsewhere; nurses and technicians working arduous shifts and long hours to deliver compassionate care; and support staff going the extra mile to ensure mission success.

Ive served in the military and as a civilian around the world for 20 years, but Im proudest of the past five years Ive worked at Brooke Army Medical Center. I am honored to have seen our warriors persevere and succeed.

As Arroyo demonstrates, after 242 years, Army medicine is still going strong. On Thursday, take a moment to reflect on the countless contributions of AMEDD professionals. We are surrounded by examples of their dedication and devotion to patient care.

Elaine Sanchez is the chief of the Communications Division at Brooke Army Medical Center.

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Army medicine saving and building lives - mySanAntonio.com

USC received more than a year of questions about former medical … – Los Angeles Times

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Four days after The Times published a story about drug use by the then-dean of USCs medical school, the university announced it was moving to fire Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito and said it was outraged and disgusted by his conduct.

USC Provost Michael Quick said the university decided to act because it had been shown extremely troubling information that same day about Puliafitos behavior. Quick provided no details. But he said it was the first time we saw such information firsthand.

I know many people wanted us to act on allegations and hearsay, but we needed actual facts, Quick wrote in a letter to the faculty.

It remains unclear when top USC officials first learned about the allegations involving Puliafito. But The Times made repeated inquiries over the last 15 months about Puliafito, in some cases describing information reporters had gathered about the dean.

USCs leaders never responded to the inquiries. Numerous phone calls were not returned, emails went unanswered and a letter seeking an interview with USC President C.L. Max Nikias to discuss Puliafito was returned to The Times by courier, unopened.

Only after The Times published its report Monday did USC address the matter publicly. By Friday, officials deplored Puliafitos conduct and said they had engaged a law firm to look into the administrations handling of the matter.

Medical ethicists said USC had a duty to look into allegations about Puliafito immediately, even if they were incomplete or uncorroborated. A prompt internal investigation was necessary, they said, regardless of whether the university decided it could answer The Times questions.

Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, a Georgetown University professor of biomedical ethics, said the need for a swift inquiry was especially pressing because of Puliafitos role as an overseer of faculty members, clinicians, students and research grants. These professionals are held to a higher moral standard than other persons, he said.

The allegations are so serious, he could put patients at risk, said Art Caplan, founding head of the Division of Bioethics at New York Universitys Langone Medical Center. I would say if youre not going to fire him outright because youre waiting to get confirmation of the facts, I would be at least moving to suspend him and figure out whats going on here.

Do you have information about USC's former med school dean? We want to hear from you

The Times report, published Monday, described in detail how Puliafito kept company with a circle of criminals and drug addicts and used methamphetamine and other drugs while serving as dean of the Keck School of Medicine. The article cited photos and videos reviewed by The Times that showed Puliafito and his friends, who were in their 20s and 30s, partying in 2015 and 2016.

The images include some in which Puliafitos companions are seen holding drug paraphernalia during an after-hours visit to the deans office at USC.

Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

The campus of the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

The campus of the Keck School of Medicine of USC. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

One member of Puliafitos circle was a 21-year-old woman who overdosed in his presence at a Pasadena hotel three weeks before he abruptly quit as dean in March 2016, in the middle of the spring term.

USC has not said whether the incident was related to Puliafitos resignation.

After stepping down as dean, the Harvard-educated Puliafito, a renowned eye surgeon, remained on the Keck faculty, continued to accept new patients and represented the university in public as recently as last weekend.

On Tuesday, a day after The Times report was published, Nikias said in a letter to the campus community that USC would examine and address the accounts but also suggested the school had not determined whether they were true. His statement did not say whether the university had known about the details before the article was published.

Our university categorically condemns the unlawful possession, use, or distribution of drugs, the president wrote. We are concerned about Dr. Puliafito and his family and hope that, if the articles assertions are true, he receives the help and treatment he may need for a full recovery.

On Friday, Nikias released a strongly worded statement, saying we are outraged and disgusted by this individuals behavior. The same day, Quick told the faculty that Puliafito had been barred from the campus and from any association with USC.

Paul Pringle, Sarah Parvini and Adam Elmahrek

The Times investigation began with a tip about the Pasadena hotel incident. Paramedics rushed the woman, Sarah Warren, to a hospital, where she recovered. A police report said officers found methamphetamine in the hotel room. No arrests were made.

A witness to the incident told the newspaper of phoning Nikias office, giving two employees an anonymous account of the overdose and demanding that USC take action against Puliafito.

Phone records reviewed by The Times showed the witness made a six-minute call to Nikias office on March 14, 2016, 10 days after the overdose. The tipster said he did not expect a call back but had told the USC employees he would go to the media if action wasnt taken.

