The Apple Store is a strange place. It does its very best to pretend it isn't a shop. There are no tills ringing or sour-faced shopgirls stacking shelves with garish product or hurrying along pretending they're too busy to help you, no groaning rails or higgledy-piggledy stacks of boxes. The Apple Store, especially the one in Covent Garden, London, is more of an 'experience'. Smiling pretty boys in skinny jeans loiter at the doorway with eager smiles and eyes so wide they can only be the result of a recently dropped ecstasy pill. They have youth, enthusiasm and a handy line in charming condescension. You could be excused for mistaking it for a bar or café, not a global corporation desperate to get its hands on your hard-earned cash - the more noughts at the end, the better.
But where there is wireless, hardware, oak beams and credit cards, there is retail; and here I am, wandering around it on a Saturday, looking for nothing in particular. I'm glad my own MacBook Pro, which wheezes like an asthmatic vuvuzela every time I turn it on, is at home and not here to see the sleek, steel-encased upstarts that will one day replace it both in my affections and upon my knee. The place is crammed with Apple fanatics in all shapes and sizes and with every variety of facial hair imaginable. Ageing computer geeks, tight-skinned students, emo girls, hipster grandmas, confused middle-class parents rife for a fleecing by their offspring and me, peeking over everybody's shoulder to get a look-in at a machine so I can check my email, as my ever-unreliable phone is about to gasp its last in battery power.
I'm having no luck, so decide to move upstairs to find a free computer. As I make my way to the staircase, I notice three younger people - two guys and a girl - standing at the foot of it and looking my way. One guy is whispering in the ear of the other guy and looking at me. It's making me a bit Hands free access, but I carry on - I'll leave being afraid of youths until I'm elderly. They're dressed in that young way where nothing seems to fit them properly and one of the guys looks like he hasn't taken his baseball cap off since he was a toddler. They are, of course, all beautiful in their own way. I walk past them and start up the steps. I only manage two or three paces before I feel someone rush past me and stop right in front of me. It is Guy 1, the whisperer, sans baseball cap. I don't have much time to take him in, but he is young, cute and staring quizzically at me.
"Excuse me?" he says, in an accent I immediately recognise as French. By stopping, I've already excused him, I guess, so I don't reply. He goes on: "Are you gay?"
I'm confused. It's not often I get asked this question in public, let alone in the middle of the day. And even though we're in the middle of the uber-liberal, peacenik outpost of sun-kissed California that is the Apple Store, I'm wary. Why would he be asking? Is he a homo or a homophobe? Is he going to kiss me or punch me on the nose?
The most recent draft of Swarthmore’s Campus Master Plan, presented to the College community at a meeting in March, works off of assumptions that faculty, students, and staff will grow, perhaps by the hundreds, over the next couple of decades. If the past is any proof, additional people will be accompanied by additional cars, as well as additional parking spaces. However, some faculty and staff are working to show that there are alternative means of managing transportation needs that can minimize the environmental impacts of the anticipated community growth.
The Parking and Transportation Master Plan Advisory Committee, which is tasked with developing policy recommendations by the beginning of the fall, will meet for their first policy discussion today. The Committee, whose work will be incorporated into the Master Planning process, will continue to meet through the summer so that the Master Plan can be finalized in September.
That committee, whose members include Executive Assistant for Facilities and Services Paula Dale, Senior Director of Corporate, Foundation, and Government Relations Nadine Kolowrat, Provost Tom Stephenson, Public Safety Director Mike Hill, Vice President for Facilities and Services Stu Hain, Engineering Professor Erik Cheever, Jennifer Walsh ‘15, and eleven others, will work to find ways to accommodate future growth, and, some members say, encourage faculty, students, and staff to ditch their cars entirely in favor of walking or riding public transit to campus.
The Master Planning process, which began in earnest last fall, looks ahead over the next couple of decades to the potential construction projects–such as the Inn, a new Science Center II, and additions to Willets and McCabe–that may eventually change the face of campus. At a meeting in January, a number of faculty raised concerns that the building boom might be accompanied by what they believe is a reckless expansion of surface parking on campus.
The role of Chance Advisors, said Dale, “is to help us with the whole master plan, which includes studying parking and transportation existing conditions, making predictions for the future, and a piece of that is considering how [we] could shape and hopefully reduce the number of spaces that we need.” She said the group with “also look at some policy questions like do we want to discourage people from driving to campus or not.”
In the fall, when the TDM study is completed, Dale said, the Committee “will recommend to senior staff a series of policies that we feel are in the best interests of the College for parking and transportation and a series of procedures to support those policies. [...] We’ve made a conscious decision that nothing is firm [in Master Planning] until we’ve heard back” from those involved with the Parking and Transportation committee and the TDM study.
According to Kolowrat, those policy recommendations might include “incentivizing ride-sharing, carpooling, ZipCars, mass transit, biking, walking, and more–all of which would have the added benefit of helping the College meet its Climate Action Plan commitments for carbon reduction.” As of now, the Climate Action Plan calls to deal with the carbon impact of transportation solely through carbon offsets.
