Libertarian author Charles Murray shouted down by Middlebury College students – Washington Times

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Hundreds of students shouted down Libertarian author and political scientist Charles Murray during a lecture Thursday at Vermonts Middlebury College, forcing him to move to a private room and stream the lecture online.

Mr. Murray, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was interrupted immediately after taking the podium at the McCullough Student Centers Wilson Hall, according to video posted by The Middlebury Campus student weekly.

Once he started to speak, dozens of students stood up and turned their backs to him, holding signs and asking others to join. They then read a script in unison condemning Mr. Murrays supposed hate speech and started chanting Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray go away.

Mr. Murray stood silently at the podium for 18 minutes until organizers approached him.

The college ultimately decided to cancel the lecture and moved Mr. Murray to a private room where he could stream the talk live, The Middlebury Campus reported.

Mr. Murray is most famously known for writing the 1994 book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, and is deemed a white nationalist by the liberal nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center.

He was set Thursday to discuss his 2012 book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, which students argued normalizes white supremacy and white nationalism.

More than 450 Middlebury alumni signed a letter published Wednesday condemning the schools decision to allow Mr. Murray on campus.

The student group that invited the author, the American Enterprise Institution Club, said the invite was not necessarily an endorsement of his beliefs.

I really think his work Coming Apart is incredibly important in understanding the forces at play that brought the movement together, and as a Republican, I dont understand this movement enough, club president Phil Hoxie told a local NBC News affiliate.

Bill Burger, the vice president of communication at the school, said he was disappointed by the protesting students behavior Thursday.

We respect the right for students to express themselves and to protest, and we acknowledge that at the opening remarks for the event, but its clear that a group of students were committed to disrupting the event, and to an extreme degree theyve done that, he told NBC. Fortunately, weve been able to preserve what he says again, the important thing in our community is that there is an opportunity for people to speak and to be heard and listen and to challenge.

Middlebury officials told Inside Higher Ed that as Mr. Murray was trying to leave campus, protesters swarmed the vehicle and jumped on it, trying to prevent him from leaving.

Mr. Murraysaid on Twitter Friday that he was physically assaulted by the out-of-control mob.

Report from the front: The Middlebury administration was exemplary. The students were seriously scary, he tweeted.

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Libertarian author Charles Murray shouted down by Middlebury College students - Washington Times

Zodiac Turns 10: Why This Amazing Film Is Libertarian – Hit & Run … – Reason (blog)

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Screenshot via ZodiacThe Washington Post's Alyssa Rosenberg notes that David Fincher's Zodiac was released 10 years ago. The film received rave reviews, but still seems underappreciated by the general public. In her retrospective, Rosenberg notes that Zodiacwhich chronicles the efforts of police officers and journalists to catch a real-life serial killer in the 1960s and 70sstill resonates:

The characters have resources to pursue their investigations, and they're given time and plenty of leeway by their superiors (though one local politician runs for governor on the argument that the cops didn't have what they needed to crack the case). And neither is "Zodiac" a story about the sorts of failures involved in the Vietnam War, where brilliant people, restricted both by their own faith in technocratic solutions and their fears of being seen as soft on Communism, made fatally terrible decisions.

Instead, Fincher captures the uncertainty and loss of confidence that follow from a prolonged failure by institutions and people who are doing everything they're supposed to, only to find that it doesn't produce the correct results.

Ten years after "Zodiac" was released, and almost fifty years after the July 4 killing that sets the movie in motion, we're still living with and working through the consequences of the decline and loss of faith David Fincher captured in this masterful film. Fincher's "Fight Club" offered up a vision of weaponized male turned against society as a whole, while his "Gone Girl" portrayed female anger that had been distilled into a particularly venomous domestic poison. "Zodiac" is his movie for the rest of us, who have to live in a world going slowly insane without losing ourselves.

For me, Zodiac was a story about obsessionwhat it feels like to care about something that most other people have lost interest in. The serial killerwho calls himself the Zodiac and sends cryptic messages to the authoritiesslaughters a handful of people, and then largely retreats into the shadows. He botches some of his attacks, and others don't fit his profile, calling into question whether he's a single person or a group of completely unrelated nutcases taking advantage of a momentary spotlight.

As days become weeks and even years, everybody moves on, except the police officers assigned to the case and the newspaper cartoonist who can't let it go. They're driven, not by public safetyas one character points out, more people die crossing the street than at the hands of the Zodiac killerbut by their own insatiable, personal need to solve the case. Asked why he still cares about a serial killer who has long since fallen inactive, Jake Gyllenhaal's character snaps, "I need to know who he is!" Anyone who's ever attempted a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle, but misplaced the last few pieces, will relate.

Zodiac also makes some lightly libertarian criticisms of authorityin particular, its limits. The various representatives of the institutions that fail to capture the killerthe police, newspapers, local politiciansaren't evil, or incompetent. They're decent people trying to do right by the citizens of California. But they encounter structural problems: the crimes cross city and county lines, and no single entity has all the relevant information. In an early scene, the lead detectives ask a county official to make copies of the evidence in his possession and fax it to San Francisco PD. He replies, "We don't have telefax yet."

The film also explores the notion that violence is random, and its underlying causes don't fit neatly into preconceived narratives. The Zodiac killer isn't Hannibal Lecter, or Ramsay Bolton. He's a weird loner whose actions don't reflect a discernible ideology of evil. This kind of real-world violence is the hardest to address through public policy, because there's no identifiable reason for it.

In the end, it took someone outside the law enforcement bureaucracyGyllenhaal's character, cartoonist Robert Graysmithto finally solve the case, to the extent that it's solved at all.

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Zodiac Turns 10: Why This Amazing Film Is Libertarian - Hit & Run ... - Reason (blog)

Social Conservatism and Libertarianism Are Not Mergeable So Stop Trying – Being Libertarian

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It goes without saying that libertarianism, as a political philosophy, is fiscally conservative i.e. that on a policy level, the State must conserve, rather than spend on a whim. Virtually all libertarians agree that this is technically correct.

The jury, however, is apparently still out on social issues. Many in the libertarian movement desire a merging between American conservatism (as opposed to virtually any other conservative movement in the world), which includes social conservatism, and libertarianism. Conservatism, as a political position, is quite region-specific, and entirely relative. To be a conservative means something different at different times. It is not a statement of principles in and of itself, but a belief that certain principles which are already being adhered to, must continue to be adhered to. This is why a European conservative is, for the most part, someone who still desires a strong welfare role for the State, and an America conservative is much more reluctant to support increased welfare.

Roger Toutant recently wrote that apparently, Libertarianism is, at its core, a fiscally and socially conservative movement. He says this without much further ado, instead opting to hide behind a facade of pragmatism. His reasoning goes that if libertarians continue to represent themselves as fiscally conservative and socially liberal (not to be confused with welfarist social liberalism), we will never win any popular support, because the right will refuse to get on board with our degenerate and lost social views, and progressives will never agree to our notion of small government.

Social liberalism, which is not under discussion here, but it is worthy to note, is a political philosophy in its own right, with its own economic theories. Being socially liberal, on the other hand, implies a public policy stance, as opposed to personal liberalism, which means that the individual himself behaves in a liberal fashion. Being socially liberal is nothing more than the notion that the State has no right to legislate decency or morality. (And given that were talking about American conservatism here, I should emphasise that it does not matter whether its a supranational government, a national government, a provincial or state government, or a local government). The States mandate is and always will be fixed to protecting people and property from physical aggression, enforcing mutually-agreed upon agreements, and guarding against fraud. All of this, naturally, must be wrapped up in the doctrine of the rule of law, i.e. the State cannot act arbitrarily, everyone must be equal before the law, people can appeal decisions, etc., etc.

Toutants is not an isolated argument. Indeed, it has become increasingly popular over the last year for conservative-leaning libertarians to defend and emphasise the ostensible compatibilities between libertarianism and American conservatism, while also emphasising the incompatibilities between traditionally left-leaning positions where progressives and libertarians share common ground. Christopher Cantwell is the embodiment of this worrying trend, having testified before a New Hampshire legislative committee that the government should prohibit female nudity on public beaches. He used highly-questionable arguments (including but what about the children?) in support of this position, but at the end of the day it was clear that his social conservatism was rearing its head in what was supposed to be a matter left to the political philosophy of libertarianism.