Last week, Puliafitos successor as dean, Dr. Rohit Varma, told a gathering of scores of students that USC had found no evidence, particularly, of that phone call. Varma told the students that Puliafito had appeared drunk at off-campus events and had sought treatment for alcoholism. He said details in the story came as a shock.

The Times first contacted USC about Puliafito the month after the overdose. In response, Puliafito said in an April 20, 2016, email that he resigned as dean to take a position in the biotech industry. He never again replied to interview requests or written questions.

In May 2016, The Times left a phone message and sent an email to USCs senior vice president for university relations, Thomas Sayles. The email said, without going into detail, that the newspaper was aware of the circumstances preceding Puliafitos resignation and wanted to hear from USC about how it dealt with the matter. Sayles did not respond.

The next month, USC hosted a catered reception for Puliafito on a sun-splashed lawn at USCs health sciences campus in Boyle Heights. As dozens of Keck employees looked on, Nikias praised Puliafitos contributions to the school as dean.

The Times continued to gather information about the overdose. In a November 2016 email, a reporter asked to interview Nikias and Quick, saying an upcoming story would examine in detail the off-campus events that preceded Dr. Puliafitos resignation. Again, there was no reply.

Last January, a reporter visited Nikias San Marino home. He was away, and the reporter gave a note for him to Nikias wife. The note was in a sealed envelope; it similarly asked Nikias to speak to the reporter about the events surrounding Puliafitos resignation.

The next day, the envelope was returned unopened to The Times by courier, with a letter of complaint from Brenda Maceo, USCs vice president for public relations and marketing. The letter said the reporter had crossed the line by visiting the Nikias home.

Thomas Meredith / For The Times

USC President C. L. Max Nikias released a statement Friday saying "we are outraged and disgusted" by Dr. Puliafito's behavior. Repeated requests for comment by him over the last 15 months went unanswered.

USC President C. L. Max Nikias released a statement Friday saying "we are outraged and disgusted" by Dr. Puliafito's behavior. Repeated requests for comment by him over the last 15 months went unanswered. (Thomas Meredith / For The Times)

The Times did more reporting. On March 2 of this year, the newspaper emailed an interview request and a list of questions to Nikias. It said a reporter had learned of the witness call to Nikias office. The email also said that the hotel room where the young woman overdosed had been registered to Puliafito and that meth was found in the room.

Attached to the email was a recording of the 911 call a hotel employee made to report the apparent overdose. On the recording, Puliafito is heard identifying himself as a doctor and saying the woman was his girlfriend. He told the 911 dispatcher that the woman had a bunch of drinks and shes sleeping.

When the dispatcher asked if she had taken anything else, Puliafito said, I think just the alcohol. A police spokeswoman later told The Times the woman had overdosed on the same drugs found in the room methamphetamine.

Nikias did not respond to the March 2 email. Two reporters visited his office that day to ask for an interview. Nikias chief of staff, Dennis Cornell, told them, The president will not be speaking to The Times on this matter.

This month, Nikias did not reply to a final email from The Times requesting an interview before the newspapers investigation was published.

Ann Fromholz, a Pasadena lawyer and USC law school alumna who has conducted hundreds of workplace investigations, said its common for employers to launch investigations prompted by anonymous tips or inquiries from outside institutions.

Even though the employer doesnt know the details of the complaining party, they are nonetheless obligated to investigate and determine if misconduct occurred, Fromholz said.

As outrage over the Puliafito revelations grew, Quick on Wednesday wrote the USC faculty a memo attempting to explain the universitys actions.

I want to reassure you that all along we have taken this matter very seriously, that we made what we felt were the best decisions we could make, as swiftly as could be done in a prudent and thoughtful manner, and given the information that we had at any given time, he wrote.

Responding to those on campus who asked why the university didnt take unilateral actions against Puliafito, the provost said it followed the rules.

If any of us were in a similar situation, we would want the university to follow its established processes in a deliberative and careful manner, he wrote.

Gus Ruelas / USC

USC Provost Michael Quick in a memo to faculty said the university acted "in a prudent and thoughtful manner" on information surrounding Dr. Puliafito.

USC Provost Michael Quick in a memo to faculty said the university acted "in a prudent and thoughtful manner" on information surrounding Dr. Puliafito. (Gus Ruelas / USC)

On Friday, Nikias announced that former federal prosecutor Debra Wong Yang would lead a thorough investigation into both Puliafitos conduct and the universitys response.

Nikias said that in this process of examination, USC officials would look to improve ways in which we could have recognized the severity of the situation sooner.

He called on all USC employees to cooperate fully and swiftly with the investigation.

Yang is a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a firm with close ties to USC.

The firms managing partner, Kenneth M. Doran, is a graduate of USCs Gould School of Law and a former chairman of its board of councilors. He has also been a prominent fundraiser for the school. Gibson Dunn was cited on the USC law school website in 2014 for achieving 100% participation by USC alumni at the firm in a fundraising drive.

