Topgolf makes progress on Charlotte facility, gives opening update – Charlotte Business Journal

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Construction continues on the Topgolf facility on West Arrowood Road in southwest more

The wait for swinging clubs at Topgolf's new facility in Charlotte will end in the next few months.

The 65,000-square-foot golf-entertainment venue under construction in southwest Charlotte is expected to be open in early June, Topgolf spokeswoman Morgan Wallace told CBJ.

Construction continues on the Topgolf facility on West Arrowood Road in southwest more

Outdoor netting recently went up on the 14-acre property near the intersection of West Arrowood Road and Interstate 485, and the building has taken shape. Next up: turf work will begin next week, followed by installation of Topgolf's gaming infrastructure shortly after, Wallace said.

"The construction process has gone very well," she said. "The team is very happy with how smoothly it has gone. Sometimes there are weather delays in certain markets, so this one has been a blessing for sure."

Wallace said the Charlotte facility will look nearly identical to Topgolf's current venues, which can be found here. She pointed specifically to Jacksonville, Fla., as the location Charlotte will most closely resemble. That facility opened last October.

The building in Charlotte won't be ready for a tour until late May, Wallace said.

The project has been moving forward since receiving rezoning approval from Charlotte City Council in October 2015. EPR Properties, an entertainment-center developer based in Kansas City, Mo., then spent $4.4 million last April in purchasing property from American Asset Corp. to develop the Topgolf facility. Construction geared up a month later.

The three-level venue will include about 3,000 square feet of private event space as well as 102 climate-controlled hitting bays, which can hold as many as six players at one time. The facility is expected to attract about 450,000 visitors in its first year of operation. It's also projected to create 450 jobs and result in an economic output of more than $264 million over a 10-year period.

In addition to a high-tech driving range, Dallas-based Topgolf offers customers a full-service restaurant and bar, music, lounges and a plethora of high-definition TVs.

"The biggest misconception is that you have to be a golfer to come to Topgolf, which is not the case," Wallace said. "We are open year-round for all ages and skill levels."

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Topgolf makes progress on Charlotte facility, gives opening update - Charlotte Business Journal

JCCs to Sessions: We’re ‘frustrated’ with progress on bomb threats – Jerusalem Post Israel News

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Donald Trump sits with Jeff Sessions at Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Executives from 141 Jewish community centers signed a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions expressing frustration with efforts combating a rash of bomb threats.

The letter, sent Wednesday by the JCC Association of North America, the national organization of Jewish community centers, requested a meeting with Sessions and urged the Justice Department to do more to stop the threats.

It also praised local law enforcements response to the incidents and recognized President Donald Trumps condemnation of them.

Still, we are frustrated with the progress in resolving this situation, the letter said. We insist that all relevant federal agencies, including your own, apply all the resources available to identify and bring the perpetrator or perpetrators, who are trying to instill anxiety and fear in communities across the country, to justice.

More than 100 bomb threats have hit JCCs and other Jewish sites across the country since the beginning of the year. The latest wave, on Tuesday and Wednesday, targeted 20 JCCs, day schools and offices of the Anti-Defamation League.

The Department of Homeland Security has made its regional experts available to JCCs, and leaders of major Jewish groups met with FBI Director James Comey on March 3. Local JCC directors have repeatedly praised the response of area law enforcement.

Local law enforcement have represented a beacon of responsiveness and professionalism as our communities have endured dozens of anti-Semitic threats in past weeks, the letter said. We respectfully ask that federal agencies, including your own, do the same.

Authorities have yet to identify the person or people behind most of the threats. Juan Thompson, a St. Louis resident charged with making eight of the threats to avenge a former romantic partner, appears to have been a copycat.

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JCCs to Sessions: We're 'frustrated' with progress on bomb threats - Jerusalem Post Israel News

South London’s Phobophobes Share Sinister New Music Video – Broadway World

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Ahead of their single launch show at MOTH Club on March 13th with Dead Pretties, South London's Phobophobes have shared a mesmerising new video, led by interpretive dance, for their forthcoming 7" 'The Never Never', due for release this March 24th via Ra-Ra Rok Records.

Featuring "threatening interpretive dance, petrifying purple smoke and a solid dose of primordial goo" according to Notion Magazine, 'The Never Never' director Tuixn Benet explains:

"Jamie [Taylor, guitar/vocals] asked me to do a video for 'The Never Never'. He said he imagined choreography in it, even though no-one else did, and I guess that's why he chose me. I agreed with him instantly, it's the kind of beat I like to dance to, not too fast, not too slow, and it allows the kind of weird, punky moves I love. We shot everything in a day and a half in Imagina-Mediapro studios in Barcelona with a wonderful team that did a great job."

Watch 'The Never Never' on YouTube - https://youtu.be/qQnwpiwjMM8

Following previous single 'Human Baby', an elegy to Phobophobes' late guitarist George Russell that was played every day for a week on BBC 6Music, 'The Never Never' arrives an ode to the precarious survivalism of society's most disenfranchised. Swirling through repetitive slogans, rubbishing the adverts that promise a life we can't really afford as pastiche, and asking earnestly, "what separates those treading water to survive from the religious idols who struggled so similarly?"

In the wake of a tumultuous 2016, Phobophobes continue to forge their own path, taking whatever's thrown at them and squeezing every ounce of inspiration from it. It's the only way they know. Frontman Jamie Taylor has built studio space wherever he's roamed, from Paris to Peckham to Primrose Hill. Even Pittsburgh, Iowa, Palm Beach and New York whilst working on a touring art exhibition across America, setting up a studio in each hotel room to work on new tracks. Even when invited to Abbey Road Studios to record with Ken Scott (Bowie, Lennon, the list goes on), bass player at the time, Elliot, took swabs of their oldest microphone and grew bacteria in petri dishes, the results of which are immortalised in Phobophobes' artwork and in the centre of their 7"s.

This boundless DIY mentality echoes through Phobophobes' every move. Having now found home in the basement of The Brixton Windmill, the nucleus of South London's gig circuit where Phobophobes record, rehearse and also put on their own shows, playing alongside Shame, Goat Girl, Meatraffle, The Fat White Family, Childhood and countless others, they remain progenitors of the scene.

Following a single launch show at London's MOTH Club, Phobophobes will tour the UK with LIFE through April on the dates below. The band are currently readying their debut full-length album and will release 'The Never Never' on 7" vinyl this March 24th via Ra-Ra Rok Records.

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South London's Phobophobes Share Sinister New Music Video - Broadway World

Wingin’ It – The Portland Mercury

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Natalie Behring

To me, flying is the hurdle you jump to get somewhere fun. Ive never had an attraction to planes. Airplanes are inconvenient sky buses accessed only through soul-crushing security lines we have to share with tacky people and business dicks. Airplanes are the journey; Im more of a destination gal.

That may have changed a few weeks ago when I walked up the dusty wing of a retired 727, through the emergency door, and into a 1,000 square foot home. With a cockpit.

Owner Bruce Campbell has been living in this bird (he calls planes birds) in the suburbs of Portland for the better part of 18 years, and hopes his passion project can turn into a movement to salvage what are still functional, weatherproof structures, while providing some cool housing options to boot.

And if youre thinking this sounds like just the gimmicky style of housing that Portland drools over, youre right.

I began corresponding with Campbell over a year ago, after Id heard about his airplane home project and approached him for a story. Hes always happy to meet with press, or just about any other snoopy looky-loo, and not only did he agree, he regularly replied with 1000-word emails. Bruce was overseas, and had a return ticket booked, but hey, maybe I could pick him up from the airport and drive him to Hillsboro?

Of course I could pick up this stranger from the airport and drive him to Hillsboro. After all, I did need a story. Besides, Id never done plane-to-plane transport before. When else could I pretend I was a big airport monorail?

It was a long drive to Hillsboro, and the big highways turned into suburban boulevards and smaller and smaller country roads until eventually Bruce pointed to a steep dirt driveway, telling me wed need to get some speed to make it up. It would be getting dark soon. There had been damage to the trees during our winter storms, and nothing had been cleared yet. I backed up my Honda and let her fly (not literally) up a muddy hill, dodging branches, at dusk. It was a tense couple of minutes that paid off when the road flattened out and the trees cleared enough to reveal the giant nose of an airplane peeking out of the forest, like a sneaky, huge, aerodynamic wolf. With the setting sun, the drizzle, and the trees, youd think it was a movie. It was so beautiful.

And weird. Airplanes go in the sky and in hangars, not on some private acreage in the suburbs.

But they can.

Natalie Behring

According to Bruce, an average of three jetliners are retired on a daily basis. When an old plane gets the boot, the engines are removed, because those stay valuable, but the rest of the plane isnt so precious. Bruce describes the process as shredding, where this giant metal flying tube made by millions of dollars of brain and labor power is reduced to piles of metal and loose wires.

Bruceand a couple of other ambitious nerds like himbelieve that empty planes have much more potential. They are weatherproof, soundproof buildings on wheels that only get junked because thats what happens. Bruce envisions a future where the planes are driven off a runway or out of a hangar and into a housing park for a quiet second life.

Because get this: Airlines dont have to sell the planes to scrappers. Anyone can buy one, you just have to put up one more dollar than the scrappers would pay, which can be less than $100,000. A decked-out tiny house can run upwards of $50,000, and those dont have more than a thousand square feet of living space, multiple bathrooms, a ton of free chairs, and a freakin cockpit. Then, all you need is some land thats zoned residentialwhich I guess is easy enough. THEN you need to know how to attach plumbing for a septic tank and fresh well water, and run electricity. There have got to be people in this dweeby city who can do that, right? Arent we always complaining about all the techies whove moved here?

Natalie Behring

The Boeing 727 is a commercial jetliner thats been around since the 1960s. It was designed for regional flights and smaller airports, so Boeing gave it its own set of stairs. The stairs fold out of the plane in the back, below the tail, accessed by a door between the two back bathrooms with an exit sign over it. It didnt initially occur to Boeing that people might want to use the exit mid-flight, so they didnt put in a locking mechanism, which was a design flaw (or feature!) that enabled one D.B. Cooper to parachute out of a 727 with a bag of money in 1971. Boeing later added a locking mechanism called the Cooper vane, so dont get any ideas.

Besides, not a lot of 727s are still in use. They have three engines, which makes it sound like a noisy birdsay a crow, or a mean goose. Also, the 727 needed a flight engineer, which called for a third person in the cockpit (and another paycheck to write). The engineer sat at his or her own desk in the cockpit (behind where Chewbacca sits), with lots of dials and buttons. Quieter, more self-sufficient jets came onto the scene, and I dont understand how you could go from needing three engines and three people in the cockpit to only needing two, but it happened, making the 727 less desirable. Bye-bye, airstairs. Bye-bye, flight engineer.

This specific 727 is a castaway from Olympic Air, a Greek airline. A cool claim to fame: Its the last plane Aristotle Onassis ever rode in! Bruce pointed to the floor, where we could see through some plexiglass and into the cargo hold. He was down there. Poor old Ari didnt appreciate the flight because he was dead and in a casket. However, Jackie Kennedy Onassis and some rich Greeks sat in these very seats, which are now softened and greyed by years of use in the days when people still smoked in planes. (Bruce said the ashtrays were still loaded with butts when he got her. Remember smoking?)

It was retired at some point in the mid-90s, and the airline was willing to unload it for cheap right around the time that Bruce got this twinkle in his eye. He bought it for $100,000 in cash in 1999. It was flown to the Hillsboro airport intact, then driven to the fairgrounds across the street to be stripped.

This is the part of the story where Bruce gets sad. Hed hired scrappers to unload what he didnt want in his plane, but he very much wanted all the visuals to remain. Unfortunately, due to some miscommunication and rookie mistakes, the plane got torn up pretty good. The cockpit now drips with ends of orphaned wires and is missing more knobs than its got. Bruce has had to improvise wiring because what could have been usable was irreparably damaged. The salvage crew is the villain in this story. Stupid salvage jerks.

Bruce got the plane to his property by removing the wings and tail and having it hauled in pieces. (Apparently you cant just drive a jet through downtown Hillsborowhich is the second villain in this story.) He put it back together on his land, then settled in.

Natalie Behring

I liked visiting Campbells airplane home because I could envision how Id lay out my furniture if I had the money and time and patience and diligence and technical savvy to buy one of my own. Other peoplesmarter peoplewould love to visit the home to see all those knobs and wires. I asked about cable TV (none) and pooping (septic tank).

The carpet inside the cabin has been taken out and the flooring is now clear plexiglass so you can see down into the cargo areas. This also reveals a lot of technology. As a person with only a rudimentary understanding of how planes fly in the first place, I was not surprised to see so many cranks and knobs and wires. This does ________, Bruce would say. Ahhh, I nodded, as if it made sense.

He has the interior divided into two rooms by a Styrofoam wall. The front area is open, with the planes seats lining one wall, and the cockpit in front. Since it was stripped of a lot of the cool stuff by the scrappers, its got a post-apocalyptic vibe. Bruce was patient to let me conduct most of my interview up there, beneath the buttons and gears and wires, in front of big windows staring out at the forest.

The backexcuse me, the aftarea is his living space. There he has two working bathrooms in their original orientation. Off to the side, hes made a small shower enclosure, with a drain on the floor. Its not super private, but he lives alone, and doesnt have neighbors peeking through one of his 100 tiny windows. Theres a washing machine, a refrigerator, a tiny sink, and a microwave. He doesnt have a stove but I couldnt figure out if that was because he couldnt have one (ventilation?) or doesnt want one. Apart from being a metal tube, it was your basic single guys studio apartment.