The founders of libertarianism would not have bothered to distinguish libertarianism from American conservatism. Indeed, if American conservatism and libertarianism are as indistinguishable as many make them out to be, why did the distinction come about at all?

This is all especially worrying to me as a South African, and, I imagine, to many libertarians across the world (to be anecdotal: my arguably anti-conservative Facebook posts get more likes from my European compatriots, over the norm where my American compatriots are mostly in the majority). In South Africa, conservatism means a preference for Apartheid, a highly-socialistic system founded in the very fascist notion that the State is the embodiment of the people and enforces their will. So when I enter into policy debates, only to have my opponents declare with conviction that libertarianism is conservative no doubt something they picked up from what is happening in America I am placed at a significant disadvantage.

The definition of conservatism which American conservatives have adopted enables them to relate, even if only at a distance, to the non-national philosophy of libertarianism. This is, however, not the case anywhere else in the world (at least, not to this extent). Therefore, when the argument is made that libertarianism and conservatism or social conservatism more particularly should, in essence, become one thing, a custom-made American definition is used. This is partly the problem with the assumptions underlying Toutants argument.

Libertarianism is set apart from American conservatism in one principal respect, which also sets it apart from progressivism, and which is the only justification for it being distinguished from both: individualism. A conservative, such as Toutant, can accept the basic premises of the NAP in theory, as have many conservative-leaning libertarians, but individualism in general is curiously excluded in favor of other values, such as (often bizarrely) democracy, certain social values such as the traditional marriage.

Toutants questionable interpretation of libertarianism is most evident in the following paragraph:

As far as I can tell, the vast majority of Libertarians are conservative in nature. They do not rely on the NAP to provide guidance to their moral behaviour, nor to help them define what is good or evil or what actions should be punished, or not, by the state. For that they rely on their culture and their religion. To many, the NAP is the equivalent of the Christian commandment, thou shalt not steal, full stop.

Being a libertarian who is personally conservative, and being a libertarian who advocates social conservatism, are two different things, considering that social conservatism is a public policy position. As an individual, I am arguably personally conservative. I believe in a higher power, I have never tasted alcohol or nicotine, I try to be decent, and look decent. But when my libertarian hat is on, i.e. when I engage in political philosophy or public policy (I work in public policy) then I am an individualist, I am socially liberal. And, in that respect, it is a prerequisite for a libertarian to be socially liberal qua libertarian.

Jared Howe, a Being Libertarian associate, recently wrote in a public Facebook comment that many Americans view libertarianism as a leftist movement due to the open border / free movement people. He went on to write that identity politics is not automatically invalid, and that even Hans-Hermann Hoppe relied on the historical and practical role of the monogamous family in his work. I am, as some would know, one of the open borders people. To many, that makes me a leftist ab initio, and clearly according to Howe as well. However, I obviously dispute this line of thinking, especially considering the rationale most open borders libertarians provide for their position, i.e. it is always founded in sound libertarian theory, even if it is not particularly Hoppean libertarian theory. Hoppes work is invaluable, but I dont recall him being declared the final arbiter on what is and what is not correct libertarian thinking.

Evidently, it has become problematic to use this description of libertarianism, i.e. that we are fiscally conservative and socially liberal. It causes confusion and opens doors which should not even exist (such as the ostensible similarities between libertarianism and American conservatism). Instead and this has become more popular in certain respects if we want to appeal to a broad audience rather than philosophy club, we should say we value personal and economic freedom for individuals. In this way, we avoid the confusion between socially liberal and social liberalism, which is a philosophy with some unfortunate socialist connotations, and avoid the confusion between American conservatism and fiscally conservative.

However, before we can go about reforming our marketing strategies, we should be clear about the fact that we comprise a distinct movement, and that while American conservatives have been worthy and valuable allies in many battles, we have our own agenda, which is often at odds with that of conservatives. We are not a subsidiary, extension, or transformation of American conservatism, but something entirely different.

Our victories over the left will be meaningless if we lose our identity in the process, instead becoming part of the authoritarian horseshoe paradigm we naturally must oppose.

* Martin van Staden is Editor in Chief of Being Libertarian.

This post was written by Martin van Staden.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Martin van Staden is the Editor in Chief of Being Libertarian, the Legal Researcher at the Free Market Foundation, a co-founder of the RationalStandard.com, and the Southern African Academic Programs Director at Students For Liberty. The views expressed in his articles are his own and do not represent any of the aforementioned organizations.

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Social Conservatism and Libertarianism Are Not Mergeable So Stop Trying - Being Libertarian

Dutch Libertarian Party Pres. Robert Valentine: If Goods Don’t Pass the Border, Troops Will – The Libertarian Republic

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LISTEN TO TLRS LATEST PODCAST:

Dries Van Thielen

TLR: Why will the 2017 elections be more successful than the one in 2012?

VALENTINE: Like the American Libertarian Party, the Dutch Libertarian Party was inspired by dogmatic anarchists. However, similar to the American Libertarian Party, we recently had a strong disagreement on approach. On the one side, we had dogmatic theorists, stating that the libertarian ideology could not dilute. On the other side, we had an uprising of pragmatics favoring a more conciliatory attitude. We went along with the pragmatics and thus far we reached a wider audience and I myself, receive more phone calls from journalists. Without betraying our ideology, we composed a more attractive program which resulted in more and younger members.

TLR: Your campaign shows similarities with Gary Johnsons presidential campaign which was unable to attract major media attention. What is the approach of the LP towards media?

VALENTINE: For 2017, our strategy consists out of two approaches. First, we try to attract political attention for the upcoming elections. In doing so, we make efforts to draw attention by focusing on social media Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn and mixing ourselves in online discussions by creating our own content. You see, similar to Johnson, we are never asked for political debates. When we are debating on a local level, the audience is drawn into our ideas since we pose a different concept than spending more money on topic A or B as our colleagues propose. Political TV debates are somnolent since no party offers solutions for ongoing problems (like poverty, ).

Secondly, we try to look further than the upcoming elections. In 2017, we will work to introduce three cornerstones (political, intellectual and social) of libertarianism in the LP. A political cornerstone since it is the only way to become more influential in the Netherlands. An intellectual cornerstone since we are too often drawn to American media outlets (FEE, Libertarian Republic, CATO, and Mises.org,), focusing on the United States. Instead, we would introduce our own articles and platform focusing on the Netherlands.

Third, a social cornerstone, showing the power of freedom and individual cooperation. We missed out on a strong equip of volunteers throughout the years, being active in the fibers of society will change that. Currently, we are working to maintain and professionalize our team.

TLR: According to your recent Twitter campaign (#Nexit), the Netherlands have to opt out of the EU and NATO. Why would this be a good idea?

VALENTINE: People who join politics are well-intended, I presume. They join a party with the firm belief to change the mishaps in their respective country. So did the EU: it started with good intentions free movement of goods, people and capital, a lessening of trade restrictions These ideas are utterly libertarian-inspired, but the reality and elaboration differ from these well-intended ideas. Nowadays, we have an army of unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and Luxembourg, designing our society! This is as un-libertarian as can be.

Without sounding too much like Geert Wilders (the entire Preliminary Election Program of PVV is 1 page long), I believe that the EU-agreements can be summed up on 1 page: freedom and free trade doesnt need codices. Brussels needs to disappear and The Hague needs to retake control.

As an alternative to the European Union, I would suggest the model Switzerland holds up. Granted, it isnt a libertarian utopia, but it only has 8 million inhabitants divided amongst 26 cantons, each with its respective constitution. The smallest particle decides which results in a more involved population. The citizens witness first handed the effects of their own policies.

TLR: And NATO?

VALENTINE: The same goes up with NATO. The NATO pact took off with good intentions, for we have to defend ourselves against invaders: libertarians arent pacifists. However, similar to the EU the intentions are overtaken by reality.

See, the moment we centralize our countrys interests, it gets troublesome since the organization you transfer your own interests to, has incentives of their own. In the case of NATO, the interests of its largest member the United States prevail on the ones of smaller member states (Netherlands and Belgium).

It is untenable to keep this relic from the Cold War alive as you take into account what it is used for nowadays: bombing sovereign states. Consistently bombing neighboring countries will not lead to a more secure Europe.