Central to these concerns is the fear that Swarthmore will add one new parking space for each new employee–or even more, to accommodate infrequent but high attendance at events–paving over what they some see as Swarthmore’s walkable paradise.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Adyen Shuttle to process mobile Point-of-Sale payments
Adyen Shuttle is a mobile payment terminal that enables merchants to accept chip & PIN card transactions at the point-of-sale, connecting via Bluetooth to any Android or iOS mobile device. The solution is fully EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) compliant, meaning that it can process payments for all credit and debit cards. Crucially, the Adyen Shuttle terminal utilises the same Internet-based reporting interface as Adyen’s online and mobile payment solutions, meaning that merchants can implement a multichannel payment strategy through one, simple integration.
Patrick de Laive, Co-Founder, The Next Web, explained, “For an organizer or business owner it is expensive and often painfully difficult to accept on-site debit and credit card payments. The Adyen Shuttle erases this friction. It is easy to set up, reliable and accepts all card payments as part of an elegant solution. There are simply no more excuses for event organisers not to accept card payments.”
Since its European launch in December 2012, Adyen has seen phenomenal demand for its Shuttle MPOS solution across a very wide range of industry sectors and from businesses of all sizes – small specialist stores right up to multinational brands. Shuttle is currently being used to take card payments at point-of-sale by taxi and delivery firms, market traders, high street fashion retailers, driving schools, bed & breakfasts, boat rental, event organisers, luxury retailers and healthcare brands amongst many others rtls.
All in Solo, a driving school based in Rotterdam, recently started using Adyen to take online reservations for driving lessons and uses Shuttle to take payment at point-of-sale. Rinus Verheij, Managing Director, All in Solo, said “The Adyen payment solution and Shuttle mobile point-of-sale device provides us with a low cost way to easily accept payments for lessons in our driving school cars. The solution will help us grow our business and increases security for our drivers who no longer have to carry cash in cars. The Adyen Shuttle is an essential part of the professional service we deliver to our customers.”
“Shuttle has been developed to bring complete mobility to point-of-sale commerce, and for events such as TNW Conference 2013, it makes accepting credit and debit card transactions easy,” explained Roelant Prins, CCO, Adyen. “We have been delighted with uptake for the Shuttle solution, which offers a natural extension of our online and mobile payment solution, and provides complete integration across all sales channels.”
Last season's Champions League winners went in front when Branislav Ivanovic - victim of Luis Suarez's bite - won a header which went in off Victor Moses, who claimed his third goal in as many Europa League games.
The visitors should have scored again prior to Fernando Torres striking the post before Cesar Azpilicueta was adjudged to have fouled Valentin Stocker and Fabian Schar converted an 87th-minute penalty. However, Chelsea responded and Luiz's late intervention earned the advantage ahead of next week's return at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea, who had lost four of their five prior European away games, missed numerous chances and Luiz's shot skipped around the wall and inside the post after John Terry had been denied by goalkeeper Yann Sommer's point-blank save earlier in stoppage time.
Chelsea, playing in white, had to be patient as Basle started well before Azpilicueta raced down the right and crossed to the near post, where Lampard's prod towards goal was turned away for a corner by Sommer. Lampard's set-piece was met by Ivanovic, whose header deflected off Moses and bounced inside the far post.
Eden Hazard, playing centrally behind Torres, was doing his utmost to find openings in the Basle defence, but all too frequently Chelsea gave the ball away. Torres twice had half-chances before Lampard found Ramires and the Brazilian's dipping shot from the right was saved well by Sommer.
Much of the second half was disjointed and punctuated by mistakes as Chelsea were forced to repel repeated Basle attacks. Fabian Frei shot narrowly wide from the edge of the box and Cole received a yellow card for time wasting at a throw-in before Aleksandar Dragovic was booked for a sliding challenge on Torres, meaning the defender will now miss the second leg.
Hazard made way for Juan Mata and Lampard was replaced by Oscar as Chelsea's search for a second continued to prove elusive. Basle substitute Marcelo Diaz curled an effort narrowly wide and Cech collected at the feet of Mohamed Salah after the winger had been played in by Dragovic. But Chelsea found themselves level when Azpilicueta was ruled to have hauled down Stocker in the area and Schar sent the ball down the middle of Cech's goal.
Patrick de Laive, Co-Founder, The Next Web, explained, “For an organizer or business owner it is expensive and often painfully difficult to accept on-site debit and credit card payments. The Adyen Shuttle erases this friction. It is easy to set up, reliable and accepts all card payments as part of an elegant solution. There are simply no more excuses for event organisers not to accept card payments.”