Theres no wood in the plane, and without gasoline and moving parts, its pretty much fireproof. However, this also means that humidity is an issue. Boogers must be an issue, too.

Bruce pointed out that in addition to being perfectly insulated, planes are pretty much 100 percent earthquake proof. No earthquake would ever be as powerful as a hard landing, which the planes landing gear is made to withstand. Bruces plane also has other jostle-proof safety features, as well as hundreds of cans of food. This project didnt start as survivalism, but it sure could survive a lot.

Natalie Behring

As it started to get dark, Bruce and I made our way around the outside of the plane while he turned on water and performed other tasks one does when one owns a plane house and returns from overseas. When we got back inside, water was pouring out of the ceiling, back by where the flight attendants used to make coffee. Bruce was completely stress-free as water poured all over the floor and he started pulling things apart. An easy fix! he exclaimed. I dumbly offered to help, and when he smartly refused, I let him know it was time for me to go.

Planes have manuals, and houses have Home Depot, but theres no guide for how to combine the two. There are a couple of other people with airplane home projects in the United States, and they can bounce ideas off one another, but everybody is pretty much winging it. (HA HA, WING.) I asked Bruce how often yahoos with wild dreams ask for advice on how to get their own planes. He said it happens fairly regularly, but people give up when they realize they cant get housing basics like conventional mortgages or insurance.

On the long drive home, I wondered if I could do it. IF I had the money, IF I had the patience, IF I had the technical savvy, and IF I had the time, could I live in an airplane home? Probably, once there were systems in place for them to be comfortable and not drafty and if we could retrofit the bathroom sinks so I could get my hands all the way under the faucet. Also Id probably get nervous about falling off the wing while walking in with groceries during a rain.

But this silly city is a smart one, and I wouldnt be surprised if some nerds exhausted by the tiny home movement didnt try starting an airplane home movement instead. Bruce would certainly love that. Hed even talk you through some DIY plumbing. And maybe it could become a home where even a flying hater like me could get warm and comfy.

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Wingin' It - The Portland Mercury

The Awolowo Legacy And Its Message For Nigerian Youths | The … – The News

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Banji Akintoye

Obafemi Awolowo

By Banji Akintoye

We gather today, the 6th day of March 2017, as we have done unfailingly and dutifully every year for decades, to celebrate the birthday of our father and benefactor, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Each celebration is our way of thanking him for the glistering heritage which he bequeathed to us; it also a way of reminding ourselves that we possess a great heritage, and that we can achieve whatever we set our hearts and minds upon to achieve.

Todays lecture is a message to our youths in these terrible times in the life and history of Nigeria. I will try to keep it as simple and brief as possible. Indeed, I want it to be as close as possible to a university classroom lecture, because I want my chosen audience, the youths of our country, to benefit fully from it.

Our father, Obafemi Awolowo, was an unrelenting searcher for information and knowledge about his society, country and world, a philosopher, a man of consistent efficiency and steadily high ideals in his private and public life, a man of titanic courage, an accomplished development planner, an endowed nation builder, an astute administrator, a great motivator, a wonderful leader of men and, above all, an inspired and inspiring teacher. It is one of the greatest joys of my life that, in my generation of Nigerian youths, I belonged to the select group of youths who were privileged to be close to Chief Awolowo as to a father, who were fortunate to learn at his feet, and who were called upon, under his leadership, to attempt great exploits towards the improvement of the quality of the lives of our people, and towards the prosperity and greatness of our country.

Chief Awolowo remains very much alive today, because his legacy continues to impact the lives of millions of his countrymen for good. I was in a get-together of old friends some weeks ago in a town in our Southwest. In the course of the evening, we in the gathering got into recounting our memories and reminiscences about our childhood lives. The few of us who were in our eighties told stories about how, when we were children, only a few of us in our towns and villages were going to school while the vast majority of our friends, brothers and cousins were not going, mostly because their parents could not afford to send them. But most of us in the gathering who were in our seventies and below told stories of how life suddenly changed for all children in their towns and villages in 1955, the year in which Chief Awolowo introduced Free Primary Education in the Western Region.

Most of the men and women who are senior professors, senior administrators, senior statesmen, senior engineers, senior architects, senior lawyers and so on in our Southwest today, are so because Chief Awolowo opened the door of schools to all children from 1955 on in our Western Region. All these senior citizens are parents of highly educated families that today occupy very important places in the life of our region, our country, and other countries in the wide world families that will, probably many centuries from now, continue to be important in the lives of our communities and of the world.

Some years ago, while traveling in some countries of Southeast Asia, I met a Yoruba man who was Dean of Technology in his university there. He told me that his place of origin was a small village in a remote part of our Southwest. I jokingly asked him how he had managed to come from his remote village to the position of Dean in a university so far across the world, and he laughed and answered in one single word, Awolowo. What he meant is that it was Chief Awolowo that had made it possible for his poor parents to send him to the small school in his small village home, and that it was Chief Awolowo that thereby opened the paths across the world before him.

Chief Awolowo changed the life, the capabilities and the prospects of the whole Yoruba nation in Nigeria, a nation that now numbers about 50 million in population. I returned home a few months ago, after many years of living and working as a professor abroad, mostly in the United States of America. America is a country of thousands of universities; and there is hardly any one of those universities that does not have some Yoruba professors. These days, since my return home from abroad, when I wake up in the morning, I love to stand at a discreet street corner and watch streams of our children going to school. Many of the children are so young that their older sisters or brothers have to hold their hands or even carry them.

The one sure thing that every Yoruba mother does for a child of school age today is to send him or her to school. Unknown to those mothers, they are building the Yoruba nation into a mighty nation in the world. In all the future, whenever the story of the greatness is written or told, it will always be remembered that it all started when Obafemi Awolowo opened the door to schools to all the children of his people. Free Education in our Western Region under Chief Awolowo was the very first in all of Africa.

The gift of Free Education was the greatest single gift given by Chief Awolowo to us his people, but it was not the only gift. Under his leadership, the Western Region stood out as the number one Region, the pace setter in development, in Nigeria. The wide-ranging development achievements included many miles of solidly surfaced roads all over our Region, pipe-borne clean water to many of our towns, the first television station on the African continent, the first public-owned sports stadium, the first industrial estate, imaginative support systems for our cocoa farmers (as a result of which our cocoa farmers became the most productive African farmers on the African continent), farm centres training our youths in modern farming, technical training centres teaching modern job skills to our youths, a broad-based investment corporation with investments in industries, commerce, banking, and real estate (the largest agglomeration of African-owned investment capital in Africa). Very importantly too, our Region was the leader in Nigeria in the development of a democratic society, and a government responsive to its people. On the whole, we in the Western Region were led to dream dreams of greatness in the world, we began to see ourselves as soon able to catch up with industrial world leaders like Japan. And we gave our Region the name First in Africa.

I need to add that Chief Awolowo did not intend to limit all these to the Western Region. No. When parents from other Regions brought their children across Regional borders to our free schools, Chief Awolowos government did not try to stop them. Moreover, he made dedicated efforts to give these goods to the whole of Nigeria. First and foremost in this regard, he was the leader who promoted most clearly and most consistently the idea that a country like Nigeria, comprising many different nationalities, in order to be able to live in harmony and make progress, needs to establish a rational federal system based on respect for the various nationalities. Other Nigerian leaders resisted this, and some castigated him for it, but he never gave up. His words have proved true in the course of the nearly sixty years of Nigerias independence. By concocting Nigeria into a country with an all-controlling central government, those who reject Chief Awolowos federalist ideas have led Nigeria into evil times times so evil that Nigeria may ultimately, or may even soon, break up.

Moreover, from 1959, Chief Awolowo embarked on efforts to take his development ideas to the Nigerian federal government and thereby to the whole of Nigeria. He fought titanic election campaigns, and reached the hearts of ordinary Nigerians far and wide. But, as we all know, most elections are won in Nigeria not through the votes of the common people but through the manipulations of powerful and influential citizens, especially powerful and influential citizens holding the machinery of the federal government. At federal election after federal election, Chief Awolowo won the majority of votes and lost the elections.

Unfortunately, in the midst of the rubble into which Nigeria has been reduced, the quality of the education which Chief Awolowo established for us is suffering today. Our children are not learning as much or as well as they should be learning in their schools. Most of the old school environments are run down and depressing and do not inspire the children to learn. Support for schools are generally poor across Nigeria, teachers are irregularly paid their salaries and are demoralized, and many teachers are forced to seek survival in all sorts of side ventures. Therefore, our youths are graduating from our schools, colleges and universities with very low levels of educational competence. The reasons for this sad state of affairs is well known. The persons who have been controlling most of the affairs of Nigeria through the Federal Government since independence are apathetic or even downright hostile to modern education. And, unhappily, the Federal Government which these people control has been gradually turned into the controller of all of Nigeria, with power and influence to determine what states may or may not do. The United Nations agency, UNESCO, estimates that a country that would have an efficient, effective and result-yielding educational system needs to be spending at least 26% of its GDP (or annual budget) on education. Nigeria spends only about 8% on education. Moreover, federal policies, and federal dictation of the nature, contents, and direction of education at all levels throughout Nigeria, have had disastrous effects on education in all parts of Nigeria.

But I must hurry to add that, happily, we are beginning to see welcome changes in our educational system. Some of the school premises being built today for primary schools in some of our states deserve our commendation and our gratitude. While thanking our elected public officials for these, however, we must also urge them to venture into deeper changes in the education of our children. What we Yoruba people want for ourselves is to belong in the ranks of the most educationally, scientifically and technologically advanced peoples of the world. In addition, we want our children to learn, and become proficient in, our language and our history. Chief Awolowo put our feet on the path to all these; we must now resume the journey with all the vigour at our command.

Obafemi Awolowo

But, as we gather here today, we are living in a Nigeria that has declined to its lowest levels of societal disorder, immorality, and hopelessness. All the negative inputs that have been fed into our countrys life since independence, all the crookedness, all the hatred and vileness and viciousness, all the involvement of the darkness of the occult and of Satanism into the affairs of Nigeria, all the murderous intent and the mass murdering of the weak and vulnerable, all the religious and inter-ethnic violence, all the sub-human greed and corruption in the ranks of the political and bureaucratic elite, all the impunity in the management of Nigerian affairs all have now converged and concatenated to make Nigeria a land of utter hopelessness for the vast majority of Nigerians, a land of poverty, hunger, disease and destitution, a land of desperation, fear and terror, a land in which rivers of human blood flow day by day, a land in which human life has become pitifully discounted.

A recent report by a United Nations agency described Nigeria as one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the world. Another UN report warned that if certain situations in Nigeria were not urgently changed, as many as 140 thousand children could die in a certain part of Nigeria in the next few months. Various reports are informing Nigeria and the world that the charitable money and other items sent by international organizations and individuals from across the world for the care of Nigerians internally displaced by Boko Haram violence are being stolen and shared by Nigerian officials, and that the camps where the internally displaced persons are being kept has become a horrible place of mass starvation and mass deaths. A report in the news media about two weeks ago alerted Nigeria to the fact that instances of mental sickness have risen to frightening heights, and are rising more and more sharply, in our country, and indicated that the cause of this is the condition of our country the hopeless poverty that reigns over the lives of masses of Nigerians, and the insensitive and utterly immoral governance of our country.

Instances of the vilest and most grotesque crimes, and of the most shockingly inhuman treatments of man by man, are reported daily from various parts of our country. The whole world has been watching videos of Nigerians calmly cutting the throats of hundreds of fellow Nigerians, and of Nigerians gathering groups of other living Nigerians together, dousing them with gasoline, and setting them on fire. Nigeria is becoming a strangely barbarous and repulsive spectacle in the world.

Not surprisingly, the outside world is already showing signs of rejecting Nigeria and Nigerians. About two weeks ago, towards the end of last January, some countries of the world issued warnings and advisories to their citizens, some urging their citizens to desist from going to Nigeria, some advising their citizens who are already in Nigeria to watch out for danger, and some advising their citizens to stay clear of certain parts of Nigeria. In the Union of South Africa, a member country of the African Union, the people are showing very definitely that they no longer want Nigerians in their country. In town after town in that country, crowds of citizens are rising up, attacking Nigerians, chasing Nigerians from their communities, killing some Nigerians in the process, and destroying the businesses and properties of Nigerians. This has been going on for some time, but it has reached a peak in recent months. And similar developments have occurred in some other African countries such as Kenya. Thousands of Nigerians regularly try to reach Europe through the Sahara Desert country of Libya in North Africa, another member of the African Union. According to official reports in recent months, Libyan citizens now commonly attack the arriving Nigerians, steal their money and other belongings, and then kill them.

As we all know, it is the youths of Nigeria that suffer the most from all these rot and ruin of Nigeria. By our youths I mean those Nigerians who belong to the age bracket of 18 to 40. As I said recently in a lecture which I delivered to Igbo Youths in Enugu, the people aged 18 to 40 are always the most dynamic sector of the population of every nation in the world. People below 18 are still children, mostly still schooling or learning in some other way. People in the age bracket 18 to 40 are usually graduates of schools, colleges and universities. In Nigeria, they constitute a majority of our countrys total population they are believed to be about 55% of our population. Even more importantly, they are the most educated and most skilled sector of our adult population. They produce and raise most of the children that are being born into our population. They dream up most ideas in business; and they are the starters of most business ventures. They lead in all fields of adventure, sports, and arts. In short, they bear the biggest share of the burden of pushing our country forward in economic, business, professional, intellectual, cultural, social and artistic pursuits.