Yang represented USC when it faced a wrongful-death lawsuit in 2012 filed by the parents of two graduate students who were slain off-campus. The suit was dismissed in 2013.

Yangs profile page on the Gibson Dunn website says she has worked as an adjunct professor at the USC law school. She last taught classes there in the late 1990s, according to a USC spokesman.

USC declined to comment further on Saturday, saying in a statement it is imperative to let the inquiry by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher run its course so as to not impede its progress or cloud the recollections of those who may have information to share. Our priority now is to obtain a clear picture of exactly what happened and to ensure the well-being and trust of our students at USC, the patients at the Keck School and our entire university community.

Sights, sounds, and the people that made the first day of 2017's Comic-Con a sight to behold.

Sights, sounds, and the people that made the first day of 2017's Comic-Con a sight to behold.

paul.pringle@latimes.com

adam.elmahrek@latimes.com

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

sarah.parvini@latimes.com

Times staff writer Harriet Ryan contributed to this report.

ALSO

Steve Lopez: USC bosses flunk the leadership test amid shocking allegations about former medical school dean

Police union examines incident at Pasadena hotel involving a former USC dean after an officer is disciplined

Drug allegations involving former USC medical school dean are probed by Medical Board of California

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USC received more than a year of questions about former medical ... - Los Angeles Times

Med school programs rank high on national survey – Huntington Herald Dispatch

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HUNTINGTON - The Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine's graduate medical education programs have ranked significantly above the national mean on the 2016-17 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education Resident and Faculty Survey, according to a news release from the university.

The assessment, conducted annually by the council, surveys medical residents for their feedback in six areas of accreditation compliance, including duty hours, faculty, evaluation, educational content, resources and patient safety/teamwork. Those scores are then compared with other institutions across the country. In every category, Marshall's rank was above the national mean.

Paulette S. Wehner, M.D., vice dean for graduate medical education, said the positive feedback from Marshall residents ranked the school very highly in terms of program satisfaction.

"We are very pleased that Marshall has been recognized for its diligence in providing quality educational experiences," Wehner said in the release. "The school has worked hard to ensure our residents receive superior clinical training, and congratulations go out to the individual training programs that make these results possible."

The school also scored well in terms of faculty satisfaction with regard to the residency programs. Faculty were asked to respond to questions in the same categories as the residents, with the exception of duty hours. Again, the school ranked above the national mean in all areas.

In congratulating Wehner and others in graduate medical education, Dean Joseph I. Shapiro, M.D., also said Marshall's training programs are in full compliance with national standards.

"In April, we received the ACGME accreditation letter informing us that all 15 programs are in compliance," Shapiro said. "Moreover, they commended Dr. Wehner and her team for demonstrated substantial compliance with the institutional requirements. This glowing report is a testament to the outstanding work by our central GME office, the clinical departments and our hospital partners, all of whom are essential to the success of the graduate medical education teaching environment."

The school of medicine's residency and fellowship programs include family and community health, sports medicine, internal medicine, cardiology, endocrinology, interventional cardiology, hematology-oncology, nephrology, pulmonary, medicine/pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology, orthopaedic surgery, pediatrics, psychiatry and surgery.

Residents, or "house officers," are physicians who have graduated from medical school and are in specialty training, which lasts from a minimum of three to sometimes in excess of seven years.

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Med school programs rank high on national survey - Huntington Herald Dispatch

West Liberty one-room schoolhouse to receive new floors – Quad City Times

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MUSCATINE Almost 50 years after a one-room schoolhouse in West Liberty closed its doors, it will get a turn-of-the century wooden floor, returning the structure to how it looked when one teacher taught students of all ages under one roof.

The schoolhouse once stood on a particularly swampy swath of land outside West Liberty, earning it the nickname the Swamp School." But since its construction at around 1879, the building was moved a couple of times and was used as a garage at some point. By the time it moved to West Liberty Heritage Park in 2004, the school lost its original wooden floor. Instead, the building had an industrial-looking poured concrete floor that seems at odds with the wooden features of the schoolhouse.

When you look at the old one-room schoolhouse and you see a modern poured concrete floor, thats not really how it was, said Scott Brooke of the West Liberty Heritage Foundation, the organization that now owns the house. We want to try and give a presentation that would give an accurate image of what a one-room school house looked like back in the day. And by putting down a vintage wooden floor it would give you a better idea of how things looked.

The floor will be the last big project in a long list of restoration projects that the West Liberty Heritage Foundation has undertaken to bring the schoolhouse back to its former glory. The $6000 project is funded in part by individual donations. The West Liberty Heritage Foundation was also awarded an almost $3,000 grant from the State Historical Society of Iowa this month for the project.

