Euthanizing cat haunts Michigan woman – Detroit Free Press

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Judy Putnam, Lansing State Journal Published 4:50 p.m. ET March 10, 2017 | Updated 21 hours ago

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Iyesta, a 13-year-old tabby, was euthanized after suffering from cancer. Her owner now regrets the decision.(Photo: Courtesy)

A Delta Township woman who regrets euthanizing her cat is angry at Michigan State Universitys veterinary clinic for what she described as continued pressure to end her pets life.

Though a veterinary hospital official said its an unusual accusation and consent for euthanasia was given in the case, it offers a window into the tough decisions for pet owners. Many of us consider our pets as members of our families.

For some people, these are children for want of a better word, said Dr. Chris Gray, director of the MSU Veterinary Medical Center.

In Faye Norris case, money wasnt among the considerations. Shes a retired state employee who was willing to spend what it took to help her beloved cat, a 13-year-old tabby named Iyesta.

Norris said she doesnt believe in euthanasia and told staff repeatedly at the Medical Centers Small Animal Clinic that she didnt want that option for Iyesta. She said MSU has a culture of euthanasia.

I dont believe in euthanasia because I feel God created people and animals, and I believe he created us and he should decide when we die, she said.

Iyesta was diagnosed with cancer in June after Norris discovered a lump on her neck. She took Iyesta to the clinic 28 times, including at times daily for bandage changes, and paid for expensive chemotherapy. She said treatments totaled $8,600. Her cat developed sores and had low energy.

Norris said the clinics staff of oncologists, veterinarians and a social worker brought up euthanasia again and again.

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The doctors at MSU think they know when your animal's life isn't worthwhile ... and then they keep pressuring you to euthanize your pet until it happens, she wrote in a follow-up e-mail.

On Iyestas last day in October,Norris rushed her to the clinic for help with pain. After she said she wouldnt put her cat to sleep unless there were no other options, she said the vet examining Iyesta told her there was nothing left to do. Her sweet cat was in pain. She consented.

The next day she checked on the cats lab report and found that Iyestas vital signs and oxygen levels were good, and her hydration had been improving after afeeding tube was inserted. She was angry and filed a complaint, feeling robbed of time with Iyesta.

Gray reviewed the case after Norris complained and has a different story. In a letter to Norris, Gray said that the vet who took care of Iyesta did not recall her objections to euthanasia. The vet agreed that she said she didnt want her cat in pain.

The cat was so weak, she had difficulty lifting her head, Gray wrote. Norris disputes that description.

None of our clinicians would force euthanasia upon an owner nor undertake euthanasia without owner consent, Gray wrote.

He did agreeto continue to ensure that the discussions of euthanasia are as empathetic and compassionate as possible.

Gray said in an interview that there are no rigid guidelines on when to suggest euthanasia. He said its also hard to summarize how decisions are made.

Different vets will advise in different ways, and different owners will make decisions at different points, he said.

He said a small percentage of pet owners, in his experience, oppose it completely.

They are few and far between, he said.

Gray said he can recall no other cases of complaints like Norris. In fact some pet owners have complained that their animals were treated too long before euthanasia was offered.

Because the clinic takes animals referred to them from veterinary practices and it is a teaching hospital with more options we are less prone to euthanasia than other practices, Gray said.

Norris is not only sad, shes angry. She is still grieving hard, feeling like she didnt do everything she could for her cat. She has seven other felines.

Her story made me recall my own experience in 2013. My 13-year-old Brittany spaniel was failing. She had been diagnosed with a disease involving the pituitary gland, Cushings disease. I remember a friend gently suggesting that maybe we were keeping Phoebe alive when she didnt have a good quality of life. I protested. Her quality of life seemed OK but my familys wasnt with lots of interrupted sleep and messes and handling of medications.

But when Phoebe suddenly started falling down and could no longer walk, we decided it was time and made the appointment. The power was out, it was bitterly cold, and I wrapped her in a blanket in front of a fire, stroking her red-and-white fur and saying goodbye.

By the appointment time, however, she had perked up and was back on her feet, even snapping up dog treats at the vets office. Should we postpone?

My husband and son made me decide, probably because she was considered my dog except during bird hunting season when she shadowed my husband constantly.

I resented being handed the final call but I made it and she died in my arms.

It was tough. I felt selfish and, like Norris, I had second thoughts. In the end, I decided that she had lived a good life and that I should focus on that.

I still miss her.

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact herat 517-267-1304 or atjputnam@lsj.com. Write to her at300 S. Washington SquareSuite #300Lansing, MI, 48933. Follow her on Twitter@JudyPutnam.

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Euthanizing cat haunts Michigan woman - Detroit Free Press

Recall EXPANDED: Evanger’s Dog and Cat Food, sold nationwide … – fox6now.com

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Recall EXPANDED: Evanger's Dog and Cat Food, sold nationwide ...
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In the Neighborhood: A Meditation on the Golden Rule, Cheaters, and Prophets – Patheos (blog)

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Jan and I were walking into the parking lot after a quick run to one of our local grocery stores, when we noticed a bumper sticker. At first glance it seemed one of those co-exist stickers with the letters twisted out of symbols from the world religions. However, as we looked more closely we could see it was a parody of that sticker and instead, while using world religions letters it read contradict.

Im certainly okay with that. I mean, after all. But, then in smaller print was a citation of a popular chapter and verse from the Gospel of John. So, it appears the meta message here is that while the worlds religions do indeed contradict each other all over the place, there is, actually, among them, a true one. And, in case were confused, heres a pointer to which one that is. Okay. We all have the right to an opinion.

But, I have to say, if I had to pick a true or, more accurately the truer one among the many, as fond as I am of my natal lineage, and how much the stories of the Bible have a place in my heart, it just wouldnt be Christianity. In Arthur C. Clarkes novel Childhoods End theres a kind of time machine, it cant be used to travel, but one can look at the events of the past. Once people got to see how all the religions got going the only one left was a very modified and deeply simplified form of Buddhism.

Me, I think that would be true, although I believe a simplified form of Daoism based exclusively on the so-called philosophical Daoists, and a similarly pretty pared down form of Confucianism might be able to stand the scrutiny of that time viewer. I fear thats it.

That said,I think that slogan contradict is important, and a wise complement, as well as challenge, to cooperate. Among the difficulties with the cooperate, is the impliedthey all teach the same truth. You dont have to go very far into a study of comparative religions to know how deeply they are not all the same. And, even to make the claim, somewhere way, way down at bottom they are all the same is going to be rough slogging. Some believe in creator, some do not. Some see an end to time, while some do not. Some see souls and some do not. Its pretty hard to find that very far to the bottom place where they are all the same.

But, there is one area where near as I can tell all the religions seem to in fact agree. Interestingly, most, maybe none consider it their primary teaching. But they all have it, and they all consider it pretty important. And that common thing is the Golden Rule, which most of us here in English speaking North America know in its formulation in the Gospel of Luke, in the King James version, as do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

The golden rule goes way back and it is found all around. As far as written records go some see it as far back as two thousand years before the common era in the Egyptian story the Eloquent Peasant. Reading it, frankly, I find that a stretch. The Odyssey, which might trace as far back as seven hundred years before the common era, has the goddess Calypso tell Odysseus shell be as careful for him as for herself, because she knows what is right and fair. Among the pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece both Thales and Pittacus of Mytilene, call us to not do that which we would not have done to us. And, while the rule isnt particularly obvious in Socrates, Plato or Aristotle (although I thank them deeply for that other bit of gold, the Golden Mean), the current continues to pop up among the Greeks here and there.

The Hebrew scriptures with strata that approach the Eloquent Peasants composition although as we understand the text more likely written closer to four or five hundred years before the common era in Exodus we are admonished to not oppress the foreigner, and in Leviticus to straight out love your neighbor as yourself. It is found in the hadith, the recorded sayings of the prophet Mohammed, and throughout muslim and particularly Sufi literature.We can find the Golden Rule in the Dhamapada, a collection of sayings attributed to Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha of history. Confucius, from about the same period, tells us in his Analects not to do to others, what you would not want them to do to you. And the list just goes on and on. There are Muslim, Jewish, and Christian version, there are Hindu, Jain, and Buddhism versions, there is a Zoroastrian version. The gold rule abides among them all.

Even in our more secular era, we see it continue to be presented. For instance, some see a philosophical variation in Immanuel Kants categorical imperative, Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. And for me, even more intriguing, Charles Darwin, writing in the Descent of Man opines that the social instincts the prime principle of mans moral condition with the aid of active intellectual powers and the effects of habit, naturally lead to the golden rule. As ye would that men should do to you, do ye to them likewise, and this lies at the foundation of morality.

And it may be even reflect natural patterning. Donald Pfaff, author of the Neuroscience of Fair Play: Why We (Usually) Follow the Golden Rule, tells how he read a paper by William Hamilton and Robert Axelrod showing that they could teach computers to behave in a according to what you could call reciprocal altruism, a fair-play principle.

Im moderately confident that the intuition that gives us the Golden Rule, and incidentally the Golden Mean, are built in, about as close to the hard wiring of our humanity as it gets. I am pretty sure it has something to do with our being mamas and herd animals. Although there is more to it, as the fact a computer can find a fair-play principle, suggests. Cooperation is critical to our survival.

All rather wonderful.