Since its European launch in December 2012, Adyen has seen phenomenal demand for its Shuttle MPOS solution across a very wide range of industry sectors and from businesses of all sizes – small specialist stores right up to multinational brands. Shuttle is currently being used to take card payments at point-of-sale by taxi and delivery firms, market traders, high street fashion retailers, driving schools, bed & breakfasts, boat rental, event organisers, luxury retailers and healthcare brands amongst many others rtls.
All in Solo, a driving school based in Rotterdam, recently started using Adyen to take online reservations for driving lessons and uses Shuttle to take payment at point-of-sale. Rinus Verheij, Managing Director, All in Solo, said “The Adyen payment solution and Shuttle mobile point-of-sale device provides us with a low cost way to easily accept payments for lessons in our driving school cars. The solution will help us grow our business and increases security for our drivers who no longer have to carry cash in cars. The Adyen Shuttle is an essential part of the professional service we deliver to our customers.”
“Shuttle has been developed to bring complete mobility to point-of-sale commerce, and for events such as TNW Conference 2013, it makes accepting credit and debit card transactions easy,” explained Roelant Prins, CCO, Adyen. “We have been delighted with uptake for the Shuttle solution, which offers a natural extension of our online and mobile payment solution, and provides complete integration across all sales channels.”
Last season's Champions League winners went in front when Branislav Ivanovic - victim of Luis Suarez's bite - won a header which went in off Victor Moses, who claimed his third goal in as many Europa League games.
The visitors should have scored again prior to Fernando Torres striking the post before Cesar Azpilicueta was adjudged to have fouled Valentin Stocker and Fabian Schar converted an 87th-minute penalty. However, Chelsea responded and Luiz's late intervention earned the advantage ahead of next week's return at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea, who had lost four of their five prior European away games, missed numerous chances and Luiz's shot skipped around the wall and inside the post after John Terry had been denied by goalkeeper Yann Sommer's point-blank save earlier in stoppage time.
Chelsea, playing in white, had to be patient as Basle started well before Azpilicueta raced down the right and crossed to the near post, where Lampard's prod towards goal was turned away for a corner by Sommer. Lampard's set-piece was met by Ivanovic, whose header deflected off Moses and bounced inside the far post.
Eden Hazard, playing centrally behind Torres, was doing his utmost to find openings in the Basle defence, but all too frequently Chelsea gave the ball away. Torres twice had half-chances before Lampard found Ramires and the Brazilian's dipping shot from the right was saved well by Sommer.
Much of the second half was disjointed and punctuated by mistakes as Chelsea were forced to repel repeated Basle attacks. Fabian Frei shot narrowly wide from the edge of the box and Cole received a yellow card for time wasting at a throw-in before Aleksandar Dragovic was booked for a sliding challenge on Torres, meaning the defender will now miss the second leg.
Hazard made way for Juan Mata and Lampard was replaced by Oscar as Chelsea's search for a second continued to prove elusive. Basle substitute Marcelo Diaz curled an effort narrowly wide and Cech collected at the feet of Mohamed Salah after the winger had been played in by Dragovic. But Chelsea found themselves level when Azpilicueta was ruled to have hauled down Stocker in the area and Schar sent the ball down the middle of Cech's goal.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
The 'magic' bomb detector that endangered lives all over the world
Jim McCormick's claims about his range of detection devices were extraordinary. He said the Advanced Detecting Equipment (ADE) he developed at his Somerset farm could pick up the most minuscule traces of explosives, drugs, ivory and even money. They were so good they could spot target substances from as far away as 1,000 metres, deep underground and even through lead-lined rooms. If their plastic grips and waggling antennae bore a passing resemblance to a ￡15 novelty golf ball finder, that was no coincidence. The 57-year-old businessman had used the jokey product sourced from the US as a starting point for an enterprise that made him a multimillion-pound fortune but placed lives at risk around the world.
To make his devices seem more credible, McCormick claimed that his company, ATSC, had four laboratories in Romania and two in the UK, each working in isolation to protect the secret behind his amazing sensors. He boasted of a super-clever expert in the background, "like Q in James Bond", who turned his concepts into reality.
It was all nonsense, albeit potentially lethal for the people of Iraq, where 6,000 of the fraudulent gadgets formed a first line of defence against car bombs and suicide bombers at checkpoints. When the devices were opened, it emerged that cable sockets were unconnected and supposed data cards were linked to nothing. One scientist told the jury who on Tuesday convicted McCormick of three counts of fraud that the antenna intended to point to suspect substances was "no more a radio antenna than a nine-inch nail".
It is thought hundreds of lives could have been lost as a result of the failure of the devices, whose detection powers were no better than a random check. One truckload of rockets reportedly went through 23 checkpoints in Baghdad equipped with one of McCormick's devices without being spotted once.
Inspector general Aqil al-Turehi of the Iraqi interior ministry, who since 2009 has been in charge of an investigation into corruption around the deals, has told a BBC Newsnight investigation that for every bomb that was stopped at a Baghdad checkpoint, four got through and exploded.