A relic of rural history, the Swamp School is one of a handful of one-room schoolhouses to be preserved in Muscatine County. At one point, according to the Iowa State Historical Society, almost 14,000 such schools dotted rural Iowa. Most were closed in the 1960s after the Iowa State Legislature mandated the creation of school districts.

It was one of the few ones that actually remained standing and all the other ones have kind of either fallen in or burned down or torn down or fallen to a state of disrepair, Brooke said.

Brooke said the foundation is looking for a turn-of-the century floor to maintain the houses historical accuracy. The floor will most likely come from an old barn or another structure built around that time. Restoration, he said, will begin in the fall and will take about a week to 10 days.

Its just an important part of our history, as an in-town school would be. Its building our community, he said.

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West Liberty one-room schoolhouse to receive new floors - Quad City Times

Liberty trustees propose committee to study central fire station as plans stall – Youngstown Vindicator

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Published: Mon, July 24, 2017 @ 12:05 a.m.

By Sarah Lehr

slehr@vindy.com

LIBERTY

Plans for a possible merger with the Girard Fire Department have stalled, prompting Liberty trustees to propose going in a different direction.

Trustee Jodi Stoyak suggested during a meeting this month the township form a committee to study creation of a central fire station, which would replace the townships two aging fire stations.

Though Stoyak placed the fire department issue on the agenda for discussion, trustees never formally voted to create a committee.

Stoyak said she wanted to at least discuss the fire department due to inaction from Girard officials on a merger study.

Ive been a bit frustrated with the lack of response from them, Stoyak said of Girard officials.

Trustees convened a joint session March 29 with Girard officials to discuss commissioning a study on the benefits and drawbacks of a merger of the Girard and Liberty fire departments.

The two communities had hoped to pay for the study using up to $50,000 in state grant money.

At that meeting, a large contingent of firefighters and their supporters spoke against commissioning a study, arguing a merger would negatively affect services to residents. At the end of the meeting, Stan Nudell, Liberty trustees chairman, said the feedback indicated there was no point in moving forward with the study and did not bring the issue to a vote.

Stoyak later brought the issue back at the next April 10 regular meeting, at which all three trustees voted for a study. Trustees emphasized the study was only for fact-finding.

Though a majority of Girard City Council members told The Vindicator earlier this year they supported a study, Girard council has never brought the issue to the floor for a vote.

Girard Mayor James Melfi and City Council President Reynold Paolone said council members have so far given no indication they wish to introduce legislation.

Melfi also has said he would support a study that does not cost the city money. Melfi said he needs more information to determine whether he favors a merger.

Canfield, Poland and Hubbard have merged with neighboring fire departments to create joint fire districts. Proponents of joint fire districts say they eliminate redundancies and allow firefighters to apply more competitively for grant money.

Nudell said he is still holding out hope Girard council will take action on a joint fire study. Liberty officials have also floated the idea of merging with a nearby community other than Girard, but have not made concrete steps in that direction.

Right now, our hands our tied, Nudell said.

The lack of action prompted Stoyak to renew the call for a central Liberty fire station an idea township leaders have bandied about for years.

Stoyak contends it is waste of taxpayer dollars to spend money on repairs to the townships two aging fire stations at 4001 Logan Way and 5920 Belmont Ave.

Both fire Chief Gus Birch and Justin Graham, president of the Liberty chapter of the International Association of Fire Fighters union, support building a new, centrally located fire station.

It would pay for itself, Graham said. Right now, we need to have two of everything.

Township voters would need to approve the issuance of bond notes to pay for the construction of a new station.

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Liberty trustees propose committee to study central fire station as plans stall - Youngstown Vindicator

Liberty Lunch Might Be Coming Back, But Where Did It Come From? – KUOW News and Information

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What's in a name? Well, a lot at least for those in Austins vibrant restaurant, live music andcondimentscenes.

Earlier this month,Stubb'sAustin Restaurant Co. settled a trademark dispute with McCormick and Co., and its subsidiary One World Foods, so that McCormick will be theonlycompany that can use the nameStubb's.

So now, the Maryland spice company that owns the Austin sauce company is no longer allowing the Austin barbecue spot and music venue to use the nickname of the man that opened the restaurant.

Perhaps anticipating that this might happen,the restaurant Stubb's filed paperwork to claim the name "Liberty Lunch," sending a collective record skip that could be heard all the way toAntones the record store, not the club. (Incidentally, the twoAntone'sbusinessesare owned by different companies.)

Stubbsregistering the name Liberty Lunch raised several questions like, "Can they do that?" and Will the new brand stick?

A brand is like a handshake. Its a promise," saidMitchBaranowski, a creative director and branding expert based in New York."Its a promise that youre going to deliver on a certain product, or service, or experience. And these days, what a lot of consumers really want is an authentic brand experience."

To get that authentic brand experience, he says, you need heritage, sincerity and quality.Stubbsis losing some of that heritage its namesake as a result of the lawsuit.