And, yes, shall we say, of course theres a fly in the ointment. This sense of fair does indeed seem to be built into our human consciousness. Generally we dont need an admonishment for something we all do. And, at about an equal level of strength so is a predilection to cheat, to advance ourselves over others. Human beings constantly are doing things that hurt others.

And, of course, we need that sense of self and that impulse for survival and advancement. Both of these goods, taken to extremes become destructive. Although, frankly, while absolutely see people who miss that the care for one another also means themselves, the excess that is more common, and dangerous in many directions is the preservation of ones self at all costs.

So, of course, the reality is we human beings live within a tension between these poles of our hearts.

And I suspect we may be looking at the deep structures of something else common among religions here. That is the problem of evil. Here we see something else common among the religions, a condemnation of the strong preying upon the weak. While there have always been a handful of people who value selfishness, Im looking at you Ayn Rand, these have always been outliers. The overwhelming majority of human beings and our religions rest upon a foundation of cooperation, of looking out for ones neighbors, of treating the other as we would treat ourselves.

But there is this conflict between selfishness and altruism. In some religions it becomes a cosmic war. And while in most good eventually prevails, I can think of at least one example where the forces of chaos eventually wins. The tension runs deep.

And, then, we can look around at the world we live in today. We have just elected a president who draws the smallest possible circle of who gets to be a neighbor, whose actions seem vastly more in concert with Ayn Rand than with Jesus, Buddha, or, for that matter, Darwin.

Now, in Jewish history in such harsh times when the rich put their boot on the neck of the poor, prophets arise and rail against the imbalance.

I consider these things, and I wonder if that prophet isnt getting ready to stand in front of the White House?

It feels that time is at hand.

Originally posted here:

In the Neighborhood: A Meditation on the Golden Rule, Cheaters, and Prophets - Patheos (blog)

What happens when Liberal backbenchers rise up: Aaron Wherry – CBC.ca

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Wednesday was an eventful day for the House of Commons. Perhaps even an important one, precisely because it was so eventful.

In the climactic moment, 105 Liberals broke with the government and voted in favour of S-201, a bill sponsored by Liberal MP Rob Oliphant to ban genetic discrimination.

Moments earlier, 27 Liberal backbenchers had provided the decisive votes in favour of S-217, Conservative MP Michael Cooper's bill on detention in custody again, against the position of the Liberal government.

Less noticed, but still noteworthy, was the cabinet's own move a few hours earlier to amend C-22, a government bill that would establish a committee of parliamentarians to review national security operations.

Liberal members of the public safety committee joined with Conservatives and New Democrats to amend the bill late last year. On Wednesday afternoon, the government brought forward its own amendments to counter some of the committee's changes.

The prime minister has, rightly or wrongly, punted on electoral reform. Parliamentary procedures remain basically unchanged, though the government has at least now released a discussion paper and the Senate continues to be a live experiment in legislative independence.

The access to information system is still awaiting reform. Question period is still a mostly drab exchange of accusations and platitudes.

But interesting things keep happening nonetheless; indications that the House of Commons might be slowly changing.

With a few exceptions, the last Parliament wasn't generally given to such dramatic demonstrations of independent thought. But Wednesday was actually not the first time during this Parliament that Liberal backbenchers have decisively swung a vote.

Liberal backbenchers helped swing two votes against the wishes of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet on Wednesday. (Chris Bolin/Reuters)

On Oct.26, 103 Liberal MPs voted to support Bill C-243, Liberal MP Mark Gerretsen's bill on maternity benefits. And, that same day, 90 Liberals voted in favour of Bill C-240, Liberal MP Bryan May's bill to create a tax credit for first-aid training.

In both cases, Liberal cabinet ministers voted against.

But C-243 and C-240, along with S-217, were at the second-reading stage of the process and Liberals were merely voting to send the bills to committee for further study.

With S-201, the ban on genetic discrimination, Liberal backbenchers were voting to pass the bill into law.

According to Liberal sources, both the prime minister and Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould addressed caucusWednesday morning about why the government opposes S-201. As Justin Trudeau explained to reporters that day, the cabinet believesthe bill violates provincial jurisdiction.

But nearly the entire Liberal backbench and a dozen parliamentary secretaries disagreed, siding with the House committee that studied the bill.

"I felt that the House justice committee came to the correct result in its deliberation and remain convinced that the important human rights concerns outweigh the concern that the bill might be ultra vires," explained Nick Whalen, the Liberal MP for St. John's East.

Did it feel odd to vote in favour of a bill that the prime minister spoke out against?

"Our obligation to use free votes for the best interest of the country and our constituents was a campaign commitment, and needs to overcome my natural desire to vote with the government," Whalen said. "So, yes. It feels odd, but it is part of a healthy working relationship and what should happen from time to time."

'There are differences in our Liberal caucus, but not a divide,' says MP Rob Oliphant6:48

Immediately after the vote, Oliphant was enthused.

"I think the new reality is that Liberal backbenchers are being empowered," he told reporters. "And I think that we're really trying to see how Parliament can change."

Excessive party discipline and the limited relevance of the backbench MP are the eternal laments of the Westminster parliamentary system.

But the last Parliament ended amid particularly loud complaint about the state of things personified by Brent Rathgeber after he quit the Conservative caucus to sit as an independent and the Liberals came to office with some suggestion things would be somehow different.

Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, the Liberal MP for Beaches-East York in Toronto, is developing a reputation for voting his own way in the House of Commons. (Nathaniel Erskine-Smith)

And things have at least been somewhat different. There were hints of a livelier Parliament last spring and one Liberal MP, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith,has nowmanaged to break from the party line on 13 per cent of his votes far more than recent precedent and roughly in line with the most independent-minded membersofthe looser British Parliament.

Oliphant theorizes that Liberal MPs, having campaigned on a promiseof more independence for MPs and House committees, are now getting comfortable in their new jobs. And the prime minister, having promised to only whip votes in specific circumstances, isn't whipping every vote.

With S-201, Oliphantsays the result wasn't a division within caucus, but a mere difference of opinion. He suggestsConservatives and New Democrats are still getting used to the new reality, too.

"I think we're in a transition time,"Oliphantsaid Thursday, reflecting on S-201's victory.

Though MPs from the governing party often function as extensions of the government, they are also simply MPs, sitting outside cabinet and with some responsibility to hold the government to account. That was one of the messages Rathgeber tried to conveyas he took on the cause of reform.

Brent Rathgeber speaks about his decision to quit the federal Conservative caucus in St. Albert, Alta., in 2013. (Jason Franson/Canadian Press)

And while self-interest often holds partisans of the same stripe togetherpolitics is still a team sport a system that allows for greater independence could have some benefits. Legislation and spending might be better scrutinized. Public concerns and potential problems might be better aired. MPs who never ascend to cabinet might be able to establish themselves as important legislators.

Or so the reform-minded might dream.

It remains to be seen whether the spirit of Wednesdaywill continue on or evolve.

Liberals can say this is the change they promised.Wednesday'svotes, and the upset that night in a Liberal nomination race in St. Laurent, might suggest a party whose members are not easily controlled anyway.

With the example of S-201, the prime minister might learn to get behind his caucus when its opinion seems to be moving against him. Or his willingness to tolerate dissent might be tested.

But regardless of whatever rules or procedures are rewritten, the potential for change would likely still depend on how MPs assert themselves. And at the very least,Wednesdaymight suggest that some change is possible.

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What happens when Liberal backbenchers rise up: Aaron Wherry - CBC.ca

In liberal Hollywood, a conservative minority faces backlash in the … – Los Angeles Times

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As an Academy Award-winning producer and a political conservative, Gerald Molen has worked in the entertainment business long enough to remember when being openly Republican in Hollywood was no big deal.

In the 90s, it was never really an issue that I had to hide. I was always forthright, recalled the producer, whose credits include Schindlers List and two Jurassic Park movies. It used to be we could have a conversation with two opposing points of view and it would be amiable. At the end, we still walked away and had lunch together.

Those days are largely gone, he said. The acrimony its there. Its front and center.

For the vast majority of conservatives who work in entertainment, going to set or the office each day has become a game of avoidance and secrecy. The political closet is now a necessity for many in an industry that is among the most liberal in the country.

Since the presidential election, some conservatives feel that their political beliefs are more of a career liability than ever even for those traditional Republicans disenchanted by President Trump.

I feel absolutely it has harmed me professionally, said Andrew Klavan, the L.A.-based screenwriter and novelist, and a reluctant Trump supporter. His credits include the 1990 Michael Caine dark comedy A Shock to the System and the novel True Crime, which was made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood.

Klavan said that producers have called my agent asking, Why would you represent this guy? Anything that lowers your odds is going to hurt.

While no official tally exists, conservatives in the local entertainment industry estimate their numbers could be as high as a few thousand. Thats a small fraction of the nearly 240,000 entertainment-related jobs in the county estimated in the most recent Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the L.A. Region.

Friends of Abe the industrys largest conservative organization alone counts about 2,500 people on its roster, having started a decade ago with just a handful of individuals led by actor Gary Sinise.

The organization, which keeps the identities of its members secret, holds monthly social events as well as lunches for new members. A new member can only join through a recommendation by an existing member. The group doesnt endorse candidates, but does hold speaking events with past guests including Trump, Ted Cruz and Glenn Beck.