But since independence, planning for the empowerment of our youths has never been a serious and sustained feature of Nigerias national development. Even the programmes for youth empowerment started in the Western Region under Chief Awolowos Regional government in the 1950s have not survived in the era of federal control and federal fiats. For decades now, the rate of unemployment among our youths has been one of the highest in the world. It has often been estimated as ranging between 54% and 70% among our educated youths, and even higher among the uneducated ones. For even the best university graduates, working the streets for years without a job is the common experience all over Nigeria. Most of our educated youths are unemployable partly because their basic education is grossly defective, partly because they lack modern job skills, and partly because the overwhelming majority lack acceptable job ethics.

At the same time, poor infrastructures, poor public administrative services, and insensitive financial services, drastically inhibit the spirit of entrepreneurship among our youths. In most countries in the world, a youth can sit at his mothers kitchen table or in his fathers garage and put together a business idea that can develop into a big winner in the market place; he does not have to fear for lack of electricity, lack of water, lack of good roads, lack of a supportive public administration, or lack of sensitive and helpful banking services. In Nigeria, even the most creative youth is deterred by such fears from going forward with his ideas; for those who choose to go forward, failure and drop-out are the very common outcomes.

However, even in these terrible times, I bring the message that any youth who chooses to learn from Chief Awolowos legacy stands a very good chance of acquiring for himself or herself a purpose-driven life, a life of success, and a life that impacts society, country and world in very positive ways. That is the central purpose of this lecture to invite and motivate our youths to benefit from the Awolowo legacy and use it to enrich, strengthen and beautify their lives and if possible, to use it to earn for themselves an image as bright and as enviable as Chief Awolowos in the world and for a long time in the future.

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I used to love the working-class nihilism of Sleaford Mods no longer – Spectator.co.uk

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Its all beginning to wear very thin indeed. Ten years ago this already addled Nottinghamshire duo captured the attention with bellowed, caustic and often astute observations delivered in an ur-rap monotone above cheapo punky laptop beats. The message then, humorously enough, was: everything is shit. Total shit. Youre shit, Im shit, the countrys shit.

This briefly entertaining and frequently obscene working-class nihilism was gratefully received by a music press that, desperately looking for something edgy, found itself confronted by the mimsy and anodyne public-school folk of Mumford & Sons and Stornoway and Laura Marling. Fair enough: it was, for a while, enlivening and a certain kind of antidote. But, you have to say, with a rapidly diminishing sense of return over the following eight albums.

On their latest, English Tapas, the message is the same as it was in 2009: everythings shit. And so indeed it is, not least this album, which sounds tired, uninspiring, boring and curiously child-like, even as its progenitors approach their fifties. The beats have not got any more inventive and musically one of the few highlights is the bassline ripped off Cameos Word Up on Just Like We Do.

There are, of course, no tunes, just that incessant monotone barking, but the nastiness of the lyrics now seems targeted more at their own fanbase, for daring to get drunk or to smoke, for being dead in the head. When the best track on the album is called Dull, you know youve got a dog on your hands. A fairly shit dog.

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I used to love the working-class nihilism of Sleaford Mods no longer - Spectator.co.uk

Saturday (novel) – Wikipedia

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Saturday (2005) is a novel by Ian McEwan set in Fitzrovia, London, on Saturday, 15 February 2003, as a large demonstration is taking place against the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. The protagonist, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon, has planned a series of chores and pleasures culminating in a family dinner in the evening. As he goes about his day, he ponders the meaning of the protest and the problems that inspired it; however, the day is disrupted by an encounter with a violent, troubled man.

To understand his character's world-view, McEwan spent time with a neurosurgeon. The novel explores one's engagement with the modern world and the meaning of existence in it. The main character, though outwardly successful, still struggles to understand meaning in his life, exploring personal satisfaction in the post-modern, developed world. Though intelligent and well read, Perowne feels he has little influence over political events.

The book, published in February 2005 by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom and in April in the United States, was critically and commercially successful. Critics noted McEwan's elegant prose, careful dissection of daily life, and interwoven themes. It won the 2005 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. It has been translated into eight languages.

Saturday is McEwan's ninth novel, published between Atonement and On Chesil Beach, two novels of historical fiction. McEwan has discussed that he prefers to alternate between writing about the past and the present.[1][2]

While researching the book, McEwan spent two years work-shadowing Neil Kitchen, a neurosurgeon at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square, London.[1][3][4] Kitchen testified that McEwan did not flinch in the theatre, a common first reaction to surgery; "He sat in the corner, with his notebook and pencil".[1] He also had several medical doctors and surgeons review the book for accuracy, though few corrections were required to the surgical description.[1][4]Saturday was also proof-read by McEwan's longstanding circle of friends who review his manuscripts, Timothy Garton Ash, Craig Raine, and Galen Strawson.[1]

There are elements of autobiography in Saturday: the protagonist lives in Fitzroy Square, the same square in London that McEwan does and is physically active in middle age.[1]Christopher Hitchens, a friend of McEwan's, noted how Perowne's wife, parents and children are the same as the writer's.[5] McEwan's son, Greg, who like Theo played the guitar reasonably well in his youth, emphasized one difference between them, "I definitely don't wear tight black jeans".[1]

Excerpts were published in five different literary magazines, including the whole of chapter one in the New York Times Book Review, in late 2004 and early 2005.[6] The complete novel was published by the Jonathan Cape Imprint of Random House Books in February 2005 in London, New York, and Toronto; Dutch, Hebrew, German, French, Spanish, Polish, Russian, and Japanese translations followed.[7][8]

The book follows Henry Perowne, a middle-aged, successful surgeon. Five chapters chart his day and thoughts on Saturday the 15 February 2003, the day of the demonstration against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the largest protest in British history. Perowne's day begins in the early morning, when he sees a burning aeroplane streak across the sky. This casts a shadow over the rest of his day as reports on the television change and shift: is it an accident, or terrorism?

En route to his weekly squash game, a traffic diversion reminds Perowne of the anti-war protests occurring that day. After being allowed through the diversion, he collides with another car, damaging its wing mirror. At first the driver, Baxter, tries to extort money from him. When Perowne refuses, Baxter and his two companions become aggressive. Noticing symptoms in Baxter's behaviour, Perowne quickly recognises the onset of Huntington's disease. Though he is punched in the sternum, Perowne manages to escape unharmed by distracting Baxter with discussions of his disease.

Perowne goes on to his squash match, still thinking about the incident. He loses the long and contested game by a technicality in the final set. After lunch he buys some fish from a local fishmonger for dinner. He visits his mother, suffering from vascular dementia, who is cared for in a nursing home.

After a visit to his son's rehearsal, Perowne returns home to cook dinner, and the evening news reminds him of the grander arc of events that surround his life. When Daisy, his daughter, arrives home from Paris, the two passionately debate the coming war in Iraq. His father-in-law arrives next. Daisy reconciles an earlier literary disagreement that led to a froideur with her maternal grandfather; remembering that it was he who had inspired her love of literature. Perowne's son Theo returns next.

Rosalind, Perowne's wife, is the last to arrive home. As she enters, Baxter and an accomplice 'Nige' force their way in armed with knives. Baxter punches the grandfather, intimidates the family and orders Daisy to strip naked. When she does, Perowne notices that she is pregnant. Finding out she is a poet, Baxter asks her to recite a poem. Rather than one of her own, she recites Dover Beach, which affects Baxter emotionally, effectively disarming him. Instead he becomes enthusiastic about Perowne's renewed talk about new treatment for Huntington's disease. After his companion abandons him, Baxter is overpowered by Perowne and Theo, and knocked unconscious after falling down the stairs. That night Perowne is summoned to the hospital for a successful emergency operation on Baxter. Saturday ends at around 5:15a.m. on Sunday, after he has returned from the hospital and made love to his wife again.

McEwan's earlier work has explored the fragility of existence using a clinical perspective,[9] Hitchens hails him a "chronicler of the physics of every-day life".[5]Saturday explores the feeling of fulfilment in Perowne: he is respected and respectable but not quite at ease, wondering about the luck that has him where he is and others homeless or in menial jobs.[5] The family is materially well-off, with a plush home and a Mercedes, but justifiably soPerowne and his wife work hard. McEwan tells of his success rate and keeping cool under pressure; there is a trade off, as he and his wife work long hours and need to put their diaries side by side to find time to spend together.[5]

Perowne's composure and success mean the implied violence is in the background. His personal contentment, (at the top of his profession, and "an unashamed beneficiary of the fruits of late capitalism"[3]) provides a hopeful side to the book, instead of the unhappiness in contemporary fiction.[2] McEwan's previous novels highlighted the fragility of modern fulfilled life, seemingly minor incidents dramatically upsetting existence.[9]Saturday returns to a theme explored in Atonement, which plotted the disruption of a lie to a middle-class family, and in The Child in Time, where a small child is kidnapped during a day's shopping.[10] This theme is continued in Saturday, a "tautly wound tour-de-force" set in a world where terrorism, war and politics make the news headlines, but the protagonist has to live out this life until he "collides with another fate".[2] In Saturday Perowne's medical knowledge captures the delicate state of humanity better than novelists' imaginations: his acquaintance with death and neurological perspective better capture human frailty.[9]

The burning aeroplane in the book's opening, and the suspicions it immediately arouses, quickly introduces the problems of terrorism and international security.[5] The day's political demonstration and the ubiquity of its news coverage provide background noise to Perowne's day, leading to him to ponder his relationship with these events.[11]Christopher Hitchens pointed out that the novel is set on the "actual day the whole of bien-pensant Britain moved into the streets to jeer at George Bush and Tony Blair" and placed the novel as "unapologetically anchored as it is in the material world and its several discontents".[5]The Economist newspaper set the context as a "world where terrorism and war make headlines, but also filter into the smallest corners of people's lives."[2] McEwan said himself, "The march gathered not far from my house, and it bothered me that so many people seemed so thrilled to be there".[12] The characterisation of Perowne as an intelligent, self-aware man: "..a habitual observer of his own moods' [who] is given to reveries about his mental processes," allows the author to explicitly set out this theme.[1]

"It's an illusion to believe himself active in the story. Does he think he's changing something, watching news programmes, or lying on his back on the sofa on Sunday afternoon, reading more opinion columns of ungrounded certainties, more long articles about what really lies behind this or that development, or what is surely going to happen next, predictions forgotten as soon as they are read, well before events disprove them?"[13]

Physically, Perowne is neither above nor outside the fray but at an angle to it; emotionally his own intelligence makes him apathetic, he can see both sides of the argument, and his beliefs are characterised by a series of hard choices rather than sure certainties.[5][14]

He is concerned for the fate of Iraqis; through his friendship with an exiled Iraqi professor he learned of the totalitarian side of Saddam Hussein's rule, but also takes seriously his children's concerns about the war. He often plays devil's advocate, being dovish with this American friend, and hawkish with his daughter.[12]

McEwan establishes Perowne as anchored in the real world.[5][15] Perowne expresses a distaste for some modern literature, puzzled by, even disdaining magical realism:

"What were these authors of reputation doing grown men and women of the twentieth century granting supernatural powers to their characters?" Perowne earnestly tried to appreciate fiction, under instruction from his daughter he read both Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, but could not accept their artificiality, even though they dwelt on detail and ordinariness.[11]

Perowne's dismissive attitude towards literature is directly contrasted with his scientific world-view in his struggle to comprehend the modern world.[11] Perowne explicitly ponders this question, "The times are strange enough. Why make things up?".[11]

Perowne's world view is rebutted by his daughter, Daisy, a young poet. In the book's climax in chapter four, while he struggles to remain calm offering medical solutions to Baxter's illness, she quotes Matthew Arnold's poem Dover Beach, which calls for civilised values in the world, temporarily placating the assailant's violent mood.[3] McEwan described his intention as wanting to "play with this idea, whether we need stories".[16] Brian Bethune interpreted McEwan's approach to Perowne as "mercilessly [mocking] his own protagonist...But Perowne's blind spot [literature] is less an author's little joke than a plea for the saving grace of literature."[15]

Similarly he is irreligious, his work making him aware of the fragility of life and consciousness's reliance on the functioning brain.[11] His morality is nuanced, weighing both sides of an issue. When leaving the confrontation with Baxter, he questions his use of his medical knowledge, even though it was in self-defense, and with genuine Hippocratic feeling. While shopping for his fish supper, he cites scientific research that shows greater consciousness in fish, and wonders whether he should stop eating them.[11] As a sign of his rationalism, he appreciates the brutality of Saddam Hussein's rule as described by the Iraqi professor whom Perowne treated, at the same time taking seriously his children's concerns about the war.

Saturday is a "post 9/11" novel, dealing with the change in lifestyle faced by Westerners after the 11 September attacks in the United States. As such, Christopher Hitchens characterised it as "unapologetically anchored as it is in the material world and its several discontents".[5] "Structurally, Saturday is a tightly wound tour de force of several strands"; it is both a thriller which portrays a very attractive family, and an allegory of the world after 11 September 2001 which meditates on the fragility of life.[14]

In this respect the novel correctly anticipates, at page 276, the July 7, 2005 bombings on London's Underground railway network, which occurred a few months after the book was published:

London, his small part of it, lies wide open, impossible to defend, waiting for its bomb, like a hundred other cities. Rush hour will be a convenient time. It might resemble the Paddington crash twisted rails, buckled, upraised commuter coaches, stretchers handed out through broken windows, the hospital's Emergency Plan in action. Berlin, Paris, Lisbon. The authorities agree, an attack's inevitable.