It is now alleged that a key reason such a business could make tens of millions of pounds is the corruption of Iraqi officials. McCormick's success was fuelled by the payment of tens of millions of pounds in bribes to Iraqi officials and middlemen, it is claimed. Turehi told Newsnight that he is aware of at least eight senior Iraqis who took bribes, while a whistleblower who worked with McCormick says he saw accounts set up in false names to pay bribes to 15 Iraqis.
General Jihad al-Jabiri, who ran the Baghdad bomb squad, has been jailed for corruption as a result of the inquiry along with two others. Police sources said Jabiri was paid millions to purchase the ADE 651 and publicly defend it. More Iraqi officials are under investigation. A whistleblower who used to work with McCormick said they "don't care if people live or die"; the only thing they care about is "how much am I going to get back – cashback".
The whistleblower walked away from the operation when he grew suspicious about the device's effectiveness. When he challenged McCormick, he replied: "It does exactly what it's meant to." When the source asked what that meant, McCormick said: "It makes money."
The British government unwittingly gave McCormick a shield of respectability. His detectors were marketed at government-backed trade fairs. He used the logos of the International Association of Bomb Technicians and the Essex Chamber of Commerce, though he had no right to. He began to house the device in Pelican rigid cases of the type that are used to carry genuine military products and sourced official-looking stickers that warned users not to open up the detectors.
It took the government over a year to cotton on to the problems. In November 2008, a whistleblower wrote to Ian Pearson, a minister in the business department, urging him to shut down the trade in fake explosive detectors, but nothing was done. In January 2009, the whistleblower, who does not want to be named, sent a dossier detailing the scam that began with a hard-hitting title – "Dowsing rods endanger lives" – to James Arbuthnot, the chairman of the Commons defence select committee.
Arbuthnot promised to raise the matter with the minister for defence equipment and support but it was not until 12 months later that their export was banned on the basis that they were a danger to British and allied troops. By then, McCormick had made a fortune on the back of contracts with Iraqis, who paid $85m (￡55m) for the bogus devices.
McCormick is married with two children, and his family have the run of a farmhouse deep in the Somerset countryside, a ￡3.5m townhouse in Bath with a basement swimming pool that was previously owned by the Hollywood actor Nicolas Cage, and a holiday home in Cyprus. McCormick also bought his father a place in Florida, a ￡600,000 Sunseeker yacht called Aesthete, and three dressage horses for one of his daughters, who has ambitions of making the British equestrian team for the Olympics in Rio.
Police have identified ￡7m of McCormick's assets, which they intend to try to seize, but believe the fraudster has stashed at least that amount away from the eyes of the taxman and other authorities in Cyprus, Belize and Beirut.
McCormick had separate trading arrangements with other countries. In Lebanon, a UN agency and a luxury hotel were among purchasers. Devices were sold to Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan regime, Iran, China, Syria, Jordan, Georgia and Mexico. Some ended up in the US, Canada, Japan and Belgium. The broadcaster Stephen Fry saw Kenyan wildlife rangers using them while he was filming and told the BBC he thought it was "cynical, cruel and monstrous" that rangers – who were trying to track down poachers – had been told they could detect ivory at vast distances.
To make his devices seem more credible, McCormick claimed that his company, ATSC, had four laboratories in Romania and two in the UK, each working in isolation to protect the secret behind his amazing sensors. He boasted of a super-clever expert in the background, "like Q in James Bond", who turned his concepts into reality.
It was all nonsense, albeit potentially lethal for the people of Iraq, where 6,000 of the fraudulent gadgets formed a first line of defence against car bombs and suicide bombers at checkpoints. When the devices were opened, it emerged that cable sockets were unconnected and supposed data cards were linked to nothing. One scientist told the jury who on Tuesday convicted McCormick of three counts of fraud that the antenna intended to point to suspect substances was "no more a radio antenna than a nine-inch nail".
It is thought hundreds of lives could have been lost as a result of the failure of the devices, whose detection powers were no better than a random check. One truckload of rockets reportedly went through 23 checkpoints in Baghdad equipped with one of McCormick's devices without being spotted once.
Inspector general Aqil al-Turehi of the Iraqi interior ministry, who since 2009 has been in charge of an investigation into corruption around the deals, has told a BBC Newsnight investigation that for every bomb that was stopped at a Baghdad checkpoint, four got through and exploded.
It is now alleged that a key reason such a business could make tens of millions of pounds is the corruption of Iraqi officials. McCormick's success was fuelled by the payment of tens of millions of pounds in bribes to Iraqi officials and middlemen, it is claimed. Turehi told Newsnight that he is aware of at least eight senior Iraqis who took bribes, while a whistleblower who worked with McCormick says he saw accounts set up in false names to pay bribes to 15 Iraqis.
General Jihad al-Jabiri, who ran the Baghdad bomb squad, has been jailed for corruption as a result of the inquiry along with two others. Police sources said Jabiri was paid millions to purchase the ADE 651 and publicly defend it. More Iraqi officials are under investigation. A whistleblower who used to work with McCormick said they "don't care if people live or die"; the only thing they care about is "how much am I going to get back – cashback".