Hollywood conservatives are themselves a divided group when it comes to Trump, whose brash style and controversial policies on trade and immigration have alienated many Republicans.

Leaders of Friends of Abe said its members have sharply divergent views on the current president.

There are very conservative people in FOA who are troubled by his rhetoric, said executive director Jeremy Boreing, a filmmaker and self-described Trump skeptic. There are others who are very gung-ho and supportive of him. There are people who are cautiously optimistic and others who are just cautious.

He said it was too early to tell how Trump will affect the organization, but if Hollywood continues to overreact to Trump and toxify peoples professional lives, FOA will grow. We got started under [George W.] Bush, not under Obama. Hollywood was a more pleasant place for conservatives during Obamas tenure because Hollywood was in a good mood.

In casting his vote for Trump, screenwriter Roger L. Simon said it was because he believes Trump can enact change in the country. But the Oscar nominee said he isnt a social conservative. (He said he voted for Moonlight for best picture.)

I think most of the people on the right in Hollywood are on the right for reasons of foreign policy and the economy, said Simon.

Leaders of Friends of Abe said it has a large contingent of below the line talent technicians, artisans, musicians and other crew members who toil far from the limelight.

They fly under the radar, said Stephen Limbaugh, a film composer and a second cousin of conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh. Most dont advertise their political views and lead unpretentious lives. Its mostly beers after work.

But another concentration of conservatives can be found at the opposite end of the Hollywood spectrum: the corner offices of major entertainment companies.

Corporate Hollywood tends to be much more conservative and Republican, said Steve Ross, a professor of history at USC and author of the book Hollywood Left and Right.

That dates back to Louis B. Mayer, the MGM boss who was active in Californias Republican establishment and who would often mix business and politics.

Prominent Republican supporters today include NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke, former Univision head Jerry Perenchio and producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

Steven Mnuchin, who was national finance chairman of Trump's campaign and is now Treasury Secretary, was a Wall Street executive and film financier whose executive producer credits include American Sniper, Mad Max: Fury Road and Sully.

Talent agency William Morris Endeavor has close ties to Trump. Co-CEO Ari Emanuel, a Democrat, is a friend of the president, having previously worked as his agent, while chief financial officer Chris Liddell recently left the company to become Trumps director of strategic initiatives.

But corporate Hollywood is far from being politically uniform. Rival agency UTA recently protested Trump by canceling its annual Oscars party and holding a pro-immigration street rally. During the recent presidential campaign, a slew of entertainment bosses lined up to give money to Hillary Clinton, including Barry Diller, Haim Saban and ICM Partners Chris Silbermann.

Some believe that deep down, corporate Hollywood is politically agnostic and that profits supersede partisanship.

Where is this liberal Hollywood agenda? The agenda seems to be whatever will entertain mass audiences, said screenwriter Craig Mazin, who has voted Democrat and Republican and now describes himself as a moderate. How could an industry have been successful this long if it was alienating half the country?

Industry insiders say this is especially true in the exhibition industry, which includes the countrys major cinema chains as well as small-town theater owners.

Film buyers are greedy. They want a good performing film, said Ron Rodgers, the retired co-founder of Rocky Mountain Pictures, an independent distributor of conservative and Christian-themed movies.

He said hes had no problems selling his films in blue states, so long as exhibitors think a movie will play well. They will change religions for it.

The same can be said of some studios. Lionsgate, the Santa Monica-based mini-major, has distributed films by left-wing documentarian Michael Moore, including Fahrenheit 9/11. But the company is also behind the most recent documentary by conservative rabble-rouser Dinesh DSouza.

Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party was savaged by critics and even earned a Razzie Award for the worst movie of 2016. But it was also the years top-grossing documentary, bringing in more than $13 million theatrically. Lionsgate, which declined to comment, distributed the DVD in the U.S.

DSouza said that since the election, Trump derangement syndrome has set in and that a lot of creative Hollywood is up in arms. That probably doesnt bode well for any conservatives in the industry, especially the ones who are outspoken about Trump.

Numerous actors including Meryl Streep, Samuel L. Jackson and Jessica Chastain have publicly denounced Trumps policies. Alec Baldwin has lampooned Trump several times on Saturday Night Live, while Jimmy Kimmel took swipes at the president while hosting the Oscars.

In such a charged climate, many conservatives in Hollywood keep a low political profile.

Theres a McCarthyism coming from the left, said one prominent TV and movie actor who requested his name not be used for fear of professional repercussions. The actor, who is conservative but not a Trump supporter, said political shouting matches have erupted on the set of one of his shows and that a conservative producer he works with has been shunned by colleagues.

In 30 years of show business, Ive never seen it like this, said the actor. If you are even lukewarm to Republicans, you are excommunicated from the church of tolerance.

(Unless youre a star like Eastwood and Jon Voight, Oscar winners who have openly supported Republican candidates. Voight even spoke during Trumps inauguration festivities: God answered all our prayers... Let us rejoice in knowing that from this time on, we will see a renewed America.)

Once you reach a certain level of success, its fine, said Michael Medved, the conservative film critic and radio host. It doesnt matter.

For Hollywood conservatives, a Republican in the White House doesnt necessarily herald a golden age of acceptance. In fact, its usually the opposite, said Lionel Chetwynd, the screenwriter and co-founder of Friends of Abe. He said industry liberals doubled down on their resentment toward conservatives during the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush years.

Today, their anger toward Trump is even more intense. And many hold enough industry power where they can be vicious, said Molen, the Schindlers List producer.

Even so, Molen said he thinks conservatives should stand up for their beliefs.

But I wouldnt flaunt it.

david.ng@latimes.com

@DavidNgLAT

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Liberal Bullying On Campus: A Case Study – Power Line (blog)

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Not all liberals are bullies, but a great many are. Where liberals are in the majority, the bullies among them try to make life miserable for those who fail to conform. Almost every college campus is in this category. A case in point, one of many, is St. Olaf College, where my youngest daughter is a sophomore. The college newspaper has a commendably balanced story on the intolerance that prevails there:

Of the 12 students interviewed by the Manitou Messenger, several have been violently threatened because of their political beliefs, and almost all of them feel as though they cant speak up about politics on campus in class, online or with their friends. *** Reagan Lundstrom Warner 20 is a political science major who has learned how to keep [her] mouth shut. While faculty are encouraged to remain unbiased, she said that one of her professors used class time to expound upon personal views.

[A professor] started every class with basically just ridiculing Trump for about 20 minutes, Lundstrom Warner said. She plans to transfer to St. Thomas University next fall.

St. Olaf is an expensive school. Do parents know that they are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars so that their children can be subjected to irrelevant political tirades?

My daughter was among those who were threatened with violence:

Many conservative students felt that the campus became more hostile during election season, and some students received violent threats. On the night of the election, a student in the Pause threatened to beat up [College Republican President Emily] Schaller, calling her a f***ing moron. Over the next couple of days, she overheard multiple students threaten to hurt the next conservative or Republican they saw. Vice President of St. Olaf College Republicans Kathryn Hinderaker 19 had a similar experience.

I think one of the hardest things was, the second day, I went into Buntrock and someone yelled from the bottom, if you voted for Trump, you better be f***ing scared. Everyone clapped and applauded, Hinderaker said. Obviously, it didnt feel super safe.

Facebook was another venue for threats against those suspected of voting for Donald Trump:

[Former student Katie] Ivance noted that the insults continued on social media.

People were saying [things] like F-you and I wish you were dead, she said. Ivance isnt the only one who has faced harassment online due to political beliefs. On Feb. 18, a student posted an unsolicited photo of a group of students that supposedly included Trump supporters and encouraged fellow students to remember their faces.

Ivance transferred to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities after the fall semester, citing harassment as her primary reason for transferring.

Schools cannot continue to permit this level of harassment and discrimination against non-left wing students. Public universities will not be supported by legislatures, and private colleges will not be supported by donors and parents, if the situation persists.

It is striking that this borderline fascist behavior by Democrats is occurring precisely as the Democratic Party slides toward irrelevance. Democrats try to enforce the view that voting for Donald Trump is beyond the pale, but Trump won the election. It is not as though Republicans are members of some obscure splinter faction. They control the presidency, both houses of Congress, thirty governorships and two-thirds of state legislative bodies.

Democrats are at a historically low ebb. You might think that this would cause liberals to re-examine their premises rather than try to bully others into submission. But thinking is not what liberals are best known for.

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Liberal Bullying On Campus: A Case Study - Power Line (blog)

No sign that Liberal knives are truly out for Kathleen Wynne – CBC.ca

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One of the questions I get asked most often these days by friends and acquaintances is whether Premier Kathleen Wynne is going to resign to give her OntarioLiberal Party a fighting chance in next year's election.

Rumours certainly abound that there is a concerted movement to push Wynne out.

The people involved (according to the whispers)rangefrom ambitious cabinet ministers who want to be premier, to backbenchersworried about losing their seats, to grassroots Liberals who believe Wynne has irreversibly become a lightning rod for voter anger.

But if there truly is a movement among Ontario Liberals to topple Wynne so that someone else can lead the party into the 2018 vote, I can't find it.