The book obeys the classical unities of place, time and action, following one man's day against the backdrop of a grander historical narrative the anti-war protests happening in the city that same day.[9] The protagonist's errands are surrounded by the recurring leitmotif of hyper real, ever-present screens which report the progress of the plane and the march Perowne has earlier encountered.[11]Saturday is in tune with its protagonist's literary tastes; "magical realism" it is not.[5] The 26-hour narrative led critics to compare the book to similar novels, especially Ulysses by James Joyce, which features a man crossing a city,[15] and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, of which Michiko Kakutani described Saturday as an "up-to-the-moment, post-9/11 variation."[10]

The novel is narrated in the third person, limited point of view: the reader learns of events as Perowne does. Using the free indirect style the narrator inhabits Perowne, a neurosurgeon, who often thinks rationally, explaining phenomena using medical terminology.[1] This allows McEwan to capture some of the "white noise that we almost forget as soon as we think it, unless we stop and write it down."[16] Hitchens highlighted how the author separates himself from his character with a "Runyonesque historical present ("He rises " "He strides ") that solidifies the context and the actuality."[5]

Saturday was both critically acclaimed and commercially successful, a best-seller in Britain and the United States. It spent a week at No. 3 on both the New York Times Best Seller List on 15 April 2005,[17] and Publishers Weekly (4 April 2005) lists.[18] A strong performance for literary fiction, Saturday sold over 250,000 copies on release, and signings were heavily attended.[19] The paperback edition sold another quarter of a million.[20]

Ruth Scurr reviewed the book in The Times, calling McEwan "[maybe] the best novelist in Britain and is certainly operating at the height of his formidable powers".[9] She praised his examination of happiness in the 21st century, particularly from the point of view of a surgeon: "doctors see real lives fall to pieces in their consulting rooms or on their operating tables, day in, day out. Often they mend what is broken, and open the door to happiness again."[9] Christopher Hitchens said the "sober yet scintillating pages of Saturday" confirmed the maturation of McEwan and displayed both his soft, humane, side and his hard, intellectual, scientific, side.[5]

Reviewers celebrated McEwan's dissection of the quotidian and his talent for observation and description. Michiko Kakutani liked the "myriad of small, telling details and a reverence for their very ordinariness ", and the suspense created that threatens these.[10] Tim Adams concurred in The Observer, calling the observation "wonderfully precise".[21] Mark Lawson in The Guardian said McEwan's style had matured into "scrupulous, sensual rhythms," and noted the considered word choice that enables his work. Perowne, for example, is a convincing neurosurgeon by the end of the book.[22] This attention to detail allowed McEwan to use all the tricks of fiction to generate "a growing sense of disquiet with the tiniest finger-flicks of detail".[14]

The "set-piece" construction of the book was noticed by many critics; Mrs Scurr praised it, describing a series of "vivid tableaux",[9] but John Banville was less impressed, calling it an assembly of discrete set pieces, though he said the treatment of the car crash and its aftermath was "masterful", and said of Perowne's visit to his mother: "the writing is genuinely affecting in its simplicity and empathetic force."[3] From the initial "dramatic overture" of the aircraft scene, there were "astonishing pages of description", sometimes "heart-stopping", though it was perhaps a touch too artful at times, according to Michael Dirda in The Washington Post.[14] Christopher Hitchens said that McEwan delivered a "virtuoso description of the aerodynamics of a squash game," enjoyable even "to a sports hater like myself",[5] Banville said he, as a literary man, had been bored by the same scene.[23] Zoe Heller praised the tension in the climax as "vintage McEwan nightmare" but questioned the resolution as "faintly preposterous".[11]

John Banville wrote a scathing review of the book for The New York Review of Books.[3] He described Saturday as the sort of thing that a committee directed to produce a 'novel of our time' would write, the politics were "banal"; the tone arrogant, self-satisfied and incompetent; the characters cardboard cut-outs. He felt McEwan strove too hard to display technical knowledge "and his ability to put that knowledge into good, clean prose".[3]

Saturday won the James Tait Black Prize for fiction;[24] and was nominated on the long-list of the Man Booker Prize in 2005.[25]

According to songwriter Neil Finn, the Crowded House song "People Are Like Suns", from Time on Earth (2007), begins with lyrics inspired by the beginning of Saturday, stating "...when I wrote it, I was reading Ian McEwan's novel Saturday, which begins with a man on his balcony watching a plane go down, so the first lines borrow something from that image."[26]

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Saturday (novel) - Wikipedia

Martyn Lawrence Bullard’s Sumptuous Palm Springs Hideaway – Architectural Digest

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When one discusses the midcentury-modern architecture of Palm Springs, its best to be specific. On the one hand, there are those archetypes of classic California modernismperhaps best exemplified by Richard Neutras famed Kaufmann Housethat echo the language of the International Style, all glass and steel and elegant rationalism. But then theres another, more playful school of modernism, one that embraced historicist elements, purely theatrical effects, and no small portion of camp to conjure a suitably sybaritic mise-en-scne for the leisure class at play. To the surprise of absolutely no one familiar with interior designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard or his sumptuous settings, the effervescent British expat selected a prime example of the latter for his own Palm Springs hideaway.

Bullard and his partner, property developer Michael Green, soak up the sunshine in a 1963 house by James McNaughton, a Hollywood set designer who found the ultimate canvas for his flights of fancy in the desert sands of the Coachella Valley. With an arched exterior canopy that segues into interior colonnades, the structure looks a bit like an early maquette for Wallace K. Harrisons Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center. The analogy is apt, given the unapologetic drama of the design, which is centered on a semicircular living room that is completed in a bowfront wall of glass overlooking the swimming pool and a black-banded terrazzo floor that was originally intended for dancing.

Its all a bit mad but divine, Bullard says of the house. Hugh Hefner supposedly owned it in the 70s, then Roger Moore, who had it tricked out in fabulous James Bond finery. This place was built for relaxation and fun, so we use it in that spirit.

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Bullard largely preserved McNaughtons floor plan, restoring sections of the home that had been altered over the years. To make the place more accommodating for visitors, he converted a pool cabana and what had been a lavish dressing room into additional guest quarters. Bullard also transformed an erstwhile library into a seriously plush screening room bathed in emerald-green lacquer and furnished with topographical de Sede Terrazza sofas covered in Ultrasuede.

During the holidays, we hole up there with our dog, Daisy, a bunch of screeners, and a lot of candy, the designer says. (For those unfamiliar with Hollywoods mysterious customs, screeners are copies of the latest movies that are distributed by the studios to industry bigwigs and apparatchiks at the end of every year, in advance of awards season.)

Bullard describes his interior appointments as a mix of swinging 60s with a touch of disco 70s. In specific terms, that vision translates into a roster of stellar furnishings by Vladimir Kagan, Willy Rizzo, Paul Evans, Milo Baughman, Angelo Mangiarotti, Karl Springer, and Charles Hollis Jones, among other avatars of groovy modern furniture. There are also more idiosyncratic pieces, like the Pierre Cardin stools at the bar and the living rooms vast zebra-skin rug (a gift from model Cheryl Tiegs, it once graced Andy Warhols Factory).

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Martyn Lawrence Bullard's Sumptuous Palm Springs Hideaway - Architectural Digest

How to Use Imagination to Grow Your Business – Business 2 Community

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In a 1929 interview, Albert Einstein said:

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.

Do you think he was correct?

Einstein was voicing his opinion regarding scientific research, an area traditionally dominated by pure rationalism.

How about in business? Do you value imagination more than (or as much as) what you know?

Its unlikely. We favor knowledge over imagination, reason over intuition.

But its imagination that creates the new, the better, the unforeseen. Imagination fuels all great visions.

All inspired leaders can envision a future that doesnt yet exist.

When we understand the source of creativity, we are better positioned to access it more freely.

When Einstein says knowledge, hes referring to our conscious, rational minds. It is from our conscious minds we operate each day.

We mainly use our intellect or reason to evaluate our surroundings, make decisions, and communicate.

Modern science, however, continues to reveal that most of our behavior, attitudes, and decisions are influenced, even ruled, by unconscious processes.

The source of our imagination lies in what we can call the unconscious mind. This unconscious mind is a storehouse of every memory, image, thought, feeling, and experience weve ever had.

More interestingly, in The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious, Carl Jung illustrates how this unconscious has a collective or universal element that accesses the memories, images, thoughts, feelings, and experiences of all humanity throughout time.

Its as if, deep inside each of us, untold imaginative treasures, insights, and ideas are just waiting for us to discover.

Living strictly conscious lives, most of us rarely tap into these imaginative capacities. Those who do, we call artists.

Ancient traditions and modern integrative therapies suggest theres a mediating factor that enables our conscious mind (or ego) to access, communicate, and even befriend the forces of the unconscious.

The Egyptians called it the Ba-Soul. Ancient Greeks called the inner daimon. The Romans saw it as genius in everyone.

Webcast, March 15th: How to Scale Upmarket with Enterprise Field Sales

Western religions call it our guardian angel or soul. Eastern philosophies and transpersonal psychologies call it the Self (capital S).

Many artists call it the Muse. William Blake called it Poetic Genius.

By whatever name, it is this Inner Guide that we tap into when our imagination flows.

Just as our conscious mind is providing us with a constant stream of thought, our unconscious mind is perpetually trying to express itself.

Only, we havent learned how to give it attention, relate to it, and understand it.

Using our conscious mind, humans communicate with one another through language.

Language is a process of the rational mind (or cerebral cortex).

The difficulty in approaching the unconscious is that it doesnt communicate to us in words. It expresses itself as images and symbols.

Only a select few have learned to access these images and symbols that come to us in dreams, fantasies, visions, and daydreams.

Accessing and paying attention to these images is the first step; learning to interpret them is the second.

To balance out our bias toward rationalism, we need to create space for the imagination.

Disney uses a method for producing creative work that any business can emulate.

They differentiate three roles necessary for generating creative ideas and actualizing them: the Dreamer, the Realist, and the Critic.

The Dreamer accesses the unconscious by allowing the mind to wander without bounds. Daydreaming isnt just allowed; its encouraged.

The Realist accesses the conscious mind that organizes ideas, develops plans, sets forth strategies for execution.

The Critic tests the plan, plays the role of Devils Advocate, and looks out for what could go wrong.

A process such as this gives the Dreamer its rightful place in business that might otherwise treat humans as purely rational beings that need to be at their desks working at all times.

See this guide for a comprehensive look at the creative process.

Its difficult to access your creativity when your body is holding unnecessary tension or anxiety.

Start by taking a few slow, steady, deep breaths. Breathe into the bottom of your belly and exhale, allowing an imaginary balloon in your belly to deflate. (See, were already using our imagination.)

Close your eyes.

Visualize yourself at work. See the faces of your team. Notice what they are doing. Feel the overall energy in your environment.

How are they relating to each other? How do they perceive you? Try to get a realistic picture of the average day at work.

Now, imagine how you want it to be. Imagine the potential of your people. See them collaborating earnestly with each other.

Feel the energy, playfulness, openness, and creativity in the air. Notice the positive and passionate attitude of your people.

Can you see the untapped potential within your business?

Can you envision new and better ways of serving your customers?

Your Inner Guide can. Trust that this is true and look and listen within yourself.

Steve Jobs never saw Apple as a business that sells computers. In his imagination, Apple made products that unleashed peoples creativity.

Imagination is vital to creating a bold, inspiring vision.

Never underestimate the power of such an image. It can rally your people around a common goal. It can fuel the creation of something that will have a positive impact on humanity.

Adapted from an article originally published on scottjeffrey.com.

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How to Use Imagination to Grow Your Business - Business 2 Community

Junk restrictive faith-based laws: Mumbai atheists – Daily News & Analysis

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The Atheists community from Mumbai will be coming together in a conference to demand abolition of the Indian Penal Code Sections 295 (hurting religious sentiments), 295A (deliberate act intended to outrage religious feelings) and 298 (Uttering, words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person). The community will also demand that an elected leader should not take an oath in Gods name to maintain the sovereignty of the state.

The fourth atheist conference which will be organised by The Brights will have speakers who promote rationalism. Advocate Asim Sarode will talk about the IPC Sections 295, 295A and 298 which were written during the British era.

When the President of our country is elected, the person is subjected to say I, (name), do swear in the name of God (or solemnly affirm), which should not happen. We will also demand change in the swearing-in the court witness box in which people are forced to take oath under a holy book, said Kumar Nage, Country Head for a multinational company and founder of The Brights.

The Sections 295, 295A and 298 are draconian which were established to control the colonies in which the Brits ruled. Even today we follow these laws in case if we speak against god in our democratic country, said Nage.

The group of atheists who reject the fiction called God want civil equality and development. In the name of God and religion people are now indulging in anti-social activities, says Nitin Worlikar, a banker and co-founder of The Brights.

On March 19, the conference will be held in Pune, in Nashik on March 26, and in Mumbai on April 9 in Yashwantrao Chavan Centre at Nariman Point.