TLR: Can free trade solve the question of security, as a reaction for the dismantling of NATO? The majority of wars are fought for a lack of free trade.

VALENTINE: If goods dont pass the border, troops will. No sane country will put well-functioning commercial relations at risk since every interaction is advantageous for both participants. It would benefit the world if the world-wide free trade would be allowed (decline of poverty as the main advantage).

TLR: Besides free movement of goods and capital, your program mentions the open border solution based on the 19th-century European model. Will every individual integrate into this model?

VALENTINE: We favor the open border policy. Every individual is free to cross borders but we will check in your country of origin, whether you have ties with terrorist organizations.

Also, we encourage immigrants to work as soon as they enter the country instead of being pampered by the government, as is the case nowadays. Only, we will not allow immigrants to make use of the social benefits. In doing so, we counter the argument (theyll ruin our welfare) made by advocates of closed borders.

I find our system logical. Therefore, we counter the argument made by Geert Wilders. He states: We have to close borders, no one is allowed to cross borders and the Muslims already residing in the Netherlands will soon be kicked out! These accusations are nonsense and will harm the economy.

TLR: You grew accustomed to libertarianism by the writings of Ron Paul. Do you have any book recommendations for our readers?

VALENTINE: As an introduction into libertarianism, I highly recommend Revolution: A Manifesto by Dr. Ron Paul. Besides the classics (Economics in One Lesson or The Law), I was impressed by Matt RadleysThe Evolution of Everything. He refers to himself as a libertarian in minuscule. Many libertarians are attracted to libertarianism for its moral or economic aspect. It never goes both ways. The entire world is driven by invisible natural laws so it is unnecessary and illogical to set up structures according to Radley.

Since it is election season, I am currently reading The audacity to win by David Plouffe, Obamas Senior Advisor. It was he who was responsible for his (re-)election which interests me nowadays and I think it is a good read for many (non-pragmatic) libertarians. Unfortunately, the story does not tell itself.

TLR: I heard a passionate libertarian. When do you call the elections successful?

VALENTINE: The goal of the American Libertarian Party was to reach for 5% of the votes mainly to become a household name. The same goes up for us: the long-term is more important than these elections. If we reach 1 seat in parliament, it will be considered a grandiose success. Even if we reach 0.5 seats, which will correspond with about 20 thousand votes, these elections will be considered successful. This way, we will become a party worth taking into account.

EUGlobal Politicsimmigrationlibertarian partyNAvoNetherlandsRobert Valentine

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Dutch Libertarian Party Pres. Robert Valentine: If Goods Don't Pass the Border, Troops Will - The Libertarian Republic

Muh State Universities: Breaking Free of Indoctrination – Being Libertarian

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Image courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

With the victory of Betsy DeVos, it seems the Department of Education may be entering its end-of-life phase. Although I would thoroughly enjoy finishing it off with a few blows of a hammer (then poking it to ensure it is good and dead), the narrowness of her victory margin suggests that detractors will successfully petition to keep the department on life support for some time. Even though the mere existence of a Department of Education flies in the face of the Constitution, people have gotten rather used to it: kind of like the awkward office Christmas parties that everybody dreads but cant abandon because they are considered an integral part of polite society. Right below muh roads in importance is muh public schools. Publications like the New Republic seem to look at Ron Pauls revolutionary idea of public school abolishment as a sure symptom of severe mental illness (reason alone for me to strongly consider his stance).

I have both hope and misgivings about the appointment of DeVos, but I find the clear disdain for her, exhibited by some of my least-favorite talking heads, mildly encouraging. I am, at the very least, interested to see what she will do, and I hope that one of her first orders of system dismantling is to staunch the bleeding of tax dollars into higher education.

From a pragmatic perspective, this move is clearly a simpler one than some of her other endeavors will likely be. The people attending college are adults and (one would hope) better able to handle the removal of their babysitter. But the reason for its importance goes beyond mere convenience. Higher education and more specifically the governments funding of it lies at the crux of many of our most pressing problems in the United States.

Until recently, I would likely have promoted our illustrious institutes of education as a solution to problems, instead of their cause; probably because the Department of Education has the word education right in its name, and that sounded so promising. I wont go into all the spectacular examples that have proven this line of thinking obsolete, but I think most people who are not either Shaun King or professors teaching seminars entitled Why All White Men Are Hitler would agree that these institutions are largely failing to educate anybody. This fact is not likely to change overnight, but merely extricating the government from them accomplishes one vitally important end quashing the illusion of entitlement that is destroying our country.

One of the first experiences many people have when officially reaching adulthood is navigating college. When state schools are so heavily funded by taxes, supplemented by state-run student loans and grants, students are immediately handed a large sum of their tuition for free and thereby unaware of the true cost of education. According to the New America Foundation (cited in The Atlantic), the federal government (your taxes) spent $69 billion on funding for higher education in 2013 (and that does not include loans). Worse, as soon as students arrive on campus, peppy student body representatives are handing these mini adults their free condoms, meal cards, and bus passes. Two seconds after reaching adulthood, they are having the idea that life is supposed to be free reinforced.

Women are oppressed by their own fertility and must be compensated. We are all victims of natural hunger and must have meals provided by well, it doesnt really matter who is paying for it, as long as WE are not. No apartments are available next to campus, so we need transportation somebody needs to cover that. And we have the right to receive education, in the area of our interest, be it interpretive dance or something even less practical.

Furthermore, we have the right to be assisted by tax money in these endeavors. If we shockingly find ourselves unable to secure a spot in a wildly successful dance company, we can have our student loans forgiven, as if doing so just required an apology and a conciliatory handshake. We have a right, nay, a DUTY, to pursue our destiny.

Mind you, I am not discouraging individuals or businesses who want to assist struggling students in these areas. Quite the contrary. I am merely pointing out that by having the government do it, we are eliminating the faces of the generous donors and the natural gratitude that often follows direct receipt of a gift. We are replacing that with the impression that these services somehow grow on trees. There is a condom tree, a bus pass tree, and a tree that produces the gelatin dessert served in your dining hall.

This may account for the tree-hugging movement among environmentalists. They got their degrees at these schools.

Unfortunately, once the government has sold this lie to students, it has them in prime position to sell them more. Consider that if these items did grow on trees, the government would tax and regulate them until they were prohibitively expensive, then heroically find ways to cut costs for students by making somebody else pay for it. The legislators who did this would now be considered champions of equality and education by the students, even as they grift those very students future selves out of tax money.

And thus, the cycle of government dependence is born at the commencement of higher education. State-sponsored universities are creating citizens who see legislators as saviors and imagined entitlements as natural resources.

Eliminating government involvement is not likely to turn clueless students into responsible adults overnight, but it will hopefully avoid our current crisis of sending intelligent young people into expensive schools and having them emerge 4 years later, 50 economic I.Q. points lower.

If we are going to kill the beast of overreaching government, we need to go for the jugular: tax-funded higher education.

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Work stoppage at Honolulu Harbor delays shipments to neighbor islands – KHON2

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Shipping company Pasha Hawaii says theres been a work stoppage at Honolulu Harbor by its stevedores.

But the company tells us it has chartered special barges to ease concerns over shipments to the neighbor islands.

The container ship Pacific Horizon arrived from the mainland Wednesdayand satidle at Pier 51. None of the goods wereunloaded.

A crew was supposed to start unloading it at 6 p.m. Wednesday, but no one showed up. The morning shift did the same thing.

Late Thursday afternoon, we got word from the companys spokeswoman that workers arrived at around 2:30 p.m.

The ship carries all types of household goods, produce, and meats to major retailers.The company issued a statement saying container availability and barge connections will be delayed due to labor shortages.

Weve learned Costco Wholesale is one of the biggest companies shipping its goods from the West Coast to Hawaii aboard Pashas ships, so any work stoppage at our ports is a concern for the big-box retailer, as well as for the truck drivers who regularly bring their goods here.

Nothing is moving in the pier, nothings coming out. The stores have got tobe stocked somehow, said truck driver Clyde Peters.

Management at theCostco inIwilei saysits not a problem so far for the stores on Oahu, but it could create some problems for neighbor island stores.