I've spoken to a range of people who you'd think would delight in seeing the back of Wynne: strong supporters of SandraPupatello, her chief rival in the last leadership race;longtime Liberal backroomers who've been frozen out by Wynne's inner circle;and senior officials whose greatest loyalty is to the party, not to Wynne.

Even given the opportunity to speak off the record, none of them purports to smelleven a whiff of an imminent revolt.

The strongest statement I could coax out of a senior Liberal (not a Wynne loyalist) is that some key activists in the party are giving her until summer to show signs of a turnaround in the polls.

Deputy Premier Deb Matthews (left) is one of Wynne's staunchest allies. (Geoff Robins/The Canadian Press)

"The knives are not out," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "But these people arein the tool-shed and they're sharpening the knives. Whether they use them or not depends on where things go from here."

He said that Wynne would only step down if there is pressure from "a combination of caucus members and the party executive." He addedthat he sees no evidence of such pressure now.

One of Wynne's staunchest allies, Deputy Premier Deb Matthews, dismissed talk of dissension in theranks.

"Kathleen Wynne has really strong support in our caucus, in our party membership,"said Matthews in an interview.

Matthews is also co-chair of the Ontario Liberal re-election campaign and insistedthat Wynne is the best person to lead the party into the 2018 vote "because she's smart, really hard working, cares deeply about issues that matter to people and gets the job done."

Another senior party official who also said he sees no sign of a desire to dump Wynne called her "our best weapon."

Here's something else that makes me skeptical there really is a movement to push Wynne out: the fact that the PCs are loudly insistingthere is one.

From the PC candidate in the Ottawa-Vanier byelection:

Earlier this week, I received anemailpurporting to be from a group of Ontario Liberal Party members, past and present, calling for Wynne to resign.

The message's credibility quickly crumbled upon closer inspection.

There was no name or contact number. Nobodyresponded to my reply asking for an interview. It contained numerous sloppy grammatical errors and typos, referredto Hydro One as "Ontario Hydro" and spelledSt.Catharineswrong.

But the final straw was the message's rant against Wynne's plan to cuthydro rates by a further 17 per cent.

The plan may indeed have some long-term negative consequences for the province, but in the short term, it can bring only political benefits for the Liberals. Knowing how intense the hydro price backlash has been, and how relieved the Liberals are that the plan could neutralize what was the hottest political issue in the province, I can't imagine any real party member would see the move as a reason to push Wynne out.

Yes,the Liberals are jittery about polls putting them on average 14 points behind the ProgressiveConservativesand putting Wynne's personal approval rating at near-record lows.

But polls only indicate how voters feel right now. Theelectionis 15 months away, an eternity in politics. The Liberals were sagging at similar points ahead of the elections in 2007, 2011 and 2014 and won them all.

It's also unclear that any other leader would be able to magically produce a surge in the polls. No matter who the premier is, the party will almost certainly have to battle against sentiment that it's "time for a change" after 14 years of Liberal governments.

It's simply a little early to write Kathleen Wynne's political obituary just yet.But if you are a Liberal party member and youdo wanther gone, please do let me knowthat you're out there.

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No sign that Liberal knives are truly out for Kathleen Wynne - CBC.ca

Ecclesia asks judge to toss records suit – Arkansas Online

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FAYETTEVILLE -- Lawyers for a Christian college at the center of a kickback scheme want a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the school thrown out.

Arkansas legislators gave nearly $700,000 in public funds to help the private Ecclesia College buy almost 50 acres in Benton County. The lawsuit seeks information from the college about the state money.

Ecclesia's receipt of the grant money entered the spotlight after former state Rep. Micah Neal, R-Springdale, pleaded guilty in federal court Jan. 4 to taking a pair of kickbacks totaling $38,000 for helping two entities receive grants through the state's General Improvement Fund.

Former state Sen. Jon Woods, R-Springdale, has since been indicted on 11 counts of honest services wire fraud, one count of honest services mail fraud and one count of money laundering in the case.

Also indicted in the kickback scheme are the college's president, Oren Paris III of Springdale, and Randell Shelton Jr. of Alma, a consultant. Each was indicted on nine counts of honest services wire fraud and one count of honest services mail fraud.

The General Improvement Fund consists of unallocated state funds at the end of each fiscal year and interest earned on state deposits.

The money is passed to the state's eight economic development districts for distribution to nonprofit groups or government entities. The beneficiaries are essentially decided by the lawmakers who direct the development districts where to send the funds, according to district directors and lawmakers.

The lawsuit against the school, filed in Washington County Circuit Court on behalf of Jim Parsons of Bella Vista, contends that private organizations that receive public money, engage in activities that are of public interest, carry on work that is intertwined with that of a government body or receive grants to promote economic development are subject to the requirements of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

Parsons is chairman of the Benton County chapter of the Transparency in Government Group. He said he's a former Ecclesia board member and faculty member.

The lawsuit asks a judge to order Ecclesia to make the documents available.

The motion to dismiss filed Wednesday said Parsons' complaint is moot because a judge didn't hear it within seven days, which the motion says is required by state law. The complaint was filed Feb. 9 and was assigned to Circuit Judge John Threet.

"Defendant Ecclesia, Inc. prays for an order of the court finding that plaintiff's complaint is time-barred...and that, therefore, defendant has substantially prevailed in the action," according to the motion to dismiss filed by attorney Travis Storey.

The motion also seeks attorneys' fees.

Attorneys for Parsons said state law does not require an expedited hearing..

"Ecclesia's motion is just a tactic to stop from complying with [the Freedom of Information Act]. We are confident that the circuit court will agree," attorney Chip Sexton III said in an email. "Ecclesia's motion doesn't cite even a single case in support of its bizarre argument. And, there is absolutely no authority for the proposition that a [Freedom of Information Act] complaint that isn't heard within seven days must be dismissed."

Sexton said state law allows either side to request an expedited hearing in writing but neither side chose to do so.

Sexton said they did not request a hearing because of concerns that the seven-day time period violates the separation of powers doctrine. The Arkansas Constitution provides that the state Supreme Court has the exclusive power to write the procedural rules that apply in this type of case, and the seven-day expedited process was written by the Legislature, Sexton said.

Ecclesia officials also declined a Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette request in early February to release documents related to its receipt and expenditure of General Improvement Fund money, claiming the school is a private entity and therefore not required to release the documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

Metro on 03/11/2017

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Ecclesia asks judge to toss records suit - Arkansas Online

Sunshine Week report card: Rock Island County – Quad City Times

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WEBSITE: (30/32 points): The Rock Island County Board has meeting packets, agendas and minutes going back to 2008 on the Rock Island County Board website, rockislandcounty.org/CountyBoard/Home.

The names and phone numbers for each of the 25 members of the Rock Island County Board can be found under the heading county board members."

The budget for fiscal year 2017 can be found on the homepage of Rock Island County, rockislandcounty.org(note the County Board site is different), which also maintains budgets, beginning with 2013. Along with the current budget is the countys capital improvement plan for fiscal year 2017 through fiscal year 2021. The Auditors Report also is available.

On the county homepage, there is a directory that provides names, phone numbers and email addresses for each department's leadership. The site also contains a Freedom of Information directory, which lists a FOIA officer for each department.

MEETINGS (17/25 points): From 2012 to 2016, the Rock Island County Board held a total of 81 meetings that included regular and special meetings of the board. In that time, the board went into closed session 26 times. The closed sessions had to do with personnel issues, including negotiations and bargaining with the unions that represent the countys workers. Minutes of closed sessions cannot be made public until the matter under discussion is resolved, per Illinois law.

The county board went into executive session more than 20 percent of the time.

BUDGET/FINANCIALS (35/35 points): The budget for fiscal year 2017 can be found on the Rock Island County website home page. The budget contains a complete table of contents on which there are hyperlinks to each section of the budget. For instance, clicking on the hyperlink for section 5b of the budget will take you to the summary for outstanding debt for the county. There also are hyperlinks to all sections of the budget, including, for example, the executive summary, bonds/debt service and property tax information.

The budget also contains an executive summary, a list of financial policies, an explanation of the budget cycle, budget trends, as well as a summary of funds and departments. There also are explanations on the debt service and property taxes.

Graphs aid in understanding the budget schedules, and there are complete budget worksheets and expense reports in the budget.

RECORDS (10/10): There is no fee to inspect records. The first 50 pages of copies are free and 15 cents per page after 50.

A request for the expense reports filed for the week of Oct. 10-14, 2016, was satisfied the same day. Because the request did not specify which department, the county assumed all departments and provided the information for each of the departments. There was no fee for the documents.

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Sunshine Week report card: Rock Island County - Quad City Times

Sunshine Week report card: East Moline – Quad City Times

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WEBSITE (30/32 points): The city of East Molines website, eastmoline.com, is user-friendly and easy to navigate. The homepage features a calendar of upcoming events, a quick link to agendas and minutes, water bill payments and a Notify Me icon. The notification allows users to sign up, using email or text messaging, for various alerts, such as snow emergencies and upcoming council meetings.

Tabs at the top of the homepage are broken down by government, services, community, doing business and general inquiry.

Minutes and agendas for regular city council and committee-of-the-whole meetings are available, from 2012 to March 2017, by clicking on "agendas and minutes" on the homepage.

On the City Council page (under the Government tab at the top of the homepage), the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and terms of office are available for the mayor, aldermen, city clerk and treasurer.