The whistleblower walked away from the operation when he grew suspicious about the device's effectiveness. When he challenged McCormick, he replied: "It does exactly what it's meant to." When the source asked what that meant, McCormick said: "It makes money."
The British government unwittingly gave McCormick a shield of respectability. His detectors were marketed at government-backed trade fairs. He used the logos of the International Association of Bomb Technicians and the Essex Chamber of Commerce, though he had no right to. He began to house the device in Pelican rigid cases of the type that are used to carry genuine military products and sourced official-looking stickers that warned users not to open up the detectors.
It took the government over a year to cotton on to the problems. In November 2008, a whistleblower wrote to Ian Pearson, a minister in the business department, urging him to shut down the trade in fake explosive detectors, but nothing was done. In January 2009, the whistleblower, who does not want to be named, sent a dossier detailing the scam that began with a hard-hitting title – "Dowsing rods endanger lives" – to James Arbuthnot, the chairman of the Commons defence select committee.
Arbuthnot promised to raise the matter with the minister for defence equipment and support but it was not until 12 months later that their export was banned on the basis that they were a danger to British and allied troops. By then, McCormick had made a fortune on the back of contracts with Iraqis, who paid $85m (￡55m) for the bogus devices.
McCormick is married with two children, and his family have the run of a farmhouse deep in the Somerset countryside, a ￡3.5m townhouse in Bath with a basement swimming pool that was previously owned by the Hollywood actor Nicolas Cage, and a holiday home in Cyprus. McCormick also bought his father a place in Florida, a ￡600,000 Sunseeker yacht called Aesthete, and three dressage horses for one of his daughters, who has ambitions of making the British equestrian team for the Olympics in Rio.
Police have identified ￡7m of McCormick's assets, which they intend to try to seize, but believe the fraudster has stashed at least that amount away from the eyes of the taxman and other authorities in Cyprus, Belize and Beirut.
McCormick had separate trading arrangements with other countries. In Lebanon, a UN agency and a luxury hotel were among purchasers. Devices were sold to Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan regime, Iran, China, Syria, Jordan, Georgia and Mexico. Some ended up in the US, Canada, Japan and Belgium. The broadcaster Stephen Fry saw Kenyan wildlife rangers using them while he was filming and told the BBC he thought it was "cynical, cruel and monstrous" that rangers – who were trying to track down poachers – had been told they could detect ivory at vast distances.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Secret History of the Vietnam War
If you thought you knew all there was to know about the Vietnam War, you were wrong. For example: ever heard of the "Mere Gook Rule," a code of conduct the US military came up with in order to make it easier for soldiers to murder Vietnamese civilians without feeling too bad about it?
Well, few people knew about this bit of history either until author Nick Turse discovered it in secret US military archives, which he used as the primary sources for his new(ish) book, Kill Everything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. The book is based on Turse's discovery of theretofore secret internal military investigations of US-perpetrated atrocities alongside extensive reporting in Vietnam and among American veterans, and it reminds us that the most significant fact about the Vietnam War is its most overlooked: massive and devastating Vietnamese civilian suffering.
The debate over the US's war in Vietnam continues to hang over this country's most recent and techno-futuristic imperial adventures. Nick's book makes for timely if extraordinarily painful reading, and I sat down with him recently to talk about the ongoing relevance of Vietnam, massacres, and secretly photocopying whole US government archives.
We have 30,000 books in print on the Vietnam War, and most of them deal with the American experience. They focus on American soldiers, on strategy, tactics, generals, or diplomacy out of Washington and the war managers there. But I didn't see any that really attempted to tell the complete story of what I came to see as the signature aspect of the conflict, which was Vietnamese civilian suffering. Millions of Vietnamese were killed, wounded, or made refugees by deliberate US policies, like the almost unrestrained bombing and artillery shelling across wide swaths of the countryside. That is, deliberate policies dictated at the highest levels of the US military. But any discussion of Vietnamese civilian suffering is condensed down to a couple pages or paragraphs on the massacre at My Lai.
I was working on a project on post-traumatic stress disorder among US Vietnam veterans. I would go down to the National Archives and I was trying to find hard data, military documents, to match up to the self-reports that we had from veterans about their experiences during the war. And on one of these trips I hit dead ends at every turn. After two weeks I had nothing to show for my research. I went to an archivist I worked with. I told him I couldn't go back to my boss empty handed. He thought about it for a second. He asked me, "do you think witnessing war crimes could cause post-traumatic stress?' I told him, "excellent hypothesis" and asked what he had.
Within an hour I was going through this box, many boxes actually, these reports of massacres, murders, rape, torture, assault, mutilation. Records put together by this Vietnam War Crimes Working Group impaneled in the Army Chief of Staff's office in the wake of the My Lai massacre, to track any war crimes cases or allegations that bubbled up from the field, to make sure that the Army wasn't caught flat footed again. And whenever it could it tried to tamp down these allegations.