C.B.Stubblefieldloved music," Baranowski said. "His original West Texas restaurant was frequented by so many great Texas musicians, from Joe Ely, Tom T. Hall, many others."

It was in Elys house that Stubblefieldbegan to bottle his sauce for sale,accordingStubbswebsite the sauce company, not the restaurant.

"They used to jam at his place all the time and that continued when he moved it to Austin," Baranowski said. "So, the live music component, that part of the brand heritage will be called up when they move over to the new name Liberty Lunch.

A Dive

If that name doesnt ring a bell, here's a primer for those of you too young or too new to Austin.

Liberty Lunch was one of the city's storied live music venues. It hit its stride in the1980sand'90s, booking a whos who of music. Located in the middle of what are now high-rises and boutiques, Liberty Lunch thrived without anyaesthetics.

I think that was the beauty of the place," saidKUTX's Susan Castle, who says she used to go to Liberty Lunch two to three times a week."It was a dive, a complete dive. It had half a roof on. But they had so many big names come through before they got big."

Great music, I mean thats what it was known for, right? saidBaranowski, who lived in Austin while attending undergrad and graduate school at the University of Texas.So, youd go see Michael Johnson and the Killer Bees, or Twang Twang Shock-A-Boom or the Reivers.

TheReivers were regulars at Liberty Lunch. You may know the band by its original name, Zeitgeist, which it had to change after a lawsuit.

A lot of those times, back in those college days, we couldnt quite afford the cover charge, so we might sit out on the curb eating our beans and rice from LaZonaRosa," Baranowski said. "But as I started working more and more around town, I had the means to pay the hefty $5 to $6 cover. Great sweaty, rocking nights at the Liberty Lunch."

"You could go right up to the stage and get just washed over [by] the sound of the Funky Meters, Castle said.

It was one of those places that many who were in Austin at the time remember fondly. It closed in 1999 to make way for the new City Hall and two office buildings.

Liberty Lunch's last owners,MarkPratzand Jeanette Ward, were not all that fond of the weird name, according to The Austin Chronicle. And that may make you wonder how it even got the name.

A Lumber Yard

If you dont know what theoriginalLiberty Lunch was, here's a primer for those of you too young or too new to Austin.

The clubs original owners, ShannonSedwickand Michael Shelton, bought the lease way back in 1975 from a guy who was running an open-air bar.

[There were] pickled eggs on the counter, with one with a bite taken out of it and put back in. It was just pretty much a dive, Sedwick said. "It was funky, very, very funky."

Sedwickand Shelton have had a hand in the development of a number of Austin night spots, most famously Esthers Follies, which they still own. Back in 75, they brought music to Liberty Lunch, booking local bands likeBetoy LosFairlanesand The Lotions.

All the outside was still pretty much the way it had been from the early days when it was a lumber yard, Sedwick said.

Wait. Lumber yard?

A Burger Stand

So, if you dont know what the original, original Liberty Lunch was, here's a primer for those of you too young or too new.

At one time, Austins warehouse district was more than inexpensive real estate to start music clubs; the warehouses were usedto house wares.

CalcasieuLumber was one of if not the biggest building suppliers in Austin. If you live in an old home in town, theres a reasonable chance that there areCalcasieubeams somewhere in the structure.

Supplying lumber and hardware to much of Austin required a lot of warehouse space.

We had a window department, an appliance store, an architectural mill plant, the main office these were all in different buildings down there in theSecondandThird Street area. But our main office was onSecondStreet, said Nick Morris, the former president ofCalcasieu. His grandfather Bill Drake started the business.

The company owned much of the land around this one building without a roof.

I ate [in that building] all the time, but, no, that was not ours," he said. "That was a restaurant, and I had plenty of hamburgers there at Liberty Lunch. Idont remember how it got its name; I know that a blind man owned it. And if you went in there often, I dont know if he could detect your voice or your footsteps or whatever, but hed call you by name.

Now were getting to the bottom of it.

According to Sedwick, the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired owned the space.

"They had named it Liberty Lunch and then painted over that part of the building," she said. "And so when we uncovered that paint on the front of the building, that name came out. We just discovered it by happy accident, and thats why we named it Liberty Lunch.

But thats where the origin story ends in a mystery. The Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired doesnt have any record of a program onSecondStreet. The school says official records of off-site programs go back only so far.

Back then, there was a federal program for the blind to be employed specifically in the operation of vending facilities, which included cafeterias, snack bars and, later, vending machines. It's possible that the burger stand was run by an individual in the program who could have had a hand in establishing the name.

Brand New

If you dont know what Liberty Lunch will be, youre not alone.

It just seems to me you shouldnt take somebodys built-up brand and utilize it again," Sedwick said. "I wouldnt like it if somebody tried to call something Armadillo World Headquarters, either. Those things are special. They should be special."