Mike Hansen, president of the Hawaii Shippers Council, says a one-day delay at Honolulu ports means a two- to three-day delay for the neighbor islands. Once the goods are unloaded in Honolulu, they are then taken to a barge operated by Young Brothers to the neighbor island ports, and those barges have set schedules of departures.

If theres been a delay and they miss the Young Brothers barge sailing to a neighbor island port, then they have to wait to until the next sailing, and so therell be a delay of a day, two days, three days depending upon which island port youre talking about, Hansen explained.

We checked with the Costco stores on Kauai, Maui, and Hawaii Island, buthave not heard back from management.

Pasha says it has secured special charter barges to the neighbor island ports to help offset the delays.

Hansensaysits rare for unionized dock workers to organize a work stoppage unless they were negotiating for a new contract. The union ILWU and the maritime companies agreed on a five-year contract two years ago.Hansensaysthe work stoppage is a violation of the contract, so the company could take the union to arbitration to recoverrevenues lost.

We went to the union to find out why the workers did not show up, and were told no one was available to talk.

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Work stoppage at Honolulu Harbor delays shipments to neighbor islands - KHON2

Some Virginia barrier islands are shrinking by the day: "You can just feel it" – Virginian-Pilot

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WACHAPREAGUE, Va.

The Atlantic Ocean streams through an inlet about four miles east of this Eastern Shore town, and hardly a week goes by without Rick Kellam motoring a skiff out that way.

Often, hes carrying families or students on ecotours.

But a lot of days I come here by myself, he said. I just gotta get out here.

Lately, its not just the heart tug of the ocean that draws him. Its also curiosity. The inlet, which cuts between the two barrier islands in front of Wachapreague, has been getting wider.

Much wider.

Its such a rapid acceleration you can almost watch it happen on a daily basis, Kellam said.

Early on a December afternoon, he slowed his boat to a crawl in the middle of the gap.

Here, let me show you something, he said, pointing one hand, then the other, toward the opposite shores, each easily a half-mile away. That is the south end of Cedar Island. And that is the north end of Parramore Island.

A half-century ago, when he was a boy, you could almost throw a hardball between the two.

The inlet has widened by more than a thousand yards just in the past few years because the islands, especially Cedar, are shrinking. So are some of the dozen other islands in Virginias barrier chain, which stretches for about 75 miles along the Eastern Shore.

Scientists offer plenty of possible explanations. Among them are a speedup in sea level rise, an increase in damaging storms, shifts in the south-running offshore currents of sand that nourish the islands.

Coastal geologists point out that these shorelines long have been among the most dynamic on the East Coast, reconfigured constantly by wind and waves as the islands rolled toward the mainland. So whats happening now may not be especially dramatic when viewed over the thousands of years since they began to form.

Still, Kellam and some other people who travel around the islands think the changes have come faster in recent years.

You can just feel it, he said.

Choose the name of a barrier island from the dropdown below to play a timelapse showing how its topography on the Eastern Shore has changed since 1984.

What makes this transformation even more striking is the response. While another chain of barrier islands, North Carolinas Outer Banks, wages a continuous battle to protect its tourism industry by holding back the sea, the official strategy on the Eastern Shore is much simpler:

Let nature have its way, no matter how violent.

The federal and state wildlife agencies with island holdings have shown no interest in building up beaches or intervening in any other way.

Thats also the approach of The Nature Conservancy, which owns all or part of 14 Eastern Shore islands, including some between the barriers and the mainland.

Jill Bieri, director of the conservancy's Virginia Coast Reserve, said Beach replenishments would be unsustainable and have too many unpredictable effects. To explain its position, several years ago the conservancy began customizing an Internet tool that focuses on the effects of climate change on the Eastern Shore. The most recent addition to it was an app, released in January and based on research from scientists at a half-dozen universities and a century and a halfs worth of maps.

It showedthat the islands have been reshaping constantly and that while the changes have been more dramatic in some places in recent decades, not all of the barriers are shrinking. A few are actually getting bigger.

Until we started doing this work, Bieri said, we never really talked in public about how were managing our islands in a natural way. We actually say that now. With confidence.

Nevertheless, even the conservancy's outlook grows bleaker as more climate change models forecast an acceleration in sea level rise and even more frequent storms. Under the most extreme scenario modeled by the conservancy's Coastal Resilience website a sea level rise of 7 feet some of the islands would be all but gone by 2100.

The conservancy touts living shorelines of oyster reefs and marsh grasses as a defense. Others, reading between the lines, detect another message: that it may be time for some people to start thinking about moving back from the water.

Outside of scientists, even big changes on the barriers dont get noticed much beyond the Eastern Shore. That partly may be because so much attention has been devoted to an island off the Shores other side. Tangier, in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, has grabbed headlines worldwide as some experts have predicted its residents could be forced out by rising seas within 50 years.

Nobody lives on Virginias ocean islands. The last year-round community, the village of Broadwater on Hog Island, vanished after a rapid erosion of its shoreline chased residents to the mainlandin the 1930s and '40s. After that, the only colonization was on Cedar, where dozens of vacation homes were built as late as the 1990s. One by one, the sea claimed them. The last was torched by its owners three years ago before the ocean could sweep it away.

The Nature Conservancy started buying up most of the island chain in the late 1960s to protect irreplaceable habitat for migrating birds. ItsVirginia Coast Reserverepresents the Eastern Seaboards longest stretch of coastal wilderness.

The conservancy was moved to action and subterfuge, using front companies to shield its identity in some cases after developers hatched a grand scheme for three of the southernmost islands: Smith, Myrtle and Ship Shoal. They had planned high-rise hotels, thousands of homes, a golf course, even an airstrip, with bridges and causeways stitching it all together.

Its hard for me to wrap my brain around those islands being developed now, or imagine how much the local, state and federal governments might now be spending to keep everything from washing away, Bieri said.

Some of theislands, because they wouldnt have been allowed to migrate naturally, might not have even existed anymore.

Now, the only developed island in the chain is Wallops. Its home to aNASA rocket-launch facility,and the only Virginia barrier on which theres been a concerted effort to hold back the ocean. NASA has spent tens of millions of dollars there in recent years on beach renourishment efforts.

A few of the remaining islands are state or national wildlife preserves, and theres an oft-visited national seashoreand a public beach on Assateague, a barrier that stretches across the state line into Maryland. Its Virginia portion too has been battered repeatedly by the Atlantic, and federal officials plan within the next decade to move the recreational area several miles north where the island is wider.

Marsh grasses are now missing from what were healthy wetlands just a few years ago near Wachapreague, seen on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016.

To most Shore residents these days, the barrier islands are like neighbors at the far end of the street familiar but not encountered often enough to know well.

The exceptions are mainly folks on the seaside, in towns like Chincoteague and Wachapreague and on farms and in hamlets in between. Like the rest of the mid-Atlantic, theyve witnessed some of the nations highest sea level rise in recent decades a rate approaching 2 feet when extended out over a century.

When islands shrink and inlets widen, or when barriers become more susceptible to breaches as they narrow from erosion, its no wonder they look out toward the Atlantic and worry: Will the next big storm tide be the one that surges through the gaps and pounds them?

In January of last year, Chincoteague got a salty taste of that when a noreaster carved a few inlets into a thin stretch of Assateague, the barrier to its east. The openings filled in within weeks, but not before a scare.

We got a call in the middle of the night from the 911 center there, saying, basically, Hey, were starting to see some flooding on the south end of Chincoteague, " said Jeff Orrock, the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service office in Wakefield.

The barrier island breached and you had all this extra water coming in to Toms Cove between Chincoteague and Assateague, Orrock said. The weather service hadnt factored in the possibility of breaches in its tide forecasts for the town.

In the end, there was much more damage from high winds than water, but the storm reminded Chincoteagues 2,900 residents of how imperiled they could be.

Lately, theyve also been keeping a closer watch on Chincoteague Inlet, which stretches between Assateague and Wallops islands. The inlet has grown wider in recent years as Assateagues far southern tip has curled eastward into a larger and larger fist of sand.

With the broader opening comes an increased risk of a storm surge driving enough water into the bay to swamp or damage the causeway connecting Chincoteague to the Eastern Shore mainland.

Chincoteague is itself an island. In fact, it was a barrier island until the mid-1800s, when Assateague extended so far south that it shielded Chincoteague from the ocean. The Atlantic still feels awfully close, however, to the town thats famous for itsannual pony swim.