Our motto is to spread awareness among the countrymen that they should not believe in any fanaticism which disturbs peace and harmony, said Worlikar.

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Junk restrictive faith-based laws: Mumbai atheists - Daily News & Analysis

University of Lincoln’s Conservative Student Group Censored for … – Reason (blog)

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Marcin FloryanTalk about proving a point. The University of Lincoln's student union has suspended a conservative student group's social media accountsan act of retaliation against the group for daring to criticize the student union's hostility toward free speech.

In effect, the British university's student government is censoring students because they objected to censorship.

"Just to reiterate the irony of this situation," wrote a different conservative club at another university, "their student union, upon being criticized for being anti-free speech, have silenced those complaining about a lack of free speech!"

What happened was this: Lincoln's Conservative Society tweeted a link to Spiked magazine's Free Speech University Rankings, which do not hold Lincoln's student union in high esteem.

Someone in the student union most have noticedthe conservatives were accused of "bring[ing] the University of Lincoln Students' Union and the University of Lincoln into disrepute," according to spiked.

In response, the student union forced the Conservative Society off of social media until May 1. Student unions at British universities, unfortunately, enjoy broad censorship powers (this is what happens when you don't have a First Amendment).

Lincoln students may not have the right to criticize their overlords, but we do. Here is the University of Lincoln Student Union's Twitter page. Let its leaders know how you feel about the way they handle dissent.

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University of Lincoln's Conservative Student Group Censored for ... - Reason (blog)

The Insanity of Self-Censorship: Climate Change, Politics, and Fear-Based Decision-Making – Climate Science Watch

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Climate change has a long list of known human health consequences, not the least of which is a set of adverse impacts on mental health. As more and more people are directly affected by destructive floods, heat waves, drought, deadly storms and other extreme weather events all worsened by increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide experts predict a steep rise in mental and social disorders: anxiety, depression, PTSD, substance abuse, increased suicide rates, and outbreaks of violence. Hardest hit will be children, the poor, the elderly, and those with existing mental health problems: collectively, this amounts to about half the US population! Worse, the consensus seems to be that the mental health profession is unprepared to handle these challenges.

Just three days after the presidential inauguration, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced in a terse email that it was cancelling a three-day conference, the Climate and Health Summit, that was to take place in Atlanta from February 14-16. With the translation of science to practice as the planned theme, scientists were to present their most recent research on the physical and mental health effects of climate change, and conferees were to explore ways to improve interagency cooperation and stakeholder engagement. Though no official reason was given, it quickly became evident that the CDC had engaged in self-censorship. President Trump has alleged that global warming is a notion invented by the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing noncompetitive and, more recently, that climate change is a hoax. This strategic retreat, as one scheduled speaker characterized it, was the result of a fear-based decision to shut down the event preemptively, before the new administration had a chance to shut it down for them, absent any foreknowledge or hint that they would.

As taxpayers who underwrite interagency federal climate science to the tune of about two billion dollars a year, we should be as intolerant of self-censorship as we are of outright censorship of government information. The unfettered communication of research findings regarding climate change impacts across regions and sectors is necessary for public awareness, preparedness, and sound policymaking. As global temperatures rise, all will be better served if civil servants inoculate themselves against the chilling effect that normally accompanies the sort of tyrannical rule weve already witnessed from our new President. In all likelihood, the CDC Summit was not on the White House radar, and could have proceeded unimpeded. Instead, Al Gore and several health-related organizations swooped in, came to the rescue, and sponsored a distilled down, one-day version they called the Climate & Health Meeting. But it is not the responsibility of private citizens and organizations to pick up the slack when agencies cower.

Source: http://bit.ly/2niCFcN

Truth be told, climate change is scary; the only thing scarier, we argue, is a culture of repression in which government employees opt for the safety of silence over the invaluable service of disclosure. Fear appears to be the common denominator: deep-seated fear often underlies psychological suffering in response to dangerous conditions, and fear of retaliatory budget cuts and potential job loss motivated CDC conference organizers to cut bait in an act of anticipatory surrender. If we subscribe to the notion that knowledge is power and empowering, it only follows that the more we can know and understand how our climate system is changing and what sorts of abnormal weather patterns we can expect where we live and work, the more we can prepare ourselves across the board, including mentally and emotionally. Were calling on the CDC and all federal and state entities conducting climate research to be fearless, to stand up in defiance of those who prefer to bury their heads in the sand and insist everyone else do the same. The stakes are too high to remain in the dark.

Climate change is already taking an emotional toll, but affects people differently. Dismissive, doubtful, disengaged, cautious, concerned, and alarmed: these words have been used to describe the wide-ranging responses people have to climate change. Those who are dismissive simply refuse to accept mounting scientific evidence, and often put forth bogus arguments in an effort to disprove global warming. There are at least two underlying explanations. As can happen with a diagnosis of life-threatening cancer, some people are thrown into fear-based denial. Simple greed or zealous protection of a financial interest can also motivate some to be dismissive and deny outright the veracity of the climate threat. Some treat climate change as if it were a religion, and declare a disbelief in climate change. To this, Neil deGrasse Tyson often says that the good thing about science is that its true whether or not you believe in it. It is as ridiculous to say, I dont believe in global warming as it is to say, I dont believe in gravity both are simple laws of physics.

Those who are doubtful are reluctant to accept climate change as a reality, and tend to defend carbon-intensive lifestyles while pointing to unsettled science and denier rhetoric to defend their view. Then there are people who simply havent plugged in, are disengaged, and have failed to notice climate change as a problem that may affect them. Still others react more neutrally, are cautious, and neither fully embrace nor reject the threat of climate change, and take a wait-and-see attitude.

Yet, the science behind climate change is well-developed, so it is no surprise that a growing percentage of people are becoming deeply concerned about worsening impacts associated with climate change severe and more frequent flooding, prolonged droughts, heat waves, devastating forest fires, sea level rise, storm surges, ocean acidification, and so on. The less fortunate of us have already been the victims of one or more extreme weather events, such as massive flooding, and have lost homes, livelihoods, even loved ones. Humans are emotional creatures. People who see unchecked climate change as an existential threat, who walk around every day acutely aware of the very real prospect of an increasingly inhospitable climate system most climate scientists are in this group can easily become alarmed.

Climate change exacts a psychological toll. A landmark 2015 report in The Lancet warns that mental health disorders are one of the most dangerous indirect health effects of global warming. Multiple studies, such as those described in the US Global Change Research Programs Third National Climate Assessments Health Chapter, have shown that climate change can cause people to become chronically worried and anxious, frustrated, overwhelmed, exasperated, even clinically depressed. Hyper-vigilance, obsessive-compulsive disorders, even full-blown PTSD can result. Some mental health professionals have dubbed the uncomfortable feeling of anticipatory anxiety pre-traumatic stress disorder. Stress levels can be the greatest for those whose livelihoods are tightly wedded to the natural environment. For example, in some parts of the world, in response to a rapidly changing climate and abnormal weather conditions, farmers are committing suicide at alarming rates.

Even if we are not directly adversely affected by it in our daily lives, simple awareness of the climate threat, via the media and in normal discourse, is enough to cause anxiety. In most areas of the world, its difficult not to notice abnormal weather patterns: higher average temperatures, wild temperature swings, a lot more precipitation, or a lot less. Instinctively, many of us know something is wrong: were experiencing the small drip of climate reality.

The Climate & Health Meeting Al Gore organized was held on February 16 at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Over 300 people attended; Gore made opening remarks; there were two panels, about a dozen speakers, and a lunch keynote address. President Jimmy Carter made a surprise appearance and delivered a few remarks. With the possible disapproval of Congress, the CDC has to be a little cautious politically, he said, adding, The Carter Center doesnt. The Chicago Tribune noted that the move sends a powerful signal: Civil society and academic organizations will try to fill the conversation gaps about climate change left by the new administration. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA), one of the meeting sponsors, commented, Were committed to making sure the nation knows about the effects of climate change on health. If anyone doesnt think this is a severe problem, they are fooling themselves. The APHA has declared 2017 the Year of Climate Change and Health. Its not clear how many CDC employees who were slated to attend the original conference were at the February 16 meeting. However, it is worth noting that two CDC staffers who did attend Dr. Patrick Breysse,director of the National Center for Environmental Health, and Dr.George Luber, an epidemiologist inthe Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects were requested for media interviews, but a senior CDC press officer declined to make them available. Restrictions on interactions with the press were put in place across all federal agencies soon after Trump took office; reportedly, some of these restrictions are beginning to loosen up, but we still dont know how much this administration will attempt to impede normal communications going forward.

Presenters at the meeting covered a wide variety of topics: air quality, infectious diseases, heat waves, extreme weather, vulnerable populations, state and local initiatives, adaptation measures, and the role of the health care sector. Children are particularly vulnerable, so much so that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a formal statement in 2015 urging pediatricians and politicians to work towards solving the climate crisis to protect the young. An AAP spokesperson noted, Their future is at stake, yet they do not vote and they have no voice in the debate. We have a moral obligation to act on their behalf. Indeed. Washington, DC-based psychiatrist Dr. Lise van Susteren, who presented on mental health at the Climate & Health Meeting (see transcript below), is convinced that the chronic failure of adults to tackle the climate change problem and implement effective solutions puts our children in harms way, and amounts to nothing less than child abuse. Its difficult to disagree; failing to provide our kids with a world thats as safe to live in as the one we were born into is something all parents should do their best to avoid.

Political interference in climate communication was a recurring problem in the Bush-Cheney administration. In October 2007, the Bush White House removed six entire pages of Congressional testimony offered by CDC Director Julie Gerberding, which linked climate change to adverse health impacts. Climate Science Watch covered the story of the eviscerated statement and published the unredacted testimony as submitted by Gerberding to the White House for customary review. It was later confirmed that Vice President Dick Cheneys office had pushed for the deletions.

Under the fossil fuel-friendly Bush Administration, many lessons were learned, and some provisions have since been put in place that protect the right to free speech of federal employees wishing to share the results of their research with the media and the public.

Given the rapidly accelerating threat of climate change and associated risks to human populations not just in America but all over the globe political interference in the communication of scientific findings crucial to informing policymakers and the public is literally a life-threatening act of betrayal against current and future generations. Keeping our Constitutional right to free speech requires that we exercise it. Please, no more self-censoring.

CSPW Senior Climate Policy Analyst Anne Polansky has 30 years of experience in public policies relating to energy and the environment, with a strong focus on climate change and renewable energy. She is a former Professional Staff Member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ TRANSCRIPT Mental Health Consequences of Climate Change By Dr. Lise Van Susteren, Psychiatrist

Everything related to climate change either directly or indirectly all the losses, injuries, illnesses, displacements carry with them an attended emotional toll that must be acknowledged as we tally up psychological impacts of climate change. Ill start with a few of the mental health impacts for which we have precise data, and then move onto those for which we do not.

We know of the link between extreme climate and weather events to aggression. For each standard deviation of increased temperature and rainfall, we can expect a four percent increase in conflict between individuals, and a fourteen percent increase in conflict between groups. The findings are valid for all ethnicities and regions.

So, more assaults, murders and suicides, and increase in unrest all over the world should come as no surprise.

Air pollution forms more readily at higher temperatures, with particulate matter crossing of the brain via the olfactory nerve, causes neural inflammation linked to multiple mental and neurologic problems: cognitive decline in all age groups, including Alzheimers and other neurodegenerative disorders, such as Parkinsons disease and ALS. It is linked to autism and to psychiatric disorders. The American Psychological Association reports that children exposed in utero to air pollutants were more likely to have symptoms of anxiety or depression. Emergency room visits for panic attacks and threats to commit suicide are higher on days with poor air quality. Exposing workers to increasing levels of CO2 has significant impact on their cognitive functioning. The testing at indoor concentrations to which Americans are frequently exposed shows the most serious decline in our ability to think strategically, to use information, and to respond to a crisis. Not good.

But, not everything that counts can be counted. Indeed, it is the inchoate, insidious, complex, and unconscious psychological states driven by climate trauma, not lending themselves to studies and precise numbers, that are the most profoundly damaging, and drive systemic emotional conditions society will find difficult to treat and surmount.

We must think about the balance between the need for data with the need to connect emotionally, because emotional connection is at the heart of what moves people to action. Action now turns on our success, in part at least, in stirring empathy. When the place you call home is burned down, blown away, dried up, flooded when you lose your possessions, maybe your pets, your livelihood, your community see injuries, illness and death the mix of fear, anger, sorrow, and trauma can easily send a person to the breaking point. Mental health professionals are seeing a full range of psychiatric disorders: PTSD, major depression, generalized anxiety, a rise in the abuse of drugs and alcohol, domestic violence (most often against women) and a rise in child-abuse.

Some of us are lucky enough to be at a distance from the worlds climate disasters, but were not potted plants sitting here. This is empathic identification with the victims. It is painful seeing people drowned, burned, flooded, starved right? Special populations that are at risk [include] children; the elderly; the sick; the disabled; the mentally ill (of course); the poor, and those living in the bulls-eye, disaster-prone areas: along coastlines and rivers, in tornado alleys, in cities with the heat island effect. [They also include] first responders, and climate Cassandras who suffer from pre-traumatic stress disorder in the grip of images of future disasters they cant put out of their minds.