It was actually a lot easier than I expected to find witnesses and survivors of these particular incidents. Generally because the Vietnamese are so tied to their land, even people who were bombed out of the countryside into the shantytowns and slums and refugee camps, after the war they returned to their home villages, and were living there when I got there. But it really transformed my project, because I went to talk to Vietnamese about this one spasm of violence that I had in the records but what they would talk to me about was ten years of living under bombs and shells and helicopter gunships, and what it took to negotiate every aspect of their lives around the American war.
What I was told in the countryside was beyond my ability to grasp, something that I could have never have gotten from the records. And I would talk to Vietnamese who would tell me about what it was like just to try and eke out an existence in the war zone. About having their home burned down five, six seven times. And then finally giving up rebuilding and starting to live a semi-subterranean life in their bomb shelter. About how they figured out ways to get out of that shelter, to get water or food or relieve themselves. And how their entire lives were just predicated on figuring out a way not to get killed. They would talk about artillery called down on a hamlet, and they would run into the bomb shelter. And stay there. And then this whole calculus would begin where they would try and figure out exactly when the right time to leave that shelter was. You had to wait until the artillery shelling stopped, but you couldn't leave too soon or you were apt to be cut down by a helicopter gunship that was flying overhead. You had to make sure you weren't caught in a crossfire between departing guerrillas and the onrushing Americans. But you couldn't stay down there too long because the Americans were coming, and they would start rolling grenades into the bomb shelters because they saw them as possible enemy bunkers, fighting positions. There all of these decisions to be made, and it wasn't just your life that depended on making it, but maybe your entire family. The whole family could get wiped out if you left a second too early or a second too late.
I couldn't get the documents out of my head, and I went to a couple Vietnam War historians that I knew and tried to interest them in the project. I said, "You really should get down to the National Archives and work on these." And everybody at that time, they were burned out on the War or working on a different project. And one of them suggested that I ought to pursue it. I went to my advisor at Columbia, David Rosner, and I said to him, "Do you think I could write a book and my dissertation at the same time?" I was 200 pages in on another dissertation. He said that I was nuts. If the documents were that important, then I should get down to the National Archives and get the documents.
I was just a grad student at the time, I didn't have the money for this endeavor. I said to him, "I'm going to have to put together a grant proposal and it would be months before I got down there." And he just pulled out his checkbook and wrote me a check on the spot and said, "Go down there and get these documents."
Within 24 hours I was down at the Archives. I went in first thing in the morning and I copied until they threw me out at night. I put every cent that he gave me into copying. I slept in my car in the Archives parking lot and I collected this entire collection.
I always thought he was a little paranoid. I didn't think there was a real need to get all the documents. It turned out that it was a smart move because these documents, sometime after I first published from the files, they were pulled from the Archives' shelves and they haven't been publicly available in the same way since. Now you have to file a Freedom of Information Act request.
Well, few people knew about this bit of history either until author Nick Turse discovered it in secret US military archives, which he used as the primary sources for his new(ish) book, Kill Everything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. The book is based on Turse's discovery of theretofore secret internal military investigations of US-perpetrated atrocities alongside extensive reporting in Vietnam and among American veterans, and it reminds us that the most significant fact about the Vietnam War is its most overlooked: massive and devastating Vietnamese civilian suffering.
The debate over the US's war in Vietnam continues to hang over this country's most recent and techno-futuristic imperial adventures. Nick's book makes for timely if extraordinarily painful reading, and I sat down with him recently to talk about the ongoing relevance of Vietnam, massacres, and secretly photocopying whole US government archives.
We have 30,000 books in print on the Vietnam War, and most of them deal with the American experience. They focus on American soldiers, on strategy, tactics, generals, or diplomacy out of Washington and the war managers there. But I didn't see any that really attempted to tell the complete story of what I came to see as the signature aspect of the conflict, which was Vietnamese civilian suffering. Millions of Vietnamese were killed, wounded, or made refugees by deliberate US policies, like the almost unrestrained bombing and artillery shelling across wide swaths of the countryside. That is, deliberate policies dictated at the highest levels of the US military. But any discussion of Vietnamese civilian suffering is condensed down to a couple pages or paragraphs on the massacre at My Lai.
I was working on a project on post-traumatic stress disorder among US Vietnam veterans. I would go down to the National Archives and I was trying to find hard data, military documents, to match up to the self-reports that we had from veterans about their experiences during the war. And on one of these trips I hit dead ends at every turn. After two weeks I had nothing to show for my research. I went to an archivist I worked with. I told him I couldn't go back to my boss empty handed. He thought about it for a second. He asked me, "do you think witnessing war crimes could cause post-traumatic stress?' I told him, "excellent hypothesis" and asked what he had.