Mayor Arthur Leonard said he frets most about a hurricane barreling up the coast: Because the inlet faces south, a "wind coming right from the ocean, its impacting Chincoteague.

Congress authorized a study of Chincoteagues vulnerability to flooding and erosion as part of a comprehensive infrastructure bill passed in December. Its not clear yet whether there will be funding for the work.

The waterfront of Wachapreague, photographed on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016.

About 35 miles down the coast, Wachapreague has its own set of worries.

Between that town and the inlet that separates Cedar and Parramore islands are vast meadows of salt marsh a lush, scenic backdrop for travelers lured by road signs to the self-proclaimed Little City by the Sea. The grasses shelter and provide nurseries for numerous fish, crabs and birds, and they filter pollutants.

Perhaps most importantly to Wachapreague, theyre a nice speed bump for ocean waves headed toward shore, said Chris Hein, an assistant professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science who recently co-authored a paper on the salt marshes behind Virginias barrier islands.

But when inlets like Wachapreagues widen, the marshes outermost edges are chipped away faster by tides, Hein said. As Cedars south tip has disintegrated, the rest of the island has been migrating more rapidly toward the mainland. Cedar has been blazing westward at an average of more than 40 feet a year in the past decade, claiming marsh that couldnt keep pace with the push of sediment from waves rolling over the island. Its one of the fastest-moving shorelines on the East Coast.

Fred Janci, Wachapreagues mayor, said the towns 220 or so residents track weather forecasts more intently these days.

There is more conversation about the loss of Cedar Island and what can be done about it, he said. Still, I dont think people are talking about this as much as they probably should.

Wachapreague's vulnerability will only grow if sea level rise speeds up in the decades ahead. Some forecast models' worst-case scenarios show much of the town permanently under water by the end of the century.

Government officials have been looking for ways to address theflooding risk. One proposal, from the Army Corps of Engineers, includes using spoils from the dredging of navigational channels to replenish marsh and build new marsh area on the back side of Cedar.

Known as a beneficial uses project, it calls for the state to come up with a third of the estimated $9.5 million cost. Its far from a done deal. But if Cedars southern tip keeps receding as fast as it has been lately, the project might gain some urgency.

John Joeckel, a former Wachapreague council member, chairs a waterways committee for the Shores two counties, Accomack and Northampton. He thinks the Wachapreague proposal could be the springboard for other such projects and says the Shores political leaders should be thinking even bigger.

We need to discuss a specific strategic plan for the islands and the area behind the islands, Joeckel said. Its got to be the whole length of the Shore. And were going to have to spend money to safeguard the seaside communities.

A storm surge from a hurricane could ravage Wachapreague, he said. It could happen next year. Forget about 50 years from now.

Marsh grasses are now missing from what were healthy wetlands just a few years ago near Wachapreague, seen on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016. Directly behind the boat is Wachapreague Inlet with the northern tip of Parramore Island to the right. Sea level rise is taking a toll on the wetlands, exposing the Eastern Shore to damage from the ocean waves.

Some Eastern Shore political leaders have suggested pumping sand mined from the ocean onto some of the islands, as a way to shore them up and give more shelter to the seaside.

Beach replenishments are commonplace up and down the East Coast, including in Virginia Beach. But theyre expensive, and one storm can wash the new sand away.

That was a lesson quickly learned on Wallops, the only Virginia barrier so far to have been renourished. Since the 1940s, NASA and its predecessor agency tried everything from a timber bulkhead to boulder seawalls to hold back the ocean. Everythingfailed, and the space agencyturned to beach widening in 2012.

Two months after it finished the work, Hurricane Sandy hit. The wider beach did its job, but enough sand was lost that NASA rushed through an emergency re-replenishment, years before the next one had been planned. It has spent more than $50 million on the recent projects and related work.

The agency could justify the re-do and the followup renourishments itsplanning because there's a lot invested at Wallops: $1 billion in infrastructure deemed critical to national security and innovation.

On most of the other islands, theres little to protect except wildlife habitat, and theres hasn't been much evidence so far that bird populations the key focus have suffered overall from the recent changes.

Some species, like piping plovers and oystercatchers, like to nest on beaches that have been scoured by overwash. Their numbers on the islands have increased, said Ruth Boettcher, a state wildlife biologist.

Boettcher has stepped foot on practically every island along the Eastern Shore and said the biggest change shes seen is not loss of land area. Its loss of elevation as big waves from more frequent storms knock down dune after dune. As the islands flatten, they roll even faster to the west.

Coastal geologists like Hein also have been trodding the islands more often lately, and say what attracts them are the many mysteries that the barriers still hold. Though theyre among the most-studied in the world, everything from their age to how theyre affected by alterations in the movement of sand offshore still isnt wellunderstood.

Hein and Michael Fenster, a geologist at Randolph-Macon College, especially want to spend more time studying Assateagues bulging south tip, known as Fishing Point. They think that as it juts farther, it may be capturing more sand drifting southward alongside the island and starving it from barriers farther down the chain. If thats the case, that could increase the erosion of some islands to the south.

Theres also the possibility of Assateagues south end eventually breaking off into an island of its own. The effects of that could be dramatic all along the coast.

Wetlands near Wachapreague, photographed on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2016.

One morning last spring, Bieri and a couple of other conservancy employees stepped onto a boat and headed forthe inlet between the south end of Parramore Island and the north end of Hog Island, both conservancy-owned. This inlet has widened, too, but not nearly as much as the inlet at Parramores other end.

Bieri pointed to a marshy area behind Hog, which has expanded in recent years.

Thats one of places where the islands have built up, she said.

Every island is behaving differently, depending on its orientation, depending on its source of sand and depending on the way the currents move around the island, Bieri explained before the trip.

The variability makes it difficult to generalize about how the island chain will look even just a few decades from now, she said.

But we still have this system that was designed by nature, this natural infrastructure, and its still protecting the coast and though perhaps not as well as it once had, still better, she said, than anything that might be devised by humans.

Also, because the barriers have remained natural, she said, we have incredible water quality in the coastal bays. We have a huge aquaculture industry because of that amazing water quality. Thats a story you dont hear in coastal areas around the world anymore.

The 63-year-old Kellam, whose ancestors include some of the last residents of Hog Island, said he supports The Nature Conservancys vow to let nature take its course: Theyve done a wonderful job.

Still, he sometimes worries about the changes on the barriers.

Ive been going to these islands since I was old enough to walk, he said, and Ive never seen in all my years anything like what has occurred in the last 10.

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Some Virginia barrier islands are shrinking by the day: "You can just feel it" - Virginian-Pilot

Class C girls basketball final: SAS, Thousand Islands seeking first section title – Syracuse.com

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No. 1 Thousand Islands (17-2) vs. No. 3 Syracuse Academy of Science (19-3)

When: 1:45 p.m, Sunday

Where: Onondaga Community College's Allyn Hall Gymnasium

What's at stake: Winner has a bye into the state tournament regional on March 11 at Tompkins Cortland Community College in Dryden. It will play Section IV champion, eitherBainbridge-Guilford (22-0) or Watkins Glen.

How they got here: Thousand Islands rolled over defending Section III Class C champion Cooperstown 57-44 in one semifinal. Science dispatched with No. 2 seeded Little Falls 64-55 in the other semifinal.

Storyline: First time the two schools have played one another. Science played in last year's sectional final where it lost to Cooperstown. Both schools are seeking their first-ever sectional championships. This is the second sectional final for Thousand Islands, which won its ninth straight Class C championship this season in the Frontier League.

Thousand Islands key players: Anna Hoover is averaging nearly 17 points per game. She's been in double-figures in every game this season but one. Courtney Evans-Eppolito had a season best 19 in the victory over Cooperstown and is averaging 12.4 points a game.

SAS key players: Lyrik Jackson is a junior and one of the top players in Section III. She's averaging 23.6 points and 12.8 rebounds a game. Diammone Harris is averaging 13 a game. Senior Reyanah Brown broke out for 18 in the win over Little Falls.

Coachspeak:

SAS's Reggie Pickard: "We watch film and watch them play. Sometimes, film doesn't show it all. It never measures your heart. Watching them play, they're a really good basketball team with a lot of heart. They play really hard. They've got great team chemistry. They play together. We're not going up against one or two good players. They have five good players, eight good players. We can't take them lightly. They're a great team."