Under the Services tab at the top of the homepage, users may click on Freedom of Information Act request, which contains a link for a FOIA request form and an email for submitting the completed form. The page also lists the email addresses and phone numbers of City Clerk/FOIA Officer Arletta Holmes and Deputy Clerk/FOIA Officer Cynthia Braggs.

MEETINGS (16/25 points): According to minutes listed on the citys website, there were 121 regular and special council meetings between 2012-2017. The council went into executive session 42 times, or about 35 percent of the time.

The purpose of the closed meetings, including the exemption used to keep the public out, are reflected in minutes.

BUDGET/FINANCIALS (8/35 points): A link to the city budget can be found under the government" tab at the top of the citys website.

The page contains links to budgets for years 2015-17. The 2017 budget book is a 104-page document that lists the citys revenues and expenditures, broken down for each fund or department. It contains a link to its comprehensive annual financial reports, which are based on audited financial statements.

The site also contains financial reports from fiscal years ending in December 2013, December 2014 and December 2015.

Another link contains employee salaries for fiscal years 2015-17.

RECORDS (5/10 points): The Quad-City Times submitted an open records request to clerk Holmes via email on Feb. 20. The request included the number of council meetings held during the past five years and the number of executive sessions that were called during the same time period, along with minutes from the past five executive sessions.

The request also included a copy of expense reports for the week of Oct. 10-14, 2016.

Holmes left a voicemail for a Times reporter the same day, and the two spoke by phone the following day. Holmes said the agendas and minutes of council meetings are available online, along with the city budget.

She said the city council reviews the minutes from executive sessions every six months. Since the last review, two executive sessions have been called. Holmes directed the Times to send an additional FOIA request to the finance department for expense reports.

Kathryn Motzer, who performs payroll and insurance duties for the city, responded to the request on Feb. 22, two days after the initial request was submitted. She said there were no expenses paid during the time period for which the records were requested.

Holmes followed up with a Times reporter on Feb. 27 to ensure compliance with the requests.

The city charges $0.25 cents a page for copies of documents. A minimum charge of $5 is added for mailing.

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Ten favorite personal-finance books – Christian Science Monitor

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March 11, 2017 While great literature is said to transcend audiences, the bestpersonal financebooks are arguably most impactful when they address a particular stage or challenge of your financial life with practical insight and advice.

With this in mind, here are 10 ValuePenguin favorite personal-finance tomes many of them among Amazons best sellers and Goodreads.coms most loved for four different aspects or times of managing your money.

1. Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence

Authors:Vicki Robin, Joe Dominguez and Monique Tilford

Goodreads rating:4.07 / 5

Published during The Great Recession, in 2008, this book looks at personal money management (i.e. getting out of debt, starting to save) in the context of ethics as opposed to spreadsheets. It touches upon mindfulness, building good habits and even being a more environmentally-friendly consumer.

2. The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness

Author:Dave Ramsey

Goodreads rating:4.28 / 5

Like other books in the financial-management genre, the title tells you what you need to know. Ramseys may be best for readers who are looking to climb out of debt before worrying about the ensuing stages in their personal-finance development.

3. I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Author:Ramit Sethi

Goodreads rating:4.04 / 5

If youre more likely to gain from a step-by-step and goal-oriented approach, Seithis book may be worth picking off the shelf. He offers a practical approach to what he calls the four pillars of personal finance:banking, saving, budgeting and investing.

4. The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of Americas Wealthy

Authors:Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko

Goodreads rating:3.99 / 5

Taking the tack that much can be learned from those of us who have already made it, so to speak, these two authors, both with Ph.D.s, examine the best practices of Americas very rich. The books success and value lies in how it makes those takeaways apply to those of us with a lot less in our portfolios than the lux types.

5. The Richest Man in Babylon

Authors:George S. Clason, Charles Conrad

Goodreads rating:4.22

This 100-pager, while nearly a hundred years old, retains as much value as when it was first published, in 1926. Some of the authors of the other books on this list have this classic on their bookshelves, and look fondly on its timeless advice for aspiring wealth-builders.

6. Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook

Author:Tony Robbins

Goodreads rating:4.14 / 5

While some of Robbins work focuses on get-rich-quick schemes for the everyman, his latest book offers more traditional advice on investing. Its at its best when it borrows from the strategies and methods of top investors.

7. The Wealthy Barber

Author:David Chilton

Goodreads rating:3.97 / 5

Unlike Robbins effort, this book claims to empower even the average salary-earner to help him or her to gain financial independence. Its more readable than the average personal finance book, in part through its use of a successful barbers experiences to illustrate Chiltons most powerful points.

8. Make Your Kid a Money Genius (Even if Youre Not)

Author:Beth Kobliner

Goodreads rating:4.25 / 5

Also the author of Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties, Kobliner addresses this 2017 book toward readers who have grown into parenthood, and now want to instruct their kids in managing money. She offers a guide teaching toddlers to teens everything there is to know about money, whether its how to use acredit cardor how to pay for college.

9. Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not

Author:Robert T. Kiyosaki

Goodreads rating:3.92 / 5

Kiyosaki takes the stories of his own father, and the wealthy father of his best friend, to explore how parenting affects a long-term outlook on money and investing.

10. How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free: Retirement Wisdom That You Wont Get from Your Financial Advisor

Author:Ernie J. Zelinski

Goodreads rating:3.71 / 5

At times, this may feel less like retirement wisdom than quiet wisdom you might receive from your yogi. Zelinski goes beyond dollars and cents to address how everything thats important in your life is connected to the time after your work life ends; it also aims to get you to that milestone more quickly.

This story originally appeared on ValuePenguin.

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Ten favorite personal-finance books - Christian Science Monitor

Sealand of the Pacific – Wikipedia

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Sealand of the Pacific was a public aquarium in South Oak Bay at The Oak Bay Marina, near the city of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada. It housed a number of orcas, Haida, Nootka, and Tillikum. In 1991, all three were involved in an incident in which a trainer, Keltie Byrne, was killed. The aquarium subsequently closed and sold its orcas to SeaWorld.[1]

The aquarium opened in 1969, housing an orca named Haida which had been captured in 1968.[2] Shortly afterwards, the aquarium decided to capture a mate for him, taking a partial albino named Chimo. She died in 1972, a little over 2 years after her capture; the disease which caused her albinism, ChdiakHigashi syndrome, made her very susceptible to illness. Haida, her mate, mourned her death, and remained alone for years[citation needed]. Eventually, Sealand captured a female whale named Nootka II for his mate. Nootka II, however, died after 9 months. His third mate, Nootka III, was also short-lived. By the time of the death of his third mate, Haida displayed no interest in them.

In 1977, Sealand captured a young orca which was found alone, emaciated, and suffering from bullet wounds. Miracle became a popular attraction, but was kept in a separate pen from Haida. Several years later her companion in the pen, a seal named Shadow, drowned in the nets forming the pen.

As anti-captivity protests began to put pressure on aquariums, Sealand agreed to release Haida, but the animal died a few days before its scheduled release in October 1982, with no evidence of foul play[citation needed]. His release had been part of a bargain for the aquarium to acquire new whales. Many people were outraged by the plan of capturing more whales, and staked a protest at the supposed capture site. Sealand soon obtained three whales captured from Iceland.

The three new orcas, Tilikum, Nootka IV, and Haida II, never had good dynamics together, and indeed, the male Tilikum was often chased into the medical pen by the two females.

On 20 February 1991, Keltie Byrne, a 20-year-old marine biology student and part-time orca trainer, slipped and fell into the whale pool after a show. Tilikum, Nootka IV, and Haida II dragged and repeatedly submerged her until she drowned, despite other trainers' efforts to rescue her. The poor relations between the whales, unfamiliarity with trainers in the water, and the pregnancy of at least one of the females (Haida II) were cited as possible causes.[3][4][5][6]

Sealand of the Pacific closed shortly after the incident, in November 1992. All three of the whales were sold to SeaWorld in the United States. Tilikum and Nootka IV went to SeaWorld Orlando, while Haida II and her baby Kyuquot went to SeaWorld San Antonio. Kyuquot remains in captivity at SeaWorld. Haida II died in August 2001, while Nootka IV died in 1994. Tilikum died in January 2017.

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Sealand of the Pacific - Wikipedia

Utopia in the Time of Trump – lareviewofbooks

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MARCH 11, 2017

THE FLOODS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY revealed a salient fact that wasnt very important before: lower Manhattan is indeed much lower than upper Manhattan, like by about fifty vertical feet on average. In Kim Stanley Robinsons New York 2140, out this month, this now extremely important fact has combined with rising sea levels to transform the city into what its inhabitants have come to call a SuperVenice: a hacked-together improvisation they navigate via water taxis, skybridges, airships, and private boats they store in the ruined lower floors of skyscrapers. The world has recovered from two massive economic depressions following the two Pulses two decades-long periods of rapid sea level rise following major ice-sheet collapses in Antarctica and is now mostly soldiering on again as normal. In fact, New York becomes something of a frontier city again, in its own way a boom town. Flooded with squatters, climate refugees, and other persons rendered undocumented by the midcentury loss of huge swaths of paper and digital records, the city may have lost its crown as the capital of global finance to Denver, but its still one hell of a town. Its doing so well by 2140, in fact, that some of those fantastically rich Denverites, 124 years from now, are even starting to see New York real estate as a buying opportunity, the next great target for re-gentrification.