In the first published climate change delusion, a 17-year-old Australian boy had to be hospitalized for refusing to drink water, believing it would cause millions in his drought-ridden in country to die of thirst. The Melbourne childrens hospital doctor who treated him told me he has a clinic full of children with climate anxiety.

Through the result of multiple forces, climate change poses both a threat multiplier and a root cause of the mental health crisis from the explosion of refugees today searching for safety, destabilization of regions, with groups dangerous to world security rising in these feral conditions. In Europe, a sharp turn to the far right politically, the once open question about America was answered in November. In times of peril and scarcity people regress, they turn to what they perceive as strong leaders to protect them and are willing to give up their freedoms and values in exchange for perceived security.

Fears often flip to a more empowering form: anger explaining why hearing about scary climate change can evoke so much aggression. The experiences of citizens stranded at the Superdome in New Orleans in the days after Katrina are an example of how quickly our systems can be overwhelmed, and our faith in them turned upside down. Faith in a functional government is the sine qua non of a stable society.

When disasters are no longer experienced solely as acts of God or nature, but derived from the behavior of humans, it will be much tougher on us, because what happens from intentional negligence is harder to put behind us than what happens accidentally. Carried by an on-off switch, the activation of a human gene for stress in the face of trauma can be passed on to succeeding generations, compounding the toll.

A new term has been coined, solastalgia to describe the pain as seeing lands that once gave the treasured sense of home now lost or irreparably damaged. Should I have a baby? is the question increasingly being asked by young people worried about the carbon cost of bringing another person into the world. A doctoral student in anthropology at Stanford and one of his friends with whom I am in contact are discussing rational suicide in the face of climate and carbon impacts.

As we register the warning that by mid-century, 30 to 50 percent of species may be on the path to extinction, and considering the life-sustaining biodiversity, the overwhelming beauty and complexity of nature, inspiring us with awe and wonder, what our friend Eric Chivian would likely ask, is the cost, not only to human health, but the cost to our souls.

When we put people in harms way, theres a name for it, its called aggression. To our children, though they are not yet calling it this, its clearer every day that destructive inaction on climate and this is my professional opinion will be experienced as child abuse, with all the attendant mental health impacts we would expect.

Thank you.

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The Insanity of Self-Censorship: Climate Change, Politics, and Fear-Based Decision-Making - Climate Science Watch

Colleges are ground zero for mob attacks on free speech, lawyer says – Washington Post

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Last week, author and conservative scholar Charles Murray was surrounded by an angry mob after trying to give a lecture about his most recent book at Middlebury College.

Hundreds of protesters, including masked demonstrators who climbed on the hood of the car and pounded on windows as he tried to leave, objected vehemently to a book he co-wrote in the 1990s, The Bell Curve, calling it racist.

[A conservative author tried to speak at a liberal college. He left fleeing an angry mob.]

Robert Shibley, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and a graduate of Duke University and its law school, writes his opinion that something fundamental is at stake when a controversial speaker is forced to flee campus. Susan Svrluga

Free speech on campus is facing a profound threat.

Not at the hands of President Trump, nor even at the hands of the administrators and lawyers who have done so much to erode academias respect for freedom of expression.

No, as highlighted by the violent disruption and end of Charles Murrays visit to Middlebury College in Vermont last week, the immediate crisis comes from one of freedoms most ancient enemies: the angry mob.

Its time for college leaders and law enforcement to take a stand: In our nation, this is not what democracy looks like.

While Americans rightly tend to focus on threats to freedom of speech from the authorities, we cannot overlook the danger of allowing people to be silenced by groups prepared to be violent.

History is littered with such warnings, from Diogenes to Robert F. Kennedy, who, on the day after the Rev. Martin Luther Kings assassination, said, A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.

That voice of madness led to Murray being forced to give his talk on social stratification in America by videolink after disruptive protesters made Murrays actual presence before the audience impossible.

It caused masked protesters to hurl a stop sign at the car in which Murray was attempting to leave, and sent his discussion partner, Prof. Allison Stanger, to the hospital with a neck injury after a protester grabbed her hair.

And it led Murray and Stanger to flee a post-event dinner after being warned that demonstrators were coming, after which, in Stangers words, she and Murray decided it was probably best to leave town.

That voice of madness also famously left the University of California, Berkeley, aflame in February, with masked vigilantes setting fires, smashing windows and attacking would-be speechgoers. And, as further violent attacks on marchers in the city of Berkeley this weekend demonstrate, the disease is not only confined to campus, though its perhaps at its most obvious in the very places that are supposed to be dedicated to the exchange of ideas.

[President Trump lashes back at Berkeley after violent protests over speaker]

While peaceful protesters must be accommodated and protected, there can be no excuse for violence in response to mere speech, and the authorities must ensure that attempts to shut down speakers do not succeed.

UC-Berkeleys February approach, with only three reported arrests and with dozens of police barricaded inside a building while attacks on people and property took place just yards away, has to be counted as a failure.

Those persuaded to write off the Berkeley mobs violent response to provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos as understandable should realize that the well-publicized lack of consequences undoubtedly encouraged the use of similar tactics to silence a sober academic in small-town Vermont.

Middlebury College may be charting a different course.

President Laurie Patton directly apologized to Murray and Stanger on behalf of Middlebury in an official statement, visited Stanger in the hospital, and promised that the college will be responding in the very near future to the clear violations of Middlebury College policy.

Some Middlebury students even reached out on their own to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), where I work, to tell us that they believe that Patton will do the right thing.

Yet the same students also begged FIRE for anonymity, saying, we are currently terrified to express any opinions that do not fall in line with the culture of moral authoritarianism that is permeating this campus.

FIRE has heard versions of this statement from students on hundreds of other campuses.

Were students this widely uncomfortable about any other matter, college leaders would rush to address it.

Instead, campuses continue to shore up this authoritarianism through efforts such as the more than 230 bias response teams nationwide that summon students and professors for lectures (or worse) on how their use of language might violate campus rules or hurt the feelings of some protected class of people.

This only encourages the vigilante censors to believe that silencing opponents is what good and moral people do. Its not.

Even if academia does nothing to address the immediate problem, law enforcement has a role to play. Local police can and should aggressively investigate reports of violence against speakers or their audiences. Smartphone pictures and video footage should give detectives plenty to go on, enhanced by their ability to legally request text messages and social media updates that may shed light on the identities of perpetrators.

While police forces may understandably prefer to spend their time pursuing major crimes, it would be a mistake to allow our democracy to be undermined simply because dissenters are being beaten and not murdered.

Lets face it: Right now, when it comes to violent censorship, crime pays.

Until that changes, we must expect more of the same and as ground zero for mob attacks on free speech, its time for colleges to lead the way.

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Colleges are ground zero for mob attacks on free speech, lawyer says - Washington Post

UMaine System pushes ahead with free speech policy – Portland … – Press Herald

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As protests flare on campuses nationwide, the University of Maine System is moving forward with a new free speech policy that affirms constitutionally protected speech, calls for civility and gives the university room to prohibit speech if it crosses into harassment or threats.

The timing is critically important, system trustee chairman Sam Collins said Wednesday, referring to violent protests that broke out days ago at Middlebury College in Vermont, after students shouted down a controversial speaker. Last month, riots broke out at University of California Berkeley in connection with a speech by a provocateur and conservative activist.

Closer to home, the University of Southern Maine recently hosted a speaker on immigration that drew protesters, but remained civil.

Collins and other members of the UMS trustees executive committee met Wednesday to discuss the new policy, saying it would help the system navigate sensitive free speech issues, while making clear that students do not have the right to shout down a speaker.

(D)emands for civility and mutual respect will not be used to justify restricting the discussion or expression of ideas or speech that may be disagreeable or even offensive to some members of the University community, the policy reads in part. Free speech is not absolute, and one persons claim to exercise his or her right to free speech may not be used to deny another persons right to free speech.

The policy defends constitutionally protected speech, and reads: There shall be no restriction at any System institutions on these fundamental rights, although the University may prohibit speech that violates the law, defames specific individuals, genuinely threatens or harasses others, or violates privacy or confidentiality requirements or interests.

The policy is based in part on the findings of the University of Chicago Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression, and the model language suggested by that committee.

This is a very positive thing, said Samantha Harris, a vice president at the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an organization that defends student and faculty rights on campus and urged campuses to adopt the Chicago language. Its heartening to see a public institution affirm their beliefs.

Seventeen colleges have adopted the Chicago language so far, Harris said.

The new policy will be voted on by the full board of trustees at its April meeting.

Noel K. Gallagher can be reached at 791-6387 or at:

[emailprotected]

Twitter: noelinmaine

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UMaine System pushes ahead with free speech policy - Portland ... - Press Herald

Free speech resolution withdrawn at Bucknell, where professor called Milo organizers ‘fascists’ – The College Fix

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Imposea steep and lasting price on them

Less than two months after a professor said students should pay a steep and lasting price for bringing Milo Yiannopoulos to campus, a faculty resolution in support of free expression was withdrawn with no explanation.

Bucknell University faculty were scheduled to vote on the resolution, which was adapted and abridged from more expansive statements by the University of Chicago and Princeton, at their monthly meeting Tuesday night, according to the agenda.

An administration spokesperson told The College Fix he didnt know why it was pulled, and the faculty sponsors didnt respond to Fix email inquiries.

The incident infuriated a Bucknell alum who has been lobbying the board of trustees to adopt a more sweeping resolution in response to the professors comments.

Bucknell already promises the essence of the resolution

Unlike the so-called Chicago Principles, which were adopted by a committee established by its administration, the Bucknell resolution would have only amended the faculty handbook.

It was not a University-wide motion directly involving the administration, the spokesman said in an email. He claimed that the essence of the resolution is already captured in various handbooks and the Universitys statement of nondiscrimination.

MORE: If you invite Milo to campus, you should pay a steep and lasting price

The resolutions background statement says the faculty handbooks language on academic freedom is decades old:

It does not clearly support campus free expression more broadly, in an activist twenty-first-century era at a residential campus seeking to be more engaged with our larger community and society. We feel that it is time for Bucknell faculty to highlight, affirm, and update our support as a faculty community for free expression on campus, in complement with university prohibitions on bias and harassment.

Bucknell University faculty resolution on freedom of expression by The College Fix on Scribd

A new faculty policy on free expression says the university should guarantee all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.

The resolution itself would add a new appendix to the faculty handbook. It would say that members of the Bucknell community should not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe, and that the administration has a solemn responsibility to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it.

How we fought fascists back then: Snap a few bones

On Jan. 16, nearly a year after conservative clubs brought the anti-feminist provocateur Yiannopoulos to campus, Bucknell Prof. Marcellus Andrews sent a mass email to all faculty regarding Yiannopoulos.

[T]he targets of his abuse need to be able to impose a steep and lasting price on the racists and fascists that invited him, Andrews wrote, apparently referring to the College Republicans, Conservatives Club and Young Americans for Liberty.

MORE: Bucknell protestersmad they still haveto march for marginalized

The professor, who is black, said free speech is not a general principle that vicious speech is without a social price in general.

As a Yale graduate student, Andrews said he was tormented by groups of young conservative white men. After one such group urinated on him and other black students who were extremely skilled in combat, the black students used our skills to rearrange a few faces [and] snap a few bones.

Andrews email was obtained by student Tom Ciccotta, who had helped bring Yiannopoulos the year before. Ciccotta read it aloud as he introduced Factual Feminist Christina Hoff Sommers for an event last month.

Just days after Andrews email went public, Bucknell alum David Kinnear launched a Facebook initiative to raise awareness about the lack of free expression at his alma mater.

Bucknellians for Freedom of Expression, composed of proud alumni and friends of the university, calls on Bucknell to join with other schools that have repudiated the new American virus of hypersensitivity by adopting the Chicago Principles.

The Bucknellians released their own proposed statement that says, in part, it is not the proper role of the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.

While much of the language between the faculty resolution and the Bucknellians statement is identical, the administration spokesman told The Fix that the latter was not adopted from the former. (Both cite the Chicago Principles.)

Also an alum of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Kinnear told The Fix that the difference in political climate between the two schools is like night and day. At Bucknell theyre not comfortable in engaging in debate and are missing out on a lot by not having that opportunity to engage in discourse.

Presented with a copy of the now-withdrawn faculty resolution, Kinnear called it an entirely self-serving effort by the five sponsors.

MORE: Why isnt anyone showing up to Bucknell social injustice conference?

Citing the resolutions language, Kinnear said: Their stated intention was to provide context, through a statement of faculty values, for interpreting Handbook provisions on academic freedom, including faculty intent to protect in the tenure process those colleagues speaking out for the rights of other community members. (The Bucknell spokesman told The Fix the handbook is stored on a campus intranet and nearly 5,000 people on campus have access to it.)

Kinnear said he has yet to hear back from the administration and board, including trustee Ken Freeman, about the absence in dialogue at Bucknell. Freeman did not respond to a Fix inquiry.

Andrews personifies theilliberal, despotic fascist hes seeking to eliminate

The alum has made his case in letters to the editor of The Bucknellian and on the self-publishing site Medium.

Currently, Bucknell policies prohibit students from fully exploring their opinions, values, and beliefs and learning how to intelligently, eloquently, and respectfully voice them, he wrote in one letter. [T]hey will be ill-prepared upon graduation to express and question viewpoints beyond those sanctioned within the Bucknell monoculture.

The controversy from the Andrews email demonstrates why Bucknell must adopt the [Bucknellians for Freedom of Expression] Statement, Kinnear said.