Thousand Islands' Pete Pettit: "Unfortunately for us, they've played a really tough schedule and done really well. They're tough kids and seen some good competition. I've played some schools as well above my class. I feel they've stood out better. I'm not really a fan of playing non-public schools in the finals (TI lost to Notre Dame in the 2010 sectional finals). Seems like every time we get there, things are not adding up. I just told the kids this is what we're doing. We're going to do our thing. The kids have a great attitude. We hope to shock everybody."

Here's a video of him at the tournament seeding meeting discussing his team.

The skinny:Both posted impressive tournament semifinal victories. Both ran into walls this year when they stepped up into Class B, arguably Section III's deepest group. The Vikings lost to South Jeff. The Atoms lost to Westhill and Grimes. However, with the exception of the loss to Grimes, SAS has averaged 73.4 points per contest over its last six games. Can its firepower overcome the tenacity and chemistry of Thousand Islands? Key for Vikings is how well it handles the SAS press or the pressure of the game.

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Class C girls basketball final: SAS, Thousand Islands seeking first section title - Syracuse.com

Future Islands Decade of Touring Led to ‘Ran’ The World Famous … – KROQ

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"Its about all the trials and tribulations that happen from us being out on the road." March 2, 2017 11:13 AM

Future Islands / Tom Hines

By Brian Ives

From Bob Segers Turn the Page to Tenacious Ds The Road, from AC/DCs Its a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock n Roll) to Journeys Faithfully, theres a time-honored tradition of rock bands writing about what its like to spend weeks, months or years on tour.

With a decade behind them, Future Islands have logged many miles on the road, and that led to their new single and video, Ran, as singer Sam Herring tellsRadio.com.

We kind of got off the road at the end of 2015 on our two-year album cycle for our last record, Singles, which came out around this time in 2014, three years ago, he says. We took maybe a month off, and we started the writing sessions for the next record in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We went down and rented a house in Buxton, North Carolina, in the southern part of the Outer Banks. Were all from, or grew up in, North Carolina, so that place is very important to us.

He continues: But it was a way for us to kind of get away and reconvene as friends and musical partners, but get away from everything and just sit down and write. So we rented this house and just set up all our gear in the living room and started making sounds, and Ran came out of the music came out of that session. And it was one of the first songs; it was written for the album. But I think, in a way, it encapsulates a lot of the themes that come out of the record, which arent necessarily new to us because weve spent most of the last nine and a half, ten years on the road as a touring band. So thats How we feelwhen we fall, when we fold, when we lose control, on these roads.'

Its about all the trials and tribulations that happen from us being out on the road, the things that we miss back home, and also the things we go towards and all those feelings. So I think it pretty much encapsulates a lot of the things weve written about over time.

Ran is the first single from Future IslandsThe Far Field, due out on April 7. The band will be touring for much of the year; check out their tour dates at Eventful.

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Future Islands Decade of Touring Led to 'Ran' The World Famous ... - KROQ

Audio Premiere: Two Islands Heaven – Wonderland Magazine

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Audio Premiere: Two Islands Heaven March 3rd, 2017

The Liverpool collective stream their beautiful new song, Heaven.

Two Islands have just released their stunning new single Heaven. Producing a track which very much reflects its name, Heaven is a glimmering pop record, full of infectious beats and ethereal melodies. The out-of-this-world track reflects Two Islands unique creative vision,Weve always felt as if we existed on our own island, like outsiders looking in. Taking musical cues from the classic songwriting synonymous with Liverpool but dressing our songs in a modern and unique way; aiming to follow in the lineage of Northern bands whose originality and creative ambition have helped to alter our perception of what is possible in pop music.

Its a masterful pop record, and instantly catchy. As Two Islands say, We want to reclaim the romance of falling in love with an artist solely through their songs, something that has been lost in the internet era. Were not looking to hide, we just want to engage through our music. Well, consider us engaged, and waiting for more!

Daecolm delivers his new energetic track Jungle

The electronic trio release the title track from their new EP, Animal.

Ethiopian American artist Siimba Liives Long drops a new offering.

Jena Irene Asciutto releases the new video for her incredible track Floating Down The River.

We chat with the coolest guy in California, dylAn.

Alt-popstar, Shannon Saunders, releases new single, Rips In Your Jeans.

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Audio Premiere: Two Islands Heaven - Wonderland Magazine

Innovative Conservation Strategies Help Restore Nearly Extinct Tortoises On Galapagos Islands – Wisconsin Public Radio News

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Wisconsin Public Radio News
Innovative Conservation Strategies Help Restore Nearly Extinct Tortoises On Galapagos Islands
Wisconsin Public Radio News
As many as 300,000 giant tortoises once roamed the volcanic islands located hundreds of miles off the coast of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean. But over the past two centuries, hunting and invasive species reduced their populations by an estimated 90 ...

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Innovative Conservation Strategies Help Restore Nearly Extinct Tortoises On Galapagos Islands - Wisconsin Public Radio News

Love Island’s Katie Salmon ‘to star on next series of Ex on the Beach’ after Channel 5 blunder – The Sun

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Glamour girl wasintroduced on Celebrity Sex Pod as one of theupcoming contestants

SHE appeared on Love Island last which massively boosted her public profile but is Katie Salmon about to take on another romance reality TV show?

Well, according to Channel 5, the buxom beauty is about to join the cast of Ex on the Beach.

iCelebTV

The glamour model, 21, was appearing on the channels show Celebrity Sex Pod alongside Big Brother housemate Sam Giffen.

And as they were both introduced to viewers, the voiceover said: Next in the queue and seeking advice on their sex lives is celebrity stylist Sam Giffen and best pal Ex On The Beachs Katie Salmon.

Was it just a mistake or does this mean well be seeing Katie on the new series of the show?

Channel 5

The Sun Online approached Katies management who cryptically said: I can neither confirm nor deny this.

And Katie herself took to Twitter, but also didnt actually give anything away as she wrote: Ex on the Beach was amazing btw, so much fun.

But Katie would be the perfect contestant for the show having taken part on ITV reality show Love Island last summer which made her name.

Meanwhile, The Sun Online exclusively revealed that Stephanie Davis has been offered a blank cheque to appear on the show to confront Jeremy McConnell.

The former Hollyoaks beauty, 23, recently reunited with her baby dad after she gavebirth last monthand now bosses are eyeing her up for a surprise arrival in the grand finale of the upcoming series.

A TV source said: Bosses have offered Stepha blank cheque to sign on the dotted line they want her no matter what it takes and money is absolutely no option.

And troubled Big Brother star Marco Pierre White Jnr is also believed to be in talks to appear on the show after his antics caught the attention of MTV bosses.

Got a story? emaildigishowbiz@the-sun.co.ukor call us direct on 02077824220

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Love Island's Katie Salmon 'to star on next series of Ex on the Beach' after Channel 5 blunder - The Sun

Their first Mardi Gras: a journey for Tiwi Island sistagirls decades in the making – The Guardian

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A group of Tiwi Island sistagirls are heading to the Sydney Mardi Gras for the first time. Photograph: Supplied

As the evening light settles over a Rapid Creek backyard, eight Tiwi Island sistagirls are making their final preparations to fly to Sydney.

A large portion of the 30 Aboriginal transgender women from the islands, north of Darwin, are already in Sydney, sending daily selfies and Facebook updates as they explore the southern city. For many, its their first time in Sydney. It will be everyones first ever Mardi Gras.

This years event is the 39th Sydney Mardi Gras, born from protests about LGBTQI rights in the 1970s. More than 10,000 people are expected to march in the parade, which has grown into an international event, drawing crowds of hundreds of thousands to Sydneys Oxford street.

Theres a discussion around the Rapid Creek table about just how famous the sistagirls are already. Over the years, there have been regular news stories about them, and in recent weeks just about every outlet has covered their Mardi Gras plans.

But all that is pretty abstract until they take centre stage at what is arguably Australias biggest party. The Tiwi Islands is home to just a few thousand people. By contrast, about 300,000 people are expected to attend the parade, which is also broadcast nationally and reported worldwide.

Patricia Puruntatameris hand goes to her heart and she tears up a little. I just dont know what to think. Wow. Its going to be so exciting, I can just imagine it already. Oh em gee! She laughs.