Thats why Im a little bummed thatStubbsmay get the name Liberty Lunch," Castle said, "because I want Liberty Lunch to bethat memory."

Will it be the same Liberty Lunch? No, it wont," Baranowskisaid. "But its in the same arena and hopefully, over time, the folks behind the new Liberty Lunch will create a similarly warm and inviting experience that can be part of the Austin culture for years to come.

This incarnation of Liberty Lunch will have barbecue but probably a different sauce.

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Liberty Lunch Might Be Coming Back, But Where Did It Come From? - KUOW News and Information

Answering Modern Threats to Religious Liberty – CBN News

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WASHINGTONAs America becomes more secular, religious liberty is facing ever harsher attacks. Opponents have what they feel are reasonable objections to that liberty, some going so far as to say religious liberty does damage and leads to discrimination. Thats led people like constitutional law professor Michael Paulsen of Minneapolis St. Thomas University to study those objections and then answer them one by one.Hes even trying to reach way out beyond his law classes to spread his message that theres a strong defense for religious rights. Before a crowd at Washington, D.C.s Family Research Council this past week, he explained that when America became a constitutional republic, most of its founders had a strong belief in God and a sacred sense about peoples religious rights. Thats why it makes so much sense theyd protect religion with the First Amendment.

Gods Commands Beat Governments Demands

"Religious liberty is our collective sense or intuition that if God exists and makes commands on people, those commands really are more important than what the state requires, Paulsen told the FRC audience.

But he worries that in an increasingly secular society, that sense is decaying.Its kind of a lost perspective in the modern era, he said.

Paulsens concerned about a growing hostility to people practicing their faith in areas like their businesses.There are those with objections to religious liberty who actually fear what such unfettered liberty in the hands of business-owners might do to harm others.

He said of such objectors who look down their nose at religion, You sort of shed the idea that religious liberty is generally a good thing, and it becomes a view that religion is an affirmatively harmful thing.And protecting what you dont think corresponds to any objective truth is kind of like protecting kookiness.

If You Believe Religion Is a Delusion

Imagine if there were a constitutional right that afforded special status for delusional people, which is the way that many secularists view religion, he continued.You would not want to protect delusions of delusional people very strongly, and you would find that just about anything that the state or society imposes as its rule should prevail over religious truth."

Its why these days, those who believe in same-sex marriage and gay rights are going after cake-bakers and florists and photographers who dont want to serve gay weddings.These gay rights supporters find biblical objections outdated or ludicrous and think actions like refusing to serve same-sex weddings should be forbidden because they see them as active discrimination.

But Paulsen pointed out, You can as a cake maker decline to make a Ku Klux Klan cake or a Nazi cake or an anti-Muslim cake.

Same-Sex Marriage Ruling a Turning Point

The thing is, the U.S. Supreme Court with the 2015 Obergefell vs. Hedges 5-to-4 ruling has now made same-sex marriage a constitutional right.

"By making it a constitutional right, the Supreme Court has given fuel to the forces who wish to override the claims of religious conscience, Paulsen told CBN News."Most Christians I think share a variety of views that entail empathy for the neighbor and are not hostile to homosexuals themselves.Nonetheless, there are very many who would wish to preserve the ability to act in accordance with what they think are scriptural commands; not to affirm propositions with which they disagree."

But now the law may force compliance, leading Paulsen to say, "The most important and dangerous aspect of Obergefell is its threat to religious liberty."

Still, the law professor pointed out that those insisting religious believers are wrong to oppose activities like abortion or same-sex marriage face a huge barrier.

An Objection to the Constitution Itself'

Paulsen stated, It is the view of some that religious liberty should not be protected and that every exercise of religious liberty basically is an impairment of the rights of others.

Now if you take that argument seriously, you never protect religious liberty, he said. But its basically an objection to the Constitution itself. The Constitution protects religious liberty and protects it in a special way.

One thing about Americas federal system is that federal law trumps state or local statutes. Paulsen believes that should be true even when it comes to state laws against some discrimination.

The Constitution prevails over statutes.If theres a constitutional right weighed against a statutory assertion, youre basically weighing the constitutional freedom of religion against a claim of government power to enforce civil rights laws, Paulsen explained.

"I think that as a matter of starting points as first principles, you should say, Wait a minute. We dont start with civil rights laws and say, well, can we really justify a religious exemption from it?' I think we start with the First Amendment free exercise right," he said.

Faith Is Not Irrational

As society becomes more secular, Paulsen suggested believers will have to learn to defend their faith in a way that makes logical sense to others.

It is not irrational for people to believe in a Creator God, he explained. "And I think it is important in defending and explaining religious freedom to be able to explain the premises that underlie religious faith in a way thats coherent to people who have competing philosophical systems.