Within an hour I was going through this box, many boxes actually, these reports of massacres, murders, rape, torture, assault, mutilation. Records put together by this Vietnam War Crimes Working Group impaneled in the Army Chief of Staff's office in the wake of the My Lai massacre, to track any war crimes cases or allegations that bubbled up from the field, to make sure that the Army wasn't caught flat footed again. And whenever it could it tried to tamp down these allegations.
It was actually a lot easier than I expected to find witnesses and survivors of these particular incidents. Generally because the Vietnamese are so tied to their land, even people who were bombed out of the countryside into the shantytowns and slums and refugee camps, after the war they returned to their home villages, and were living there when I got there. But it really transformed my project, because I went to talk to Vietnamese about this one spasm of violence that I had in the records but what they would talk to me about was ten years of living under bombs and shells and helicopter gunships, and what it took to negotiate every aspect of their lives around the American war.
What I was told in the countryside was beyond my ability to grasp, something that I could have never have gotten from the records. And I would talk to Vietnamese who would tell me about what it was like just to try and eke out an existence in the war zone. About having their home burned down five, six seven times. And then finally giving up rebuilding and starting to live a semi-subterranean life in their bomb shelter. About how they figured out ways to get out of that shelter, to get water or food or relieve themselves. And how their entire lives were just predicated on figuring out a way not to get killed. They would talk about artillery called down on a hamlet, and they would run into the bomb shelter. And stay there. And then this whole calculus would begin where they would try and figure out exactly when the right time to leave that shelter was. You had to wait until the artillery shelling stopped, but you couldn't leave too soon or you were apt to be cut down by a helicopter gunship that was flying overhead. You had to make sure you weren't caught in a crossfire between departing guerrillas and the onrushing Americans. But you couldn't stay down there too long because the Americans were coming, and they would start rolling grenades into the bomb shelters because they saw them as possible enemy bunkers, fighting positions. There all of these decisions to be made, and it wasn't just your life that depended on making it, but maybe your entire family. The whole family could get wiped out if you left a second too early or a second too late.
I couldn't get the documents out of my head, and I went to a couple Vietnam War historians that I knew and tried to interest them in the project. I said, "You really should get down to the National Archives and work on these." And everybody at that time, they were burned out on the War or working on a different project. And one of them suggested that I ought to pursue it. I went to my advisor at Columbia, David Rosner, and I said to him, "Do you think I could write a book and my dissertation at the same time?" I was 200 pages in on another dissertation. He said that I was nuts. If the documents were that important, then I should get down to the National Archives and get the documents.
I was just a grad student at the time, I didn't have the money for this endeavor. I said to him, "I'm going to have to put together a grant proposal and it would be months before I got down there." And he just pulled out his checkbook and wrote me a check on the spot and said, "Go down there and get these documents."
Within 24 hours I was down at the Archives. I went in first thing in the morning and I copied until they threw me out at night. I put every cent that he gave me into copying. I slept in my car in the Archives parking lot and I collected this entire collection.
I always thought he was a little paranoid. I didn't think there was a real need to get all the documents. It turned out that it was a smart move because these documents, sometime after I first published from the files, they were pulled from the Archives' shelves and they haven't been publicly available in the same way since. Now you have to file a Freedom of Information Act request.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Uttar Pradesh awarded as 'Most Improved State'
For the health sector in Uttar Pradesh, the last few years have been mired in controversies and graft during the previous BSP government where a multi crore scam in the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) caught national headlines. Last week when the state was awarded the 'Most Improved State' award by the union government, not only was the infamous past washed away but a new beginning was ushered in.
With Smart Cards made for 48 lakh families under the National Health Insurance Scheme, many feel this was a 360 degree turnaround in the health sector of Uttar Pradesh. Officials say, the success run was largely reached due to the leadership of the Chief Minister Mr. Akhilesh Yadav and the clear cut message of deliverance given from the State's Health Minister Mr. Ahmad Hasan.
The reward is a huge recognition to the efforts of thousands of workers in the state government who let this milestone happen. Under the scheme, the UPRIMSR in Saifai, Etawah has been rewarded for its good and laudable work as an independent hospital. Compared to the first phase of the scheme, more than 25% of the below poverty line (BPL) population has been assimilated and smart cards for 48, 65,692 families have been made.
As part of course correction, taken as part of the inferences drawn from the first phase of the scheme where the claims were not attended to by listed hospitals due to tardy payment schedules, for the first time the anomalies were weeded out by the help of technique and weekly reviews and a server was established at the state level. The intervention and initiative saw miraculous results and of the claims made by listed hospitals, as many as 74% were settled within 30 days.
To ensure and enhance transparency in listing of hospitals, a district insurance committee was formed under the chairmanship of the district magistrate at district levels. This committee comprised of the district magistrate, the chief medical officer/DKMA and the representatives of the selected insurance company and after due deliberations, the recommendations to list hospitals was sent for approval to SACHI.