The sistagirls are a close-knit group from across the Tiwi communities, who have supported each other through decades of seeking acceptance. Years past have been marred by suicides, bullying and discrimination.

Jayma Timaepatua says theyll be marching to remember the older sistagirls, who have passed away and who have pain.

If not for them I wouldnt be here for now, she says.

The group first began planning the Mardi Gras adventure late last year. Various subsets within the 30 have travelled with the assistance of crowdfunding, support from the local art centre, or with money from their own pocket. Staying in Redfern, theyll have spent Friday getting their nails, hair and makeup done.

Their costumes are in traditional Tiwi designs featuring clan totem animals, hand-printed in glowing rainbow paint. Were all excited about going. We just finished screen printing, and the colour has come out so nice, says Lima Alimankinni.

The Northern Territory float, expected to be towards the front of the parade will feature twinkling stars, representing the Northern Territory skies.

No one really knows what to expect, but they hope to meet sistagirls from other communities as well as a few celebrities including NT locals Miranda Tapsell and Rob Collins.

Alex Greenwich, the independent Sydney MP and co-chair of the Australian Marriage Equality Campaign, says the sistagirls coming to Sydney is a reminder of the breadth of Australias LGBTI community.

Its really important for Australias LGBTI community to really be welcoming, inclusive and celebrate entrants like that and to also make sure there are those connections made, he told Guardian Australia this week.

And Im sure there is also lots of stuff we can learn from the strong sense of community I know the sistagirls on the Tiwi Islands have.

To go to the Mardi Gras is to showcase our culture and our people, how Tiwi people evolved in this generation and how we became stronger in our community, sistagirl Crystal Johnson told the ABC. To show people you can make a change.

Puruntatameri says she might also like to tell others in the LGBTI community about life on the Tiwi Islands, to tell them about our hunting and gathering, and singing.

Were just going to walk and wave to the people, she says.

To say that were here, interjects Anthony Tipungwuti.

Puruntatameri nods. And that we do exist.

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Their first Mardi Gras: a journey for Tiwi Island sistagirls decades in the making - The Guardian

Human cloning a step closer after UK scientists create artificial embryos – RT

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Human life could soon be replicated in a laboratory after scientists at the University of Cambridge successfully created artificial mouse embryos.

Scientists developed a mouse embryo structure using stem cells grown in the lab. The cells grew into primitive embryos that had identical internal structures to those that emerge during normal development in the womb.

The purpose of the research is to gain deeper insight into an embryos development just prior to implantation.

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It marks a significant step forward, as previous attempts to grow embryo-like structures using only embryonic stem cells have only had limited success.

Im looking at it as a miracle of nature as well as trying to understand the process. Its incredibly beautiful that we can begin to understand those forces that give rise to self-organization during the earliest stage of development, Professor Zernicka-Goetz told the Guardian.

The researchers used a combination of genetically modified mouse cells, known as master cells, and a 3D scaffold, known as an extracellular matrix, on which the cells could grow. The resulting embryo looks almost identical to a natural mouse embryo.

If carried out on human embryos, the experiment could reveal the cause behind miscarriages and infertility, as it shows how genetic activity varies the way mammals grow right after conception.

The breakthrough, made by a team led by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, who last year discovered the way to keep embryos alive in the laboratory for up to 14 days, means that more embryos could be reproduced for research without sperm or egg donations, potentially also removing ethical issues surrounding embryo replication.

Both the embryonic and extraembryonic cells start to talk to each other and become organized into a structure that looks like and behaves like an embryo, said Zernicka-Goetz.

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One in six pregnancies end in miscarriage, though there is still no explicit answer to how this happens.

If we can translate the knowledge into humans it will be incredibly powerful for understanding our own development at a stage when many human lives are lost, the professor said, according to the Times.

However researchers said although the artificial embryo closely resembles a natural one, it is unlikely to develop further into a healthy mouse fetus. This would require a yolk sac, which provides nourishment for the embryo and where blood vessels develop.

Experiments are currently carried out on leftover human embryos from In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), but these are often insufficient and can only be held for a maximum of 14 days under legal frameworks.

The outcome of the experiment has also been criticized by some concerned that it may pave the way for genetically modified (GM) humans.

What concerns me about the possibility of artificial embryos is that this may become a route to creating GM or even cloned babies, the director of Human Genetics Alert, Dr, David King, told the Telegraph.

Until there is an enforceable global ban on those possibilities this kind of research risks doing the scientific groundwork for entrepreneurs who will use the technologies in countries with no regulations.

The findings were published in the journal Science on Thursday.

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Human cloning a step closer after UK scientists create artificial embryos - RT

Assistant professor delivers genetic variation research on pine sawflies – UTA The Shorthorn

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There is a lab in the University of Kentucky that smells like Christmas. This is where biology assistant professor Catherine Linnen conducts her research.

On Thursday, Linnen spoke about genetic variation caused by the environment. She is researching how insects called pine sawflies vary genetically based on their environment.

Her lab is filled with pine tree seedlings to feed and conduct experiments on these sawflies. Linnen is studying the color of the larvae and the body types and egg-laying patterns of mature females, she said.

Pine sawflies have different colors based on various factors. Surviving against predators and parasites is a major factor of this coloration. Some sawflies are white to camouflage themselves with the white-colored pine they live on. Others have spots to make it harder for parasites to penetrate their skin.

Linnen bred many species of pine sawflies and sped up the process by artificially hatching the eggs to be able to conduct her research faster, she said.

Pine sawflies mate on a host pine tree. The female then digs holes in pine needles to lay her eggs inside.

Linnen found that the smaller the pine leaf, the smaller the sawfly's body is and the fewer eggs it lays, she said.

She also found genetic differences occurred most based on the host plant, she said. Linnen studied geographic, historical and biological factors, and none had the same impact on genetic variation as the type of plant eaten.

Andrew Corbin, quantitative biology doctoral student, attended Linnens lecture and said he was especially interested in the dynamic between the host and parasite.

Biology senior Gavin Verdier said hes interested in the human genetics implications of this research. He said it was refreshing to do something without a grade attached and to hear different experts speak on a subject.

@FornariLoL

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Assistant professor delivers genetic variation research on pine sawflies - UTA The Shorthorn

Apple or pear waist-to-hip ratio and the risk of CHD and T2DM – Nature.com

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Nature.com
Apple or pear waist-to-hip ratio and the risk of CHD and T2DM
Nature.com
Now, Emdin, Kathiresan and colleagues have used a human genetics tool known as Mendelian randomization to investigate whether a genetic predisposition to an elevated waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI) increases the risk of developing ...

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Apple or pear waist-to-hip ratio and the risk of CHD and T2DM - Nature.com

The GOP and Health Care – New York Times

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CBS News
The GOP and Health Care
New York Times
David Leonhardt is right. If Republicans want to provide health insurance through free market competition, their solution will have the same problems as the Affordable Care Act: Healthy, low-risk families will be forced to buy costly policies more ...
What would happen to health care coverage under emerging GOP plan?CBS News
We won't know what's in the Republican health-care repeal plan until they pass itWashington Post
Why Republicans should support universal health careThe Tennessean
The Hill -STLtoday.com -Carroll County Times -Politico
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The GOP and Health Care - New York Times

GOP rep: Some people ‘just don’t want healthcare’ – The Hill

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Some people just dont want health care, according to Rep. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who cited the Bible while arguing against former President Obama's Medicaid expansion.

Just like Jesus said, The poor will always be with us, Marshall, a doctor and freshman lawmaker, toldStat Newson Friday.

There is a group of people that just dont want healthcare and arent going to take care of themselves.

Just, like, homeless people. I think just morally, spiritually, socially, [some people] just dont want health care, he said.

The Medicaid population, which is [on] a free credit card, as a group, do probably the least preventive medicine and taking care of themselves and eating healthy and exercising. And Im not judging, Im just saying socially thats where they are. So theres a group of people that even with unlimited access to health care are only going to use the emergency room when their arm is chopped off or when their pneumonia is so bad they get brought [into] the ER.

What to do with the expansion of Medicaid is one of the thorniest issues for Republicans looking to repeal ObamaCare, with some Republicans pressing to keep it. ObamaCare expanded eligibility for the program up to 138 percent of the poverty level, and 31 states have accepted the expansion.