Where most contemporary histories of the future imagine climate change as either an annoying irritation or else the end of history the disaster that will end civilization in New York 2140 Robinson cuts more of a middle path. Climate change does indeed prove utterly catastrophic in this novel, laying waste to the coastal cities where a startling percentage of the worlds population currently lives, and devastating a huge amount of infrastructure and fixed capital, costing trillions of dollars but humans are incredibly versatile problem-solvers, and we adapt. Technical solutions like sea walls and skybridges are really only the start of what would be necessary in a flooded Manhattan. Think of the immense social changes, the legal, economic, and architectural structures that would need to be innovated when huge areas of major cities are permanently underwater, or indeed become part of the intertidal zone. Even by 2140, nearly 100 years after the start of the crisis, the long work of retrofitting civilization to rising sea levels goes on, and not all of it is even that unhappy; its no secret that the capitalists use the same phrase to denote both crisis and opportunity, creative destruction. Theres even an investment fund keyed to up-to-the-minute oceanographic data, which you can buy, sell, or short based on your predictions of sea level change from tsunamis, storm surge, and other ecocatastrophic fluctuations.

Befitting its setting, the eco in New York 2140 is as much economy as ecology; climate disaster becomes just another black-swan market event no one could have predicted, with winners (mostly rich people) and losers (mostly the rest of us). And true to Robinsons famous political orientation toward utopian speculations, it falls to his 2140 characters to disrupt the cycle of bubble, crash, and bailout that has run nearly uninterrupted across multiple economic depressions since we all got it wrong the first time, way back in 2008. His protagonists are an unlikely group: a couple of homeless hackers, a YouTube-style celebrity, a hedge fund manager, an NYPD detective, a city organizer, a super, some kids all living in the abandoned Met Life building, to which they have somewhat dubious squatters rights. But ingenuity and accident give them an unexpected opening to make a real difference in the larger world, and they decide to grab it.

Unlike seemingly everyone I knew in high school, college, and graduate school, Ive never actually lived in New York City, though I did grow up in New Jersey, and have spent enough time there that I still feel the usual sort of warm glow about the place. To the extent that the East Coast/West Coast divide replicates in science fiction as it does across most contemporary pop cultural genres, Robinson is a Californian sojourning in New York, but to this Jersey kid he got the details impressively right, even down to a sidelong glance at my beloved Meadowlands. At times, the book actually felt a bit over-researched to me, with too many characters talking about what used to be at this site or that, before the flood, but I came to understand that this was not simply as-you-know-Bob overexposition; it was also a token of the immense trauma they and everyone in Future New York is still living through. What else would you think about, as you flew through a strange web of skybridges and ziplines crisscrossing the ruins of what used to be the greatest city in the world? Of course they talk and think often about how things used to be, back when the world was normal. They live with that temporal confusion every day. (I will concede, however, even as an unrepentant Robinson booster, that the people of 2140 seem awfully well informed about nuts-and-bolts details of the 2008 financial crisis.)

It is undeniably clear that Robinsons project has become the construction of a huge metatextual history of the future, not unlike those sagas imagined by Asimov or Heinlein in the Golden Age of Science Fiction, distributed across overlapping but distinct and mutually irreconcilable texts. Each new Robinson book comments on and complicates the vision of the future espoused by earlier ones, typically by refocusing our attention on some heretofore overlooked component of the problem. Here, for instance, an event that featured in the background of his other future histories including the Mars books ice sheet collapse moves to the foreground, while the question of outer space exploration and colonization is now bracketed entirely. Likewise, the question of animals in an era of mass extinction (what one character in New York 2140 calls not the Anthropocene but the Anthropocide) which was a major theme in Robinsons novel 2312 returns here in unexpected ways, some more optimistic but most rather less so. There are decent people trying to make a positive difference by working for government, like in Science in the Capital, and even some hope somehow squeezed out of the United Statess necrotic political process, if you can imagine such a thing. If the narrative situations in these books sometimes coincide, if sometimes the starting points for these stories seem a bit similar, this shouldnt be altogether shocking or offensive to us; to whatever extent the future flows out of physical, biological, and historical law it will be largely path-dependent, and with only so much variation among possibilities.

This formal similarity of possible futures, all branching out from a single history, has often been an explicit concern of Robinsons. He once published a companion to the Mars trilogy in The Martians, which contains stories in which some aspects of the Mars narrative go different ways; he also published an essay, Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions, which spells out several possible futures that might have come out of his alternate history story The Lucky Strike (many of them strongly undercutting the optimism of the original story). This fascination with theme and variation turns out to be unexpectedly manifest in New York 2140 as well, whose opening chapter appeared in modified, alternate-universe form in Fredric Jamesons An American Utopia last summer as Mutt and Jeff Push the Button. Whereas it was oriented toward Jamesons discussion of universal conscription as a vision of a classless anticapitalist utopia in that book, here Mutt and Jeff set the table instead for the revolutionary financial hacks of New York 2140.

Like Galileos Dream, 2312, and Aurora before it, New York 2140 remixes many of Robinsons key futurological themes, once again with a significantly more pessimistic orientation. One of the many competing narrative voices in New York 2140, a historian (or at least history-minded amateur) who is only referred to as a citizen, seems to exist in metafictional relationship with the rest of the text, living in 2140 New York along with the others but simultaneously understanding himself to be part of a constructed and perhaps somewhat tunnel-visioned narrative. The a citizen narrator seems to understand himself to be in a sort of ongoing argument with interlocutors who dont want him to be too pessimistic, who dont want to hear a bunch of boo-hooing and giving-upness, but who also need to be made to understand that there arent actually happy endings in history, just people coming together to make choices that can make things better or make them worse (and so we should strive to make them better). Like most of the recent Robinson novels in what I would call his postScience in the Capital Middle Period and remixing, in different ways, the ends of both 2312 and Aurora New York 2140 ends on a note of strong ambiguity. The heroes have achieved many of their goals but there was no guarantee of permanence to anything they did, and the pushback was ferocious as always, because people are crazy and history never ends, and good is accomplished against the immense black-hole gravity of greed and fear. And out there of course, forever hovering over everything like the sword of Damocles, is the rest of the ice sheet, the climatological monster weve summoned and can neither control nor banish, which could slide into the ocean at any time, and throw everything theyve built into utter chaos once again.

Ive taken the highly unusual and possibly ill-advised step of quoting from very late in the book here because of something that I feel must be said: written before Trumps election and released just after his inauguration, New York 2140 stands as the first major science fictional artifact of the Trump era, anticipating even in its articulation of the conditions of victory the fragility of progress and the likelihood of reversal. The story ends at a moment of upswing (like the pie-in-the-sky optimism of November 2008, which felt at the time like an exhilarating moment of liberation) but how can we not hear in those words not only the disappointing and broken struggle of the actual Obama years but also the screeching, lunatic backlash of the Trump era to which we have now all been condemned? Dont be nave! the a citizen narrator implores us. There are no happy endings! Because there are no endings! And possibly there is no happiness either! I felt for a bit reading New York 2140 that perhaps it was no longer right to call Robinson our last great utopian visionary, as he is so often described; maybe even Stan has finally wised up and realized were all doomed. When the misanthropic voice of H. G. Wells pops up in one of the epigram pages that periodically punctuate the novel, to announce, upon first seeing the Manhattan skyline, What a beautiful ruin it will make! it really felt to me, when reading the novel in the bleak, miserable December of 2016, like the piercing stab of the truth, the real truth. We are going to take this beautiful place and make it a ruin, make everything a ruin until everything is dead. In fact, speaking realistically rather than utopically, we probably already have. Climate change is an intensifying feedback loop we cant interrupt and cant reverse; even if we stopped burning carbon tomorrow, itd probably already be too late to stop most of it, and we wont stop burning carbon, especially not post-11/8. Some version of New York 2140 maybe better, likely much worse seems to be the actual future of our civilization, the one our political leaders and titans of industry and artificially intelligent high-speed-trading algorithms driving the invisible hand of the market have, in their infinite wisdom, chosen for us.

So maybe New York 2140 is a genuinely utopian text after all, insofar as it puts the start of the worst of the disaster in the 2050s, when the crooks who did this to us will all be dead, and Ill be in my 70s, even more bitter and dyspeptic about the state of the world than I am now, if thats possible. In 2052, when Robinson imagines the first Pulse starting, assuming of course Trump doesnt kill us all first, my kids will be 40 and 38, both of them just a little older than I am today. Too bad for them, I guess! Too bad for any kids they might want to have, or any kids those kids will have, or any kids theyll have, or

But of course this isnt the full story either, not all of it. New York 2140 has actually clarified for me my previous misunderstanding of Robinsons intellectual project in his Middle Period, where (it has always seemed to me) we keep getting utopia-but-worse, -and-worse, -and-worse-yet. What is actually happening, I realize now, is more complicated than that. In Benjamins Theses on the Concept of History, he writes of the work of historical materialism as a bid to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Robinsons project since the Mars books has been to attempt to seize hold of the future as it flashes up at a moment of danger and say a better world is possible yes, even here, and even here. After all, every second of time, Benjamin says in that same essay, is a gate through which the Messiah might enter.