MORE: Bucknells sorry history with free speech

In his Medium post, Kinnear said Andrews is an intimidating and powerful authority figure to his teenage students, who nonetheless casts himself as a member of the oppressed underclass to justify his rhetoric.

He is the personification of the illiberal, despotic fascist hes seeking to eliminate from Bucknells campus, Kinnear said.

In both his Fix interview and his articles, though, the alum said he simply wants everyone else to enjoy the same freedom of expression as Andrews. I implore President John Bravman and the Board of Trustees to remove themselves as arbiter of acceptable speech, he wrote on Medium.

I dont see any consistency in how they apply these vague policies, he told The Fix.

Typical of the wide generalizations made about conservatives

Bucknellianconservative columnist Samantha Woolford said Andrews email comments are representative of the wide generalizations made about conservatives.

He assumed something about me that is false and unfounded, she wrote. Saying you are a conservative tends to cause people to automatically assume not only your opinions on certain matters, but also who you are as a person, in my experience, and this leads conservative students to self-censor.

In a statement given to The Tab, Dean of Students Amy Badal said the very reason that Bucknell helped facilitate the Yiannopoulos event in the face of disinvitation demands was because it promotes conversation about ideas and diverse viewpoints and critical thinking skills.

Kinnear was not satisfied with the deans response in his letter. Bucknells weak official response to Andrews disturbing email appears arbitrary and capricious because it is driven by ambiguous policies interpreted and enforced by the administration.

Other schools are considering resolutions similar to the Bucknell facultys.

A University of Maine System board committee was scheduled to consider a statement Wednesday that would affirm the First Amendment but prohibit speech [that] harasses others, according to the Portland Press Herald.

MORE: Bucknell prez expels students for offensive radio show

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About the Author

Jackson Richman is a senior studying political science at George Washington University. He has interned at The Weekly Standard and The Daily Caller. He's a frequent contributor for Red Alert Politics, Campus Reform and American Action News.

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Free speech resolution withdrawn at Bucknell, where professor called Milo organizers 'fascists' - The College Fix

Sorry, but hate speech doesn’t count as free speech – The Badger Herald

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The Badger Herald
Sorry, but hate speech doesn't count as free speech
The Badger Herald
I recently read an article titled Are There Limits to Online Free Speech? by Alice Marwick, assistant professor of communication and media studies at Fordham University. In the article, Marwick recognizes the increasing amount of discourse ...

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Sorry, but hate speech doesn't count as free speech - The Badger Herald

Free speech is not freedom from consequence – Bulletin

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It was a formula Milo Yiannopoulos, former editor at Breitbart news and star of the white nationalist alt-right, had used many times. Say something incendiary and offensive in a public platform, provoke liberal outrage, argue this is another attack on free speech by the left who is obsessed with political correctness and reap the reward of the notoriety the episode generates. Except this time, another group inserted itself into this well-oiled formula. Yiannopoulos went too far, and angered the right as well as the left.

America is learning just how much conservatives will tolerate when faced with unsavory facts about a successful bedfellow. A candidates boast he can molest women with impunity? Not disqualifying. Yiannopoulos claim the tragic shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando was an expression of mainstream Muslim values? Give him a book deal. But Yiannopoulos apparent defense of pedophilia and assertion that sex with a sexually mature 13-year-old boy is not abuse? Now we have crossed the elusive line in the sand. And mysteriously, the right has stopped insisting Yiannopoulos is entitled to say whatever he wants.

In a series of videos posted on Twitter by the conservative blog Reagan Battalion, Yiannopoulos appears to condone or even encourage relationships between older men and boys as young as 13.

I think in the gay world, some of the most important, enriching and incredibly life affirming, important shaping relationships, very often between younger boys and older men, they can be hugely positive experiences for those young boys, Yiannopoulos argues, claiming this sort of arbitrary and oppressive idea of consent fails to recognize the subtleties and complicated nature of many relationships.

When another man on the podcast points out this enriching relationship sounds like molestation by Catholic priests to him, Yiannopoulos is flippant.

And you know what, Im grateful for Father Michael. I wouldnt give nearly such good [oral sex] if it wasnt for him, he says.

Of course this is wrong. The idea sex between adults and young teens cannot only be consensual but actually a positive experience for the younger party is dangerous and damaging to victims of childhood abuse, particularly when the argument comes from a gay man who seems to be drawing on his own experiences. Such assertions are horrifying.

But the backlash these revelations incited, costing Yiannopoulos his book deal, keynote speech at the CPAC American Conservative Union conference and position at Breitbart news, reveals the hypocrisy of the free speech defense Yiannopoulos employed so regularly. Apparently, free speech is only unassailable when the right agrees with the content.

Yiannopoulos has been allowed to get away with appalling verbal attacks in the past. At a December 2016 speech at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Yiannopoulos projected a picture of Adelaide Kramer, a transgender woman and student in the audience, on the screen behind him, called her a tranny and accused her of forc[ing] his way into the womens locker rooms.

Kramer was, understandably, terrified and traumatized. In an email to UW-Milwaukees chancellor, obtained by the student publication Media Milwaukee, she asked, Do you know what its like to be in a room full of people who are laughing at you as if youre some sort of perverted freak? She has since left the school.

To be clear, Yiannopoulos was not simply airing a controversial opinion in this case; he intentionally targeted a student for public ridicule, causing that student to fear for her safety. Nevertheless, conservatives rushed to his defense in the name of free speech. CPAC invited him to speak three months later.

Here is the problem: When the left insists normal speech has become hate speech, they are considered triggered snowflakes. But when the right finds a transgression they will not tolerate, whether it is sympathy for abusive priests or gay people daring to patronize their businesses, they are the noble moral arbiters of society. Anger at Yiannopoulos now, while indisputably justified, tacitly condones every bigoted comment he made before this moment.

This backlash reveals what we knew all along about the free speech defense of Yiannopoulos. There is no debate between free speech crusaders and gleeful censors. The debate is about the platform speakers are entitled to.

The same people distancing themselves from Yiannopoulos now decried the violent protests at University of California, Berkeley, his impending visit incited just last month. Thats the pesky thing about free speech: Everyone is entitled to it, not just far-right provocateurs.

Freedom of expression as it is constitutionally understood encompasses freedom of assembly, of the press, to petition the government and yes, of speech. In other words, protesting a free speech fundamentalist is exercising your right to freedom of speech.

Gonzaga professor of womens and gender studies Sara Diaz concurs: When students or faculty say they dont want a speaker on campus that is not a violation of freedom of speech, she clarifies. In fact, it is an exercise of free speech.

GU found itself in a similar situation to the one faced by Berkeley with Dinesh DSouzas invitation to speak on campus last year. In both cases, the universities were faced with the presence of controversial figures invited by their schools College Republicans club and had to balance their legal and philosophical impetus to ensure all views can be expressed on their campuses with a desire to ensure an inclusive academic environment free of bigotry. Both schools got it right by supporting their students invitations; as academic freedom is an essential right of universities with a clear legal trail all the way to the Supreme Court.

And the student bodies of both Berkeley and GU got it right by protesting in response.

As Diaz puts it, Freedom of speech does not protect us from the consequences of violating the norms of speech, such as rudeness, spreading misinformation [and] academic dishonesty.

Yiannopoulos is free to spew his hateful diatribe at whoever will listen. He is owed that right by the Constitution. But he is not owed a megaphone.

My recommendation for dealing with the Yiannopouloses of the world? If its free speech they want, its free speech theyll get. Robust debate and protest, not censorship, is the proper way to deal with bigots. And when they claim, as Yiannopoulos did, to be the victim of a cynical media witch hunt, can we please call them snowflakes?

Eleanor Lyon is a staff writer. Follow her on Twitter: @eleanorroselyon.

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Tennant: Freedom of speech crucial for health of nation – Reno Gazette Journal

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Laura Tennant, news@masonvalleynews.com Published 10:32 a.m. PT March 8, 2017 | Updated 21 hours ago

Laura Tennant is a columnist for the Mason Valley News.(Photo: Provided to the Mason Valley News)

I was flabbergasted a few years ago to learn that administrators and students at some American colleges and universities were protesting free speech and the students were obtaining petition signatures to eliminate the First Amendment because a lecturer with different political views had been scheduled to speak at the school. I was more than flabbergasted when the president of the college upheld their views. I had thought the radical anti-free speech movement would fade away but it is now becoming violent with lawlessness occurring and no one suffering the consequences but innocent people.

America is a nation of laws and always has been for more than 200 years. I guess young people who have never had rules at home think they dont have to obey the laws of the land go try it in some other country.

The opponents of the First Amendment must believe, if the amendment were scratched from the U.S. Constitution, they would be the only ones who had the right to voice an opinion because, of course, their political views are superior to those of other citizens. Sounds scary that is what Adolph Hitlers brown shirts believed. If German citizens dared to express their opinion, they were immediately hauled off to a prison camp or murdered on the spot!

I cannot believe any American of any political party favors this type of a government.

The First Amendment is one of the most important freedoms we Americans have. I truly believe that everyone has a right to hold and express a political or other type of opinion in this society and to do it without fearing physical abuse from citizens who disagree.

In my younger years, I loved reading the classic authors of the 18th and 19th centuries, who often wrote about their gatherings where they socialized and respectfully discussed the worlds problems with their friends who were famous artists or statesmen.

Antagonists are our helpers

A quote by British statesman Edmund Burke reflects why I think that citizens open exchange of viewpoints on any subject is a positive force in America.

Burke said, He who struggles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. I believe this, so with whom shall I discuss politics if everybody is forced to think alike? That form of government is called a dictatorship and citizens of those countries are so controlled there is no freedom of speech.

Burke was an 18th-century Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who eventually moved to London and served in the House of Commons with the Whig Party and many of his quotes have become famous.

By the time students get to college, I would think that they could stand to be civil to someone who does not share their opinions.

So far, President Donald Trump has not tried to stop the deadly antics of the opposing side, but he might have to step in if communities, colleges or universities cannot get the situation remedied before someone gets killed.

Snow globe world

I woke up last Sunday morning to see and hear a howling blizzard blustering through our yard. We have not seen one of these storms for years. I honestly enjoy wild weather if I am warm and toasty inside the house by the fire and I do not have to drive anywhere.

This morning, I was unable to resist so I grabbed my camera and went outside barefooted to capture the moment. When the wind hit me, it felt like the storm had blown in from the Artic Circle but it was blowing from the usual southeasterly direction. Getting a good picture of wind and snow flitting through our yard was difficult. But I did get a couple of video shots that tell the story. The snow quit for a while until this afternoon and now the snowflakes are slowly drifting down and it feels like we are in a musical snowglobe.

Laura Tennant is a Silver City native, Dayton historian and the Leader-Couriers former editor. Comments are welcomed. Call 775-246-03256, e-mail L10ant38@gmail.com or write P.O. Box 143, Dayton, NV 89403.

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Colleges must be taught a lesson about free speech: Letters – The Daily Breeze

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Colleges must be taught a lesson about free speech

Re Does America have a free speech problem? (Question of the Week, Feb. 28) and Troubling times for free speech on campus (Editorial, Feb. 28):

Your editorial board is to be commended for your severe rebuke of our colleges and universities for their intolerance of free speech.

Our institutions of higher learning were once bastions of free speech and the free exchange of ideas, as well as reasoned, thoughtful debate. Today, those same institutions are the epicenter of intolerance that only further divides us.

Freedom of speech is one of our most important constitutional rights. To see such rights suppressed, especially by publicly funded institutions, is not only immoral but threatens the very fabric of a civil society.

These institutions should be held to account for their abject intolerance by the state and federal entities that fund them.

Robert Schilling, Torrance

Let states decide on pot

Re White House eyeing pot rules (Feb. 24):

The Trump administration gets an A for hypocrisy.

Earlier in the week it said the states should have the right to decide how to implement rules for transgender bathroom use. By Thursday it was contemplating enforcing federal laws banning recreational marijuana use, even though some states have voted to approve it.

Using the feds to police marijuana use has nothing to do with helping people and everything to do with increasing government power and decreasing individual liberty.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the White House is considering the federal action because of health issues related to opioid overuse. If President Trump cared about health issues, he would ban tobacco and alcohol, whose cost to society is much higher than problems caused by marijuana. But hell never do that because their use is so widespread and includes many of those who voted for him.

Mark Apoian, Rolling Hills Estates

Question for abortion foes

Re Abortion protests target clinics (Feb. 12):

Its fine to protest abortion, but what will happen to all the unwanted children? Should every protestor be required to sign a bond agreeing to adopt one of these babies?

The Republicans dont want abortion but dont want to pay for these babies either. Abominable!

Jo Ann Michetti, Rancho Palos Verdes

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Colleges must be taught a lesson about free speech: Letters - The Daily Breeze

A recharged debate over the speed of the expansion of the universe could lead to new physics – Science Magazine

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By Joshua SokolMar. 8, 2017 , 8:00 AM

It was the early 1990s, and the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California, had emptied out for the Christmas holiday. Wendy Freedman was toiling alone in the library on an immense and thorny problem: the expansion rate of the universe.

Carnegie was hallowed ground for this sort of work. It was here, in 1929, that Edwin Hubble first clocked faraway galaxies flying away from the Milky Way, bobbing in the outward current of expanding space. The speed of that flow came to be called the Hubble constant.