Its why hes out there defending it himself in an era where such liberty may soon be threatened like never before in America. Hes also written about it extensively in The Priority of God (a Theory of Religious Liberty).

Christians have lived in secular and oppressive ages throughout all history. America is probably one of the least bad places for that. We enjoy these tremendous constitutional freedoms and theyre protected by a very strong social structure, Paulsen told CBN News.

But he warned, "Nonetheless, It is obviously true that the more society becomes secularized, the less strongly it will value and protect religious liberty. And Id like to keep religious liberty strong for all Christians, Muslims, Jews and all religious believers of good faith.

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Answering Modern Threats to Religious Liberty - CBN News

TSA still offers us less liberty and less safety – OCRegister

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By just about any measure, the Transportation Security Administration has been a failure. A recent undercover test provides even further evidence of this, as if any were needed.

The TSA was a mess before it was merged, along with 21 other federal agencies, into the superbureaucracy known as the Department of Homeland Security in 2002. At the time, then-President George W. Bush promised that the new department would improve efficiency without growing government, but as with other DHS agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Secret Service, the TSA has only gotten more bloated, more incompetent and less accountable.

The latest example is the dreadful performance of security screeners at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the 16th-busiest airport in the U.S., where undercover agents with the DHS Office of the Inspector General successfully smuggled explosive materials and fake weapons through security on 17 of 18 attempts thats a failure rate of 95 percent! The TSAs performance was so bad that the covert tests were reportedly halted prematurely. Moreover, it seems that security at Minneapolis-St. Paul has actually been getting worse; screeners failed on 9 of 12 attempts during a similar test last year.

This seems to be consistent with the national trend. In 2002, USA Today reported that undercover agents got bombs and weapons through security about a quarter of the time. By 2007, the failure rate had jumped to 75 percent, the paper reported. Between 2007 and 2015, the TSA beefed up its screening staff by more than 50 percent from about 30,000 to 46,000 and spent $550 million on staff training and new screening equipment, but then TSA famously failed to detect mock explosives and banned weapons in 67 of 70 cases a 96 percent failure rate in 2015, leading to the ouster of agency chief Melvin Carraway. It seems things have not gotten any better since then.

If that was not enough, the U.S. Government Accountability Office again blasted the TSA for wasting resources on a behavior detection program that has little, if any, scientific basis, much less actual results to justify it. As a new GAO report explains, officers were trained to look for behavioral indicators like assessing the way an individual swallows or the degree to which an individuals eyes are open, supposedly as evidence that an individual might pose a threat.

But, as the GAO concluded in a 2013 report, The human ability to accurately identify deceptive behavior based on behavioral indicators is the same as or slightly better than chance, and it recommended shutting the program down. The new report confirms that 98 percent of the 178 sources the TSA cited to substantiate its efforts failed to meet the GAOs definition of valid evidence thereby discrediting at least 28 of the 36 behavioral indicators examined.

Yet, even as the TSAs performance remarkably continues to deteriorate, as in numerous other areas, the governments solution is more of the same: more employees, more taxpayer money, more pointless harassment of passengers, including enhanced pat-downs and inspections of books and food. These efforts have never caught a terrorist or foiled a terrorist plot, but they have successfully beaten Americans into submission to ever-growing government authority and intrusions.

We are told that these infringements of our liberties are the price of security, but as Benjamin Franklin so presciently warned 262 years ago, these sacrifices have only led to less liberty and less safety. In the interests of both liberty and safety, we should get government out of the security business and let airlines compete to serve customers while also keeping them safe.

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TSA still offers us less liberty and less safety - OCRegister

Financier Davis is Liberty Bank’s community developer – Hartford Business

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July 24, 2017

Faces of Business

Stan Simpson Special to the Hartford Business Journal

Math and computations have always fascinated Glenn Davis.

As he reflected in his Middletown office on his extensive career in finance, the dapper vice president for community development at Liberty Bank said it wasn't really the numbers that engaged him as a child.

"I like solving problems," Davis said. "What's intriguing for me is working through the process. I love successful outcomes. As an economic development person what is refreshing is that you can leave a legacy that you were able to solve a problem that led to significant change. At the end of the day, economic development is about taking nothing and turning it into something.''

The Windsor resident's mornings start at about 5 a.m. with prayer, walking the family dog and then breakfast. He is normally at his Main Street branch a little after 8 a.m.; leaves around 5:30 p.m. and usually works another two hours in his home office.

Davis leads a three-person team tasked with making investments and providing resources to empower low-and-moderate income communities. In addition to his VP duties, Davis is also the bank's Community Reinvestment Act officer, making sure that loans and mortgages are made available to underserved communities.

More than $40 million worth of transactions flow through his office, including investments in nonprofits, lending to homebuyers, neighborhood revitalization projects and small businesses.

Davis, a Philadelphia native, and wife Dianne have been married 37 years. They have three children and a grandchild. His career in finance, banking and economic development spans 40 years.