The passage that solidified this new understanding for me was ironically one in which two characters (the aforementioned Mutt and Jeff) find themselves trapped in a Waiting for Godotesque situation with nothing but time, discussing the past. Once upon a time, the Vladimir says to the Estragon, there was a country across the sea, where everyone tried their best to make a community that worked for everyone.

Utopia?

New York. We then see the Vladimir describe the founding of this New York as a place where everyone could be whoever they wanted to be, where who you were before you got there didnt matter a free place, a beautiful place, a gift. Of course its a place that never fully existed in our bad history, but from time to time we saw its glimmers, and in any event its a place we might have had.

Why didnt anyone live there before? the Estragon asks.

Well, thats another story. Actually there were people there already, I have to say, but alas they didnt have immunity to the diseases that the new people brought with them, so most of them died. But the survivors joined this community and taught the newcomers how to take care of the land so that it would stay healthy forever. Oh oh well. So this is all just another utopian dream, a lullaby, a tale for children, an alternate history not all that unlike the one Robinson himself crafted in his own The Years of Rice and Salt. But despite its what-if nature, its really not so far out of the realm of the possible. The lullaby simply imagines people who are just like us, except they chose to seize hold of utopia, together, in their shared moment of danger. It could have happened! It didnt, alas the colonists chose to accelerate the wretched work of genocide instead but it might have. Even in the world-historical disaster that was first contact between the New World and the Old, even in a time of horrific, unthinkable mass death, we can still find seeds for the utopia that might have been founded then instead. Every moment has those seeds, Benjamin said; ours does too. In this way,New York 2140 truly is a document of hope as much as dread and despair. And its a hope well dearly need in the Anthropocene, the Anthropocide, the Capitalocene, the Chthulucene, postnormality, whatever you want to call the coming bad years that, with each flood and drought and wildfire and superstorm, we have to realize have already begun our own shared moment of danger, as it now begins to wash up over our beaches, breach our levees, flash up at us in an ever-rising tide.

Gerry Canavan is an assistant professor of 20th- and 21st-century literature at Marquette University and the author of Octavia E. Butler (University of Illinois Press, 2016).

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Utopia in the Time of Trump - lareviewofbooks

Why Canada will come to regret its embrace of refugees – New York Post

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New York Post
Why Canada will come to regret its embrace of refugees
New York Post
Each illegal crossing represents one less headache for us, one more headache for them sorry, one more beautiful soul to bask in Trudeau's utopia. To those fleeing ... That isn't exactly how things work in the non-Twitter world, of course: The March ...

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Why Canada will come to regret its embrace of refugees - New York Post

Legoland Builds In Shanghai, Royal Caribbean Steers Clear Of Korea – Seeking Alpha

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Bottom line: Legoland's new Shanghai theme park spotlights the growing lure of China's leisure travel market, while Royal Caribbean's removal of South Korean ports from its China-based trips spotlights how political tensions can affect tourism-reliant businesses.

A couple of Shanghai-based leisure stories are spotlighting two very different trends in China's leisure travel sector, where a burgeoning middle-class is seeking new and interesting vacation ideas. On the more upbeat side, one of Europe's top theme park developers is expressing a major vote of confidence in the market, with word that the developer of Legoland theme parks will open one of its mega-resorts in Shanghai. But on the downside, the country's largest cruise operator, Royal Caribbean (NYSE: RCL), has removed South Korean ports from its China-based trips amid growing frictions between Beijing and Seoul over a controversial missile defense system.

The Legoland deal spotlights the big upside to China's leisure travel market, which has attracted most of the world's major theme park operators including Disney (NYSE: DIS), Universal Studios and Six Flags (NYSE: SIX). The latter story spotlights one of the biggest downside risks to doing business in China, namely the potential for politics to become entangled in business.

Let's jump right in with Legoland news, which is quite big in terms of investment and the arrival of another major player to the market. The latest reports say that Britain's Merlin Entertainment, developer of Legoland theme parks, will build a $300 million resort in Shanghai's Qingpu district.

Here we need to distinguish between the various formats that Legoland takes. Merlin has already opened a much smaller-scale rendition of its Legoland Discovery Center in Shanghai, probably costing in the tens of millions of dollars. But this particular new project involving a full-scale outdoor Legoland involves the company's premier product, and the size of the investment attests to the big potential Merlin sees in the market.

The reports say the resort will be completed in 2022, and will complement similar parks under construction in Japan and South Korea. it's significant the park is being built in Shanghai, which is fast becoming China's theme park capital for this kind of world-class entertainment. Disney last year opened its first mainland-based resort in the city, and Six Flags is building one of its resorts nearby. By comparison, only Universal has chosen Beijing, whose weather and nearby population base are less ideal for this kind of major outdoor attraction.

Cruising Cuts

Meantime, there's the other news that Royal Caribbean has removed all South Korean ports of call from its cruises originating in China, many of those from Shanghai. The move was announced in low-key fashion on the company's China website, citing "recent developments regarding the situation in South Korea".

That's a slightly subtle reference to the current political tensions occurring between Seoul and Beijing over a high-tech anti-missile defense system the former is installing. Seoul says the system is necessary to protect against potential threats from North Korea, while Beijing worries the system could be used for spying on China.

In this case the biggest losers will be the South Korean ports that are usually included on such cruises, such as the island of Jeju that has become heavily dependent on Chinese tourism. South Korean retailer Lotte has also seen its China operations suffer as a result of the tensions, with a number of its retail stores and one of its joint venture factories recently forced to close after local inspectors discovered various violations.

This kind of fallout for businesses as a result of political tensions is one of the biggest risks for companies doing business in China, or in this case overseas firms that rely on Chinese tourists. Beijing is notorious for parlaying political tensions into the business realm, allowing state-controlled media to report extensively on the matters and fuel discontent among ordinary citizens.

In this case government is keeping a close watch on things, and appears to be making sure that the public outrage doesn't get out of hand the way it has in the past with other similar tensions. Still, that won't be much consolation for the people at Lotte or hundreds of small businesses in South Korea that have come to depend on Chinese tourists.

Disclosure: None

Link:

Legoland Builds In Shanghai, Royal Caribbean Steers Clear Of Korea - Seeking Alpha

The International Teaser for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 5’ – ScreenCrush – ScreenCrush

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For many movie fans, international trailers are an afterthought, an attempt to repackage previously released footage for a new market. But given the popularity of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies abroad, its probably safe to say that Disney takes its international footage pretty seriously. After all, the previous film in the franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, grossed a total of $240 million domestically and $804 million internationally. Put another way: the film failed to make back its budget ($250 million) in the United States but tripled it abroad.

So while the new trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (via Heroic Hollywood) may not have a lot of new footage it does highlight some of the major points from the other teasers ghost pirates! an uncomfortably computer generated Johnny Depp! while also finding time to show Jack Sparrow without his trousers up. If anything, the trailer serves as a reminder that the Pirates of the Caribbean movies are never quite as serious as the trailers make them out to be.

As long as these movies keep making money around the world, Disney will keep finding reasons to throw Jack Sparrow back in harms way. And while there are undoubtedly some who wonder why we need a fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film, Im willing to meet the studio halfway with one very specific request. If Disney decides to focus less on Johnny Depps character and more on the Bond villain-esque performances of actors like Geoffrey Rush, Bill Nighy, and Javier Bardem, then I think I could be convinced to stick around for a couple more films. We may not need more Jack Sparrow films, but more movies about evil swarthy ghost pirates? Im listening.

Heres the full plot synopsis for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales:

The rip-roaring adventure finds down-on-his-luck Captain Jack feeling the winds of ill-fortune blowing strongly his way when deadly ghost sailors, led by the terrifying Captain Salazar, escape from the Devils Triangle bent on killing every pirate at seanotably Jack. Jacks only hope of survival lies in the legendary Trident of Poseidon, but to find it he must forge an uneasy alliance with Carina Smyth, a brilliant and beautiful astronomer, and Henry, a headstrong young sailor in the Royal Navy. At the helm of the Dying Gull, his pitifully small and shabby ship, Captain Jack seeks not only to reverse his recent spate of ill fortune, but to save his very life from the most formidable and malicious foe he has ever faced.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales will bring back Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, and Orlando Bloom in addition to newcomers Javier Bardem, Kaya Scodelario, and Brenton Thwaites. It will sail into theaters on May 26, 2017.

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The International Teaser for 'Pirates of the Caribbean 5' - ScreenCrush - ScreenCrush

Jennifer Lopez and A-Rod take romance to the Bahamas – Page Six

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Theyre on J-Cation.

New couple Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez are enjoying a romantic getaway at Bakers Bay Golf & Ocean Club, an exclusive, owners-only destination in the Bahamas, The Post has learned.

The couple flew by private jet from Miami to Marsh Harbour on Friday night. At 9:30 p.m., they arrived at Harbour View Marina, where they were caught getting cozy on a power boat en route to their sequestered love nest.

J-Rod are spending the weekend alone at a friends home, according to a source familiar with their tropical canoodling.

Its early days, but Jennifer and Alex are really into each other, the source said.

The luxurious club, which sits on a seven-mile stretch of Great Guana Cay in the Abaco islands 150 miles off the Florida coast, is a favorite destination of the rich and famous. Celebrities known to vacation there include Reese Witherspoon, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady and wife Gisele Bndchen.