Marshalls office has not yet responded to a request for comment.

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GOP rep: Some people 'just don't want healthcare' - The Hill

Is Abortion ‘Health Care’? Activists Want It Both Ways. – National Review

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Earlier this week, BuzzFeed News published an article (Ramesh noted it here in the Corner) about Planned Parenthoods anxieties under the new administration. It included this quote, from Planned Parenthood chief Cecile Richards:

The stakes have become quite clear recently, and theyre very high. . . . The patients I talk to are terrified theyre going to lose their access to health care, and docs and clinicians are terrified that this Senate is going block the women with the least access to health care from getting any at all.

LifeNews.com subsequently tweeted out a summary of the piece under the headline: Cecile Richards: If Planned Parenthood is Defunded Were Terrified Women Wont be Able to Get Abortions. I retweeted that, with a little quip attached, and my tweet went a bit viral.

Since then, several left-wing journalists and activisttypes as well as the author of the original BuzzFeed story have tweeted back that LifeNews.coms tweet misrepresented the original quote. What Richards said is that they were afraid of losing their health care.

Pardon?

Isnt it Planned Parenthoods own contention that abortion is health care? Doesnt Planned Parenthood insist that to deprive women of the right to an abortion is to deprive them of their basic reproductive rights? In fact, isnt Planned Parenthood so committed to this idea that they believe taxpayers should be forced to fund abortions on the grounds that taxpayers fund other basic health-care needs?

Put another way: Wouldnt it contradict what Cecile Richards has spent her adult life advocating to suggest that her understanding of health care excluded abortion?

Dont get me wrong, though: If that iswhats happening, its extraordinarily welcome news.

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Is Abortion 'Health Care'? Activists Want It Both Ways. - National Review

Why tech giants are claiming space in healthcare – Healthcare Dive

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From cloud platforms for medical data and hospital smart rooms to artificial intelligence and patient-engagement technologies, the giants of the digital world are threatening to disrupt healthcare.

Leading the pack is IBM and its centerpiece offering Watson Health. In just the last six months, the company has announced major initiatives into healthcare including a partnership with clinical consultation provider Best Doctors to add Watsons cancer suite to employee benefits packages, a population health management alliance with Siemens Healthineers and an effort linking IBMs PowerAI deep learning software toolkit with NVIDIAs NVLink interconnect technology. The PowerAI is already being used improve diagnoses and care plans by sifting through patient data.

In October, Big Blue announced a $200 million investment in its Watson Internet of Things global headquarters in Munich, Germany. The money will support a series of IoT collaboratories aimed at bringing researchers, engineers, developers and entrepreneurs together to work on novel healthcare and other solutions.

Apple has also more hinted at plans for a major thrust into healthcare, with high-profile hires and partnerships with large healthcare systems like Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital and Scripts Translational Science Institute. The company also acquired personal health record startup Gliimpse, which hopes to advance interoperability by aggregating health data into a single digital patient record.

Meanwhile, Apple has a patent application for a wearable device that can measure electrocardiographic information across different body areas of provide doctors with actionable readings. A series of emails between Apple and the Food and Drug Administration also shed light on several regulated products Silicon Valley firm is developing.

Microsoft is also expanding its footprint in healthcare with its analytics capabilities. Since jumping into the wearables market in 2014, the company has teamed with Twist BioScience on the capabilities of DNA digital data storage, collaborated with the medical community on numerous health research projects and joined forces with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to create innovative care delivery products. And just this week, Cigna announced it has leveraged Microsofts HoloLens technology to for interactive game-based health screenings.

And last month, Samsung waded into the digital health space via a partnership with American Well that leverages the Korean tech firms consumer electronics with American Wells Exchange platform to enable providers and payers to connect and share telehealth services online. The company is also launching an IoT senior care solution called Breezie.

Driving these and other large, multinational electronics companies is demand for data-driven information and the shift to value-based models of medicine and payment.

Healthcare has been labeled as ripe for disruption for years, but the combination of government mandates and regulations, technological advancements and financial incentives of the last decade has seemed to finally get the needle moving, Derek Spearing, senior manager at Top Tier Consulting tells Healthcare Dive. Add that to the wave of health IT startups in recent years, and healthcare is cool again, he adds.

One of the things larger organizations bring to healthcare is a perspective on how other economic sectors have handled information challenges. At the same time, theres growing appreciation among IT firms for the enormous complexities of healthcare and the fact that peoples health and lives are at stake.

There is tremendous potential to leverage whats been done in other sectors within healthcare to drive greater clarity in terms of care delivery and to really modernize, streamline and help along the journey toward value-based care where organizations are able to deliver high-quality care at a low cost and in a reproducible fashion, David Delaney, chief medical officer at SAP in Cambridge, MA, tells Healthcare Dive. Last May, the firm launched SAP Connected Health Platform, which leverages its SAP Hana in-memory computing platform with healthcare-specific components.

The runways a little longer, it takes longer to achieve lift and scale in healthcare, but the commitment and journey are very much worth it.

David Delaney

Chief Medical Officer, SAP

However, tech companies need to do their homework and engineer solutions that truly support healthcare, Delaney adds.

Penetration into the healthcare is already high and will grow exponentially over the next five to 10 years, according to Robert Krohn, partner and healthcare practice lead at ISG. Starting with electronic health records and moving to IoT, the quality of predictive analytics and real-time analytics, as well as digital offering that enhance the patient interface, which younger patients are migrating toward, are growing daily, he says.

What this all means for hospitals is improved patient outcomes and patient satisfaction, both of which increase Medicare payments, as well as lower costs and higher margins due to operating efficiencies,Spearing says. But while IT firms are shaking up healthcare with AI and automation and helping doctors better tailor patient treatments, he hesitates to call them disruptive just yet.

As long as the same decades-old issues continue to plague healthcare lack of interoperability, questionable security, over-regulation, over-employment (driven by the tedious manually intensive approaches to administration, claims processing, testing, auditing) misdiagnoses, etc. Ill be pessimistic of any claims of disruption, Spearing says.

With myriad startups and small HIT companies dotting the healthcare landscape and larger companies entering the space, consolidation is only a matter of time, experts say. The health information exchange market, for instance, started with a number of small firms that were bought up by large payers, notes Delaney. And theres talk about consolidation in the EHR sector.

The large multinationals always monitor the smaller firms and will make financial plays at the appropriate time to take these startup ideas and commercialize them and broaden them into grander offerings, Krohn tells Healthcare Dive. We dont think thats a bad idea."

Delaney agrees. Whether its regulatory, administrative or patient engagement, early-stage companies are able to rapidly identify a trend or opportunity and execute on it in a nimble fashion. Larger firms have the customer base to really drive and catalyze those changes. This is a natural kind of movement youll have across all sectors in a time of disruption, he says.

As hospitals and health systems expand their palette of digital partners, should they be thinking and acting more like them? T2Cs Spearing thinks so.Responsiveness, efficiency and user experience are just a few traits of todays successful technology companies and their products, and I dont think any of these immediately come to mind when a patient recounts their experiences with hospitals, health plans and the patient portals offered by either.Spearing says.

I believe that patient experiences and outcomes, as well as the hospitals bottom line, would improve if hospitals were to act more like tech companies.

Derek Spearing

Senior Manager, Top Tier Consulting

Pointing to Yelp, Spearing says complaints of long wait times, lack of price transparency, billing issues and patient privacy could also be addressed and eased to some extent at least with digital solutions.

Organizations should identify their core competencies and where they can invest their people to achieve the greatest return on investment toward their mission, which is caring for people, according to Delaney. Large technology companies do infrastructure well, so its a waste of good talent to focus an organizations IT staff on reproducing that.

Delaney recommends that organizations leverage the platforms tech companies have to offer and then innovate on top of that to create that last mile of capabilities that improves patient interaction and operations.

Partnering with the large multinationals, assuming youve got appropriate scale to do so, is the appropriate approach,Krohn says. That being said, you cant be blind and immune to the emergence of technologies. You need to understand what it is that your partner does at a level where your appreciating it and figuring out how it can help your overall business model and your patient experience, while not necessarily trying to recreate it.

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Why tech giants are claiming space in healthcare - Healthcare Dive