"I love working with small businesses and helping them to achieve their goal," Davis, 62, said. "That's been the real driver for me helping others achieve their goals."

That driver applies to his staff as well. As a business leader, Davis says he wants his team members to achieve their individual goals, "but to have that success structured in the context of our team."

When it comes to managing people, Davis said he has learned that it's important to understand the personalities of each employee and what motivates them.

"You can't treat everyone the same," he said. "People are wired differently. So, even your approach to how you motivate them is different. Some may require more of a strong-arm approach; others a softer approach. The key to being successful with that is to really be in tune to who you are. You have to be comfortable with yourself to be able to flow in those different roles."

He majored in business and economics at Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., and earned a master's degree in management at Cambridge College in Massachusetts. Work stops included Louisville, Ky.; Shreveport, La.; and Houston, Texas.

This is a man who at an early age found his niche in life finance and parlayed it into a career helping others secure funding for their dreams. Davis was hired at Liberty in 2013.

On any given day, the customer may be a real estate developer trying to transform a parcel of land, a nonprofit looking to expand, a first-time homebuyer, or an entrepreneur seeking a loan.

Financial literacy is another sector that drives Davis.

He is particularly proud of Liberty's Small Business Academy launched in 2016. The training program educates fledgling entrepreneurs, who generate less than $1 million in annual revenue, on the fundamentals of business. Financing, taxes, risk management and insurance are among the topics discussed. The candidates must be in business for less than three years, have no bankruptcies in the past five years, and not be under supervision of the criminal justice system. A credit line of $5,000 is approved for each participant that completes the eight-week program. So far, about 100 entrepreneurs have graduated.

"In my experience, no one has ever gone out of business because they were not proficient at what they did,'' Davis said, adding that it is the business-side of operating a firm that dooms many entrepreneurs.

When he's not working the numbers and solving problems, Davis enjoys time at home working on his yard and reading motivational books, or ones about spirituality and (who knew?) espionage.

He finds irony that his very first job in 1976 was in a management-training program at a place called Liberty Bank in Louisville, Ky. no connection to Connecticut's Liberty.

"I've come full circle," Davis said, with a smile. "Back into a Liberty Bank."

Stan Simpson is the principal of Stan Simpson Enterprises LLC, a strategic communications consulting firm. He is also host of "The Stan Simpson Show," on Fox 61.

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Financier Davis is Liberty Bank's community developer - Hartford Business

Former Liberty Cab drivers start new service in Chico – KRCRTV.COM

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Former Liberty Cab drivers start new...

CHICO, Calif. - There's a new cab in Chico, but these might look familiar.

Just months after Liberty Cab went out of business after serving Chico for 12 years, some of its drivers have officially launched a new cab company.

The former Liberty Cab drivers bought three taxi's from their former boss and transformed Liberty Cab into Star Taxi.

"I just want to drive. I don't know, it's so simple, I love driving," said Erik Schmidt, co-owner of Star Taxi.

That's exactly what he and the other owner, Shawn Heater, plan to do. Schmidt said he only got five days notice from Liberty Cab that he would no longer have a job back when they closed in April.

Now, he and two former drivers are back to serve the city.

"I just hope we can be the new Liberty, I just hope we can make it," Schmidt said.

The taxis have the same look, with a new name. Three drivers are ready for duty 24 hours a day.

They even deliver. Schmidt brought an Icee to a Chico man named Richard Kisling, who can't drive. "It's pretty valuable [to me,] said Kisling. "I can call [the taxi] that particular day to go somewhere and back and with [another transportation option] I'd have to make arrangements beforehand."

It's the kind of bedside manner Schmidt said sets Star Taxi apart from other taxi companies and from the ride share options like Uber.

"Most of our demographic doesn't have smart phones," Schmidt said. "Our average customer is probably about 40 or 50 years older than the average Uber user."

The elderly or disabled make up about 80 percent of their business, which is slowly but surely on the rise.

"Today I feel better," said Schmidt. "I was really scared, but we get about four or five more calls every day which is good right?"

It's a continuing improvement. The three hit the road July 13 with only six calls a day and now they're up to almost 25 a day just a week and a half later.

Enough business means they'll be adding two more cabs sooner than later.

"I'm all in. I've sold everything I could possibly sell. I just put everything I have, it's gonna work," said Schmidt.

The local business is asking for local help. Anyone who needs a ride is welcome to call Star Taxi at 530-466-8899. Schmidt said they're still working out some kinks in their call system. If that number doesn't work, call 530-966-0439.

Schmidt said their former employers with Liberty Cab are fully supporting the new business. The average taxi can cost up to $5,000, but they're buying the already branded Liberty Cabs at a discounted rate of about $1,200.

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Former Liberty Cab drivers start new service in Chico - KRCRTV.COM