Freedman's quiet work was soon interrupted when fellow Carnegie astronomer Allan Sandage stormed in. Sandage, Hubble's designated scientific heir, had spent decades refining the Hubble constant, and had consistently defended a slow rate of expansion. Freedman was the latest challenger to publish a faster rate, and Sandage had seen the heretical study.

"He was so angry," recalls Freedman, now at the University of Chicago in Illinois, "that you sort of become aware that you're the only two people in the building. I took a step back, and that was when I realized, oh boy, this was not the friendliest of fields."

A 1923 image of the Andromeda galaxy. A cepheid, or variable star (marked VAR!), helped Edwin Hubble determine the vast distance to Andromeda.

The Carnegie Observatories

The acrimony has diminished, but not by much. Sandage died in 2010, and by then most astronomers had converged on a Hubble constant in a narrow range. But in a twist Sandage himself might savor, new techniques suggest that the Hubble constant is 8% lower than a leading number. For nearly a century, astronomers have calculated it by meticulously measuring distances in the nearby universe and moving ever farther out. But lately, astrophysicists have measured the constant from the outside in, based on maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the dappled afterglow of the big bang that is a backdrop to the rest of the visible universe. By making assumptions about how the push and pull of energy and matter in the universe have changed the rate of cosmic expansion since the microwave background was formed, the astrophysicists can take their map and adjust the Hubble constant to the present-day, local universe. The numbers should match. But they don't.

It could be that one approach has it wrong. The two sides are searching for flaws in their own methods and each other's alike, and senior figures like Freedman are racing to publish their own measures. "We don't know which way this is going to land," Freedman says.

But if the disagreement holds, it will be a crack in the firmament of modern cosmology. It could mean that current theories are missing some ingredient that intervened between the present and the ancient past, throwing off the chain of inferences from the CMB to the current Hubble constant. If so, history will be repeating itself. In the 1990s, Adam Riess, now an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, led one of the groups that discovered dark energy, a repulsive force that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. It is one of the factors that the CMB calculations must take into account.

Now, Riess's team is leading the quest to pin down the Hubble constant in nearby space and beyond. His goal is not just to refine the number, but to see whether it is changing over time in ways that even dark energyas currently conceivedcan't explain. So far, he has few hints about what the missing factor might be. "I'm really wondering what is going on," he says.

In1927, Hubble was moving beyond the Milky Way with what was then the world's biggest telescope, the 100-inch (2.5-m) Hooker telescope that loomed over Pasadena on top of Mount Wilson. He photographed the faint spiral smudges we know as galaxies and measured the reddening of their light as their motions Doppler-shifted it to longer wavelengths, like the keening of a receding ambulance. By comparing the galaxies' redshifts to their brightness, Hubble stumbled on something revolutionary: The dimmer and presumably farther away a galaxy was, the faster it was receding. That meant the universe was expanding. It also meant the universe had a finite age, beginning in a big bang.

Debate over the Hubble constant, the expansion rate of the universe, has exploded again. Astronomers had mostly settled on a number using a classical techniquethe "distance ladder," or astronomical observations from the local universe on out. But these values conflict with cosmological estimates made from maps of the early universe and adjusted to the present day. The dispute suggests a missing ingredient may be fueling the growth of the universe.

J. You

To pin down the expansion ratehis eponymous constantHubble needed actual distances to the galaxies, not just relative ones based on their apparent brightness. So he began the laborious process of building up a distance ladderfrom the Milky Way to neighboring galaxies to the far reaches of expanding space. Each rung in the ladder has to be calibrated by "standard candles": objects that shift, pulse, flash, or rotate in a way that reliably encodes how far away they are.

The first rung seemed reasonably sturdy: variable stars called cepheids, which ramp up and down in brightness over the course of days or weeks. The length of that cycle indicates the star's intrinsic brightness. By comparing the observed brightness of a cepheid to the brightness inferred from its oscillations, Hubble could gauge its distance. The Mount Wilson telescope was only good enough to see a few cepheids in the nearest galaxies. For more distant galaxies, he assumed that the brightest star in each had the same intrinsic brightness. Even farther out, he assumed that entire galaxies were standard candles, with uniform luminosities.

C. Bickel

They weren't good assumptions. Hubble's first published constant was 500 kilometers per second per megaparsecmeaning that for every 3.25 million light-years he looked out into space, the expanding universe was ferrying away galaxies 500 kilometers per second faster. The number was way offan order of magnitude too fast. It also implied a universe just 2 billion years old, a baby compared with current estimates. But it was a start.

By 1949, construction had finished on the 200-inch (5.1-m) telescope at Palomar in southern Californiajust in time for Hubble to suffer a heart attack. Hubble passed the mantle to Sandage, an ace observer who spent the subsequent decades exposing photographic plates during all-night sessions suspended in the telescope's vast apparatus, shivering and in desperate need of a bathroom break.

With Palomar's higher resolution and light-gathering power, Sandage could pluck cepheids from more distant galaxies. He also realized that Hubble's bright stars were in fact entire star clusters. They were intrinsically brighter and thus farther away than Hubble thought, which, in addition to other corrections, implied a much lower Hubble constant. By the 1980s, Sandage had settled on a value of about 50, which he zealously defended. Perhaps his most famous foil, French astronomer Grard de Vaucouleurs, promoted a competing value of 100. One of the key parameters of cosmology was contested to an embarrassing factor of two.

In the late 1990s, Freedman, having survived Sandage's verbal abuse, was determined to solve the puzzle with a powerful new tool designed with just this job in mind: the Hubble Space Telescope. Its sharp view from above the atmosphere allowed Freedman's team to pick out individual cepheids up to 10 times farther away than Sandage had with Palomar. Sometimes those galaxies happened to host both cepheids and an even brighter beacona type Ia supernova. These exploding white dwarf stars are visible across space and flare to a consistent, maximum brightness. Once calibrated with the cepheids, the supernovae could be used on their own to probe the most distant reaches of space. In 2001, Freedman's team narrowed the Hubble constant to 72 plus or minus eight, a definitive effort that ended Sandage and De Vaucouleurs's feud. "I was done," she says. "I never thought I'd work on the Hubble constant again."

Edwin Hubble poses inside the 200-inch Palomar telescope a few years before his death in 1953.

Ned/Steer/Huchra/Riess; NASA/ESA

But then came the physicist, who had an independent way of calculating the Hubble constant with the most distant, redshifted thing of all: the microwave background. In 2003, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) published its first map showing the speckles of temperature variations on the CMB. The maps provided not a standard candle, but a standard yardstick: a pattern of hotter and colder spots in the primordial soup created by sound waves rippling through the newborn universe.

With a few assumptions about the ingredients in that soupfamiliar particles like atoms and photons, some extra invisible stuff called dark matter, and dark energythe WMAP team could calculate the physical size of those primordial sound waves. That could be compared to the apparent size of the sound waves as recorded in the CMB speckles. The comparison gave the distance to the microwave background, and a value for the expansion rate of the universe at that primordial moment. By making assumptions about how regular particles, dark energy, and dark matter have altered the expansion since then, the WMAP team could tune the constant to its current rate of swelling. Initially, they came up with a value of 72, right in line with what Freedman had found.

But since then, the astronomical measurements of the Hubble constant have inched higher, even as error bars have narrowed. In recent publications, Riess has leapfrogged ahead of competitors like Freedman by using the infrared camera installed in 2009 on the Hubble Telescope, which can both pinpoint the distances to Milky Way cepheids and pick out their faraway, reddish cousins from the bluer stars that tend to surround cepheids. The most recent result from Riess's team is 73.24.

Meanwhile, Planck, a European Space Agency (ESA) mission that has imaged the CMB at higher resolution and greater temperature sensitivity, has settled on 67.8. In statistical terms, the two values are separated by a gulf of 3.4 sigma not quite the 5 sigma that in particle physics signals a significant result, but getting there. "That, I think, is hard to explain as a statistical fluke," says Chuck Bennett, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins who led the WMAP team.

Each side is pointing its finger at the other. George Efstathiou, a leading cosmologist for the Planck team at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, says the Planck data are "absolutely rock solid." Fresh off analyzing the first Planck results in 2013, Efstathiou cast his eyes elsewhere. He downloaded Riess's data and published his own analysis with a lower and less-precise Hubble constant. He found the astronomers' outwardly groping ladder "messy," he says.

Allan Sandage, Edwin Hubble's designated scientific heir, consistently defended a lower value for the Hubble constant.

The Carnegie Observatories

In response, the astronomers argue that they are making an actual measurement in the present-day universe, whereas the CMB technique relies on many cosmological assumptions. If the two don't agree, they ask, why not change the cosmology? Instead, "The George Efstathious of the world moved in and said, I'm going to reanalyze all of your data," says the University of Chicago's Barry Madore, who has been Freedman's collaborator and husband since the 1980s. "So what do you do? You have to find a tiebreaker."

Wendy Freedman thought her 2001 study pinned down the Hubble constant, but debate has resumed.

Yuri Beletsky, Carnegie Institution for Science

In the astronomers' corner is a technique called gravitational lensing. Around massive galaxy clusters, gravity itself warps space, forming a giant lens that can bend light from a more distant light source, like a quasar. If the alignment of the lens and quasar is just right, the light can follow several paths to Earth, creating multiple images around the lensing cluster. In even luckier circumstances, the quasar flickers in brightness. That causes each cloned image to flicker, too, but at different times, because the light rays for each image take different paths through the bent space. The delays between the flickers indicate differences in the path lengths; by combining those with the size of the cluster, astronomers can use trigonometry to calculate the absolute distance to the lensing galaxy cluster. Only three gravitational lenses have been rigorously measured this way, with six more under study now. But in late January, astrophysicist Sherry Suyu of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, and her collaborators published their current best guess at the Hubble constant. "Our measurement is in agreement with the distance ladder approach," Suyu says.

The cosmologists, meanwhile, have their own sister technique: baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs). As the universe aged, the same sound wave patterns imprinted on the CMBthe primordial yardstickseeded the nuggets of matter that grew into galaxy clusters. The patterning of galaxies on the sky should preserve the original dimensions of the sound waves, and as before, comparing the apparent scale of the pattern to its calculated actual size leads to a distance. Like the CMB technique, the BAO method makes cosmological assumptions. But over the past few years, it has been yielding Hubble constant values in line with Planck's. The ongoing fourth iteration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a vast galaxy mapping effort, should help refine these measurements.

That's not to say that the bickering distance ladder and CMB teams are simply waiting for other methods to settle the dispute. To firm up the foundation of the distance ladder, the distances to cepheids in the Milky Way, ESA's Gaia mission is trying to find precise distances to about a billion different nearby stars, cepheids included. Gaia, in orbit around the sun beyond Earth, uses the surest of all measures: parallax, or the apparent shift of the stars against the background sky, as the spacecraft swings to opposite sides of its orbit. When Gaia's full data set is released in 2022, it should provide another leap forward in certainty for the astronomers. (Already, Riess has found that his higher Hubble constant persists when he uses the preliminary Gaia results.)

The cosmologists expect to firm up their measurements, too, using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope in Chile and the South Pole Telescope, which can check Planck's high-resolution results. "It's not going to remain ambiguous," says Lyman Page, an astrophysicist at Princeton University. And if the divergent results prove rock solid, it will be up to the theorists to try to close the gap. "The gold is where the model breaks down," Page says. "Confirming the model isblah."

The South Pole Telescope will help astrophysicists map the tiny temperature variations of the cosmic microwave background, refining one Hubble measurement.

Keith Vanderlinde

One fixis to add an extra particle to the standard model of the universe. The CMB offers an estimate of the overall energy budget of the universe soon after the big bang, when it was divided into matter and high-energy radiation. Because of Albert Einstein's famous equivalence E=mc2, energy acted like matter, slowing the expansion of space with its gravity. But matter is a more effective brake. As time passed, radiationphotons of light and other lightweight particles like neutrinoscooled and lost energy, diluting its gravitational influence.

There are currently three known kinds of neutrinos. If there were a fourth, as some theorists have speculated, it would have claimed a little more of the universe's initial energy budget for the radiation side, which would dissipate faster. That, in turn, would mean an early universe that expanded faster than the one predicted by standard cosmology's list of ingredients. Fast-forwarding that adjustment into the present brings the two measurements in line. Yet neutrino detectors haven't turned up any evidence for a fourth kind, and other Planck measurements put a tight cap on the total amount of surplus radiation.

Another possible fix is so-called phantom dark energy. Current cosmological models assume a constant strength for dark energy. If dark energy becomes slightly stronger over time, though, it would explain why the cosmos is expanding faster today than one might guess from looking at the early universe. But critics like Hiranya Peiris, a Planck astrophysicist based at University College London, says variable dark energy seems "ad hoc and contrived." And her work suggests that new neutrino physics doesn't work either. Right now, she says, flaws in the different techniques are more likely than new physics.

For Freedman, now a dean of the field, the only solution to the squabble is to fight fire with firewith new observations of the universe. She and Madore are now preparing a separate measurement calibrated not just with cepheids, but other types of variable stars and bright red giantsusing an automated telescope only 30 centimeters across to study the nearest examples, and the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to monitor them in remote galaxies. If she could handle the dark and stormy Sandage, she's ready to stand with Riess and answer the brash challenge from the Planck team. "The message was You guys are wrong. Well, maybe," she says, chuckling. "We'll see."

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A recharged debate over the speed of the expansion of the universe could lead to new physics - Science Magazine