Jeff Soffer and Elle Macpherson own a home on Bakers Bay, which features luxe amenities like a Tom Fazio-designed golf course and views of the Sea of Abaco. The hot-spot where posh homes easily fetch seven figures is also where Jennifer Garner, and former J-Lo flame Ben Affleck jetted off to with their three children as they were in the process of getting divorced. They were famously photographed sitting on a bench looking distressed.

Lopez, 47, and Rodriguez, 41, have been quietly dating for months, Page Six recently confirmed.

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Jennifer Lopez and A-Rod take romance to the Bahamas - Page Six

Maryland takes next step toward offshore wind – Baltimore Sun – Baltimore Sun

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Hearings starting Monday could determine whether Maryland becomes a leader in the development of offshore wind power in the United States.

The Maryland Public Service Commission will begin what could be two weeks of hearings on proposals from two developers to build wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean off Maryland. The two developers are competing for up to $1.9 billion in subsidies over 20 years, paid for by the state's electricity ratepayers, a crucial financing mechanism for developers to recoup the cost of building the massive wind farms.

The commission is expected to decide whether to move forward with one by May 17.

Offshore wind energy, which is booming in Europe, offers significant potential to replace aging energy infrastructure along the East Coast, create jobs and bolster the economy.

The federal government has leased thousands of acres off the Eact Coast to be developed into wind farms, but the industry has yet to take off in the United States. Wind development has been hobbled largely by its cost as well as regulatory hurdles and opposition from politicians opposed to subsidizing energy, coastal residents worried about views and environmentalists worried about migratory birds.

Only one small offshore wind farm has been installed in the United States, just five turbines off Block Island in Rhode Island. But other projects are in the works off Massachusetts, New Jersey and North Carolinia.

If Maryland successfully becomes one of the first states to establish an offshore wind farm, the project could position the state to be a leader in the industry and serve as a hub for the contractors who could service future offshore wind farms up and down the East Coast.

"The opportunity Maryland has is huge," said Liz Burdock, executive director of the Business Network for Offshore Wind, a national advocacy group. "Where the infrastructure goes into place, where first companies set up, will be the base for where the rest of the industry is served."

Maryland has set a goal of getting a quarter of the state's power from renewable sources by 2020. Of that, up to 2.5 percent must come from offshore wind.

To meet those goals, utility companies such as Baltimore Gas & Electric Co., will be required to buy energy credits from offshore wind farms, solar companies and other renewable energy producers.

To encourage development in offshore wind, state lawmakers in 2013 approved legislation that will allow energy companies to pass on the cost of the offshore wind credits to ratepayers. Under the law, residential power bills could go up $1.50 a month and businesses could pay up to 1.5 percent more, to support an offshore wind project once it is up and running.

The Maryland Public Service Commission will decide how much utilities should pay for the offshore energy credits and from which project, essential determining which might get built.

"Maryland wants to be a leader in renewable energy and wants to have more homegrown renewable energy," said James McGarry, a policy director for Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental nonprofit in Takoma Park. "Offshore wind is potentially the biggest untapped source of homegrown renewable energy."

The two proposals under consideration are from US Wind, a Baltimore-based subsidiary of Italian energy and construction giant Toto Holding SpA, and Deepwater Wind, the Providence, R.I. -based developer of the only wind farm off the U.S. coast.

In 2014, US Wind won a federal auction for the leases of two offshore wind sites off the coast of Ocean City. The company wants to build a 750-megawatt wind farm with 187 turbines on the 80,000-acre site. The project would be built in three stages, with the first capable of creating 250 megawatts of wind power. The first stage could be complete by 2020 and the entire project could be built by 2022.

The first stage of the project would cost about $1 billion, said Paul Rich, US Wind's director of project development. He declined to share the proposed impact to ratepayers' energy bills.

Rich said he thinks the company's "go big" approach is Maryland's best bet for establishing itself as a long-term industry leader.

The plan calls for manufacturing facilities at Sparrows Point in Baltimore County that would be run by contractors who will make the massive turbines and bases they sit on. Rich envisions those facilities becoming the go-to resource for future projects up and down the East Coast.

All told, the project could create 5,000 construction, fabrication, electrical and support jobs, he said.

"We are trying to embrace a vision," Rich said. "This will be the Silicon Valley of industrial activity for the offshore wind industry for the whole East Coast."

Meanwhile Deepwater Wind is proposing a smaller, $720 million project that executives called the "right size" for Maryland.

The Skipjack Wind Farm would be located on a 96,400-acre site about 17 nautical miles northeast of Ocean City, actually in waters off Delaware. The company has proposed building 15 turbines, capable of producing 120 megawatts of energy, with the possibility of adding more turbines in the future. Construction could start in 2020 with the farm operational by 2022.

Deepwater has proposed a price for its energy that would cost residential customers 34 cents a month, said Deepwater CEO Jeff Grybowski.

Deepwater acquired the site's lease last year from utility company NRG Energy. The lease had been among the first granted by the federal government in 2012, but NRG's planned wind farm stalled due to financial constraints.

Deepwater leaders said their more conservative proposal is based on their experience developing the only other offshore U.S. wind farm.

The five-turbine Block Island Wind Farm is capable of producing just a quarter of the energy as the proposed Skipjack Wind Farm and took almost a decade to bring to fruition, said Chris van Beek, president of Deepwater, who discussed the project at an event hosted by Business Network for Offshore Wind in Linthicum Heights last week that also featured a presentation by US Wind.

"The problems we had, we were able to handle them because it was small," van Beek said. "I think we start small and prove to the industry that a wind farm can be built and is possible, and I think that's more important than the size of the project."

The Skipjack project also calls for manufacturing operations at Sparrows Point and several hundred construction jobs.

Both companies would establish operations and maintenance offices in Ocean City.

Regardless of which developer Maryland regulators chose, labor unions say the project could be a lifesaver for trade workers who have struggled to find jobs as manufacturing declined in Maryland.

"The promise is enormous for our ready and willing, skilled ironworking workforce and apprenticeship program," said William Beckman, a representative of the Ironworkers Local 5, in testimony submitted to the public service commission. "We will all thrive with exciting new economic development projects that can revive our great city."

Despite such promise, cost remains a concern among consumer advocates. Maryland People's Counsel Paula Carmody, whose office represents residential utility consumer interests, worries that the projects could end up being more costly and a bigger burden to consumers than projected.

"This is a cost impact what that risk or impact might have on the rates they pay in the future, that's what we're talking about," Carmody said. "What we are taking a look at is the level of uncertainty in those projections."

sarah.gantz@baltsun.com

twitter.com/sarahgantz

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Maryland takes next step toward offshore wind - Baltimore Sun - Baltimore Sun

Paragon Offshore – Complete Fleet Status As Of March 10, 2017 And Commentary – Seeking Alpha

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To read the complete fleet status report of March 10, 2017, click here.

1. Class: Jackups

Year

Built

Spec.

Feet/K feet

Contract

End

Current

Day rate

Location

Rate at 0 revenue

1982/2006

mid 7/17

76

[NDC ZADCO]

UAE

M1161

1980

Early 4/18

62

[Dynamic Drilling/ONGC]

Bareboat chartered

India

B152

1982/2004

Late 11/17

81

[NDC]

UAE

(L1112)

Noble Ed Holt

1981/2003

Late 10/18

38

[Dynamic Drilling/ONGC]

Bareboat chartered

India

L786

1983/1998

[Dynamic Drilling/ONGC]

Bareboat chartered

India

Prospector 5

6/2014

JU 2000E

HS-HE

218

[Total]

UK NS

Sold to SinoEnergy

B 391

1981-2001

[Centrica]

UK NS

4-wells

JU 2000E

HS-HE

113

Swap with C461

[ONE]

NL

Sold to SinoEnergy

3. Prospector Offshore HE-HS Jack-up new build.

Name

Year built

Spec.

Feet/K feet

Contract

End

Information

Prospector 6

Delayed

JU 2000E

HS-HE

Prospector 7

delayed

JU 2000E

HS-HE

Prospector 8

delayed

JU 2000E

HS-HE

Note: The company has the option to delay the delivery of Prospector 6. The three rigs (P6, P7 and P8) are being constructed on a non-recourse basis with no parent company guarantees. They do not figure into the fleet status anymore.

Cold Stacked and Ready Stacked Rigs

Note: Ready stacked includes warm stacked, hot stacked and available (When the status or rig name is marked in blue you can click to get more information).

1981/2002

2011

Cold stacked

M842

M825

The company indicated a backlog of $242 million as of December 31, 2016 (now estimated at $195 million as of March 10, 2017):

Paragon Fleet Status

Commentary:

Paragon Offshore released another depressing FSR after a long silence. As a reminder, the preceding fleet status was released on October 18, 2016.

1 - The company managed to bag a small 4-well contract @$55k/d, in the North See for the JU B 391 in UK with Centrica. Additional backlog is $5 million.

2 - Prospector 1 and C461. Contract runs until mid 2/2018.

Executed rig-swap with ONE, transferring all remaining contracted days from the Paragon C461 to the Prospector 1. Anticipate 6 days off rate in March 2017 for planned upgrades; these days to be added to the end of the contract.

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Paragon Offshore - Complete Fleet Status As Of March 10, 2017 And Commentary - Seeking Alpha