Owing to the prompt process and quick decision making, 1486 hospitals have been listed so far, of which 823 are private hospitals while 663 are government hospitals. Aware of road blocks for the first time a two tier complaint redressal system was set rolling in which claimants dissatisfied with decisions could appeal to district and then to the state level committee.
The scheme, kick started to benefit the BPL families, as per the 2002 census provides a smart card at a basic fee of Rs 30 which is used to meet all administrative expenses incurred in the scheme. The field key officer (FKO) is named for the completion of the nomination process in which a family, with considered unit of five, is listed on the smart card. The hitherto used 32 kb card has been replaced by a 64 kb card so that the beneficiaries can avail the benefits of both the state and central schemes.
To smart card holding families a sum of Rs 30,000 is entitled on floater basis for one year and a total of 1090 pre decided diseases/packages is available through indoor patient facilities. The scheme also entails giving of food and Rs 100 per day for transport on discharge from hospital but a maximum of Rs 1,000 in a year. 75% of the annual premium on the scheme is borne by the central government and the remaining 25% by the state government.
The cost of a smart card (Rs 60) is separately borne by the union government. Till March 31, 2013 48 lakh smart cards have been made in Uttar Pradesh and nomination process is underway in 21 districts, by the end of which 58 lakh beneficiary families are likely to be assimilated in the scheme. The scheme is an added benefit for residents of the state who are already availing the 108 ambulance service for emergency services.
I have no views on the musical abilities of Canadian-born pop star Justin Bieber. But I do have strong views about the new prepaid debit card he has recently endorsed, called the SpendSmart Prepaid Mastercard. Although Justin Bieber says this prepaid card will help teenagers learn how to manage their personal finances, it will ultimately teach teenagers only one fundamental truth: Prepaid debit cards are not a good product. Teenagers and anyone else — including college students — are better off getting a savings and checking account with a local credit union than buying a prepaid debit card.
In the abstract, prepaid debit cards sound like a great idea. A person doesn’t have to worry about opening up a savings or checking account with a bank or another analogous financial institution to use plastic. But the abstract benefits of prepaid debit cards don’t coincide with the basic reality of the harms they inflict on average American consumers. As Mitchell Weiss, co-founder of the University of Hartford’s Center for Personal Financial Responsibility, said to U.S. News, “These cards prey on the under- and unbanked, who mistakenly believe they’re more economical than having a traditional checking account.”
Weiss is entirely correct. These prepaid debit cards don’t help consumers. This is evident from the multitude of fees these cards charge their users. For example, let’s look at the SpendSmart prepaid debit card that Justin Bieber is so enthusiastic about. It charges a monthly fee of $3.95, a $1.50 fee each time a card user withdraws funds from an ATM, a $0.50 fee each time a card user checks his or her card balance using an ATM and a $3 fee each time a card user does not use his or her card for a 30-day period.
The SpendSmart card is not the only prepaid debit card to charge exorbitant and excessive fees. Of 15 prepaid debit cards that Consumer Reports examined, five charged card users for not using their debit cards during a certain time period, 13 charged card users monthly fees and 14 charged card users for withdrawing funds from an ATM. Thus, it seems obvious from the empirical evidence that these prepaid debit cards do not serve the interests of consumers. Instead, they mainly serve the interests of wealthy corporations. As Michelle Jun, a lawyer with Consumers Union, said to The New York Times, “We would not recommend that parents use prepaid cards for their teens. It doesn’t help your teen establish a credit history or a relationship with a financial institution, so we recommend going the traditional route and opening up a checking account at your bank or credit union of choice.”
Recently, some of the biggest American financial conglomerates — including JP Morgan — have gotten into the prepaid debit card business, an activity these institutions avoided in the past. Why are these institutions suddenly so interested in the prepaid debit card business? The biggest reasons are the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and regulations subsequently enacted pursuant to Dodd-Frank and the Credit CARD Act of 2009, which include new restrictions on how much financial institutions can earn from debit card fees.
With Smart Cards made for 48 lakh families under the National Health Insurance Scheme, many feel this was a 360 degree turnaround in the health sector of Uttar Pradesh. Officials say, the success run was largely reached due to the leadership of the Chief Minister Mr. Akhilesh Yadav and the clear cut message of deliverance given from the State's Health Minister Mr. Ahmad Hasan.
The reward is a huge recognition to the efforts of thousands of workers in the state government who let this milestone happen. Under the scheme, the UPRIMSR in Saifai, Etawah has been rewarded for its good and laudable work as an independent hospital. Compared to the first phase of the scheme, more than 25% of the below poverty line (BPL) population has been assimilated and smart cards for 48, 65,692 families have been made.
As part of course correction, taken as part of the inferences drawn from the first phase of the scheme where the claims were not attended to by listed hospitals due to tardy payment schedules, for the first time the anomalies were weeded out by the help of technique and weekly reviews and a server was established at the state level. The intervention and initiative saw miraculous results and of the claims made by listed hospitals, as many as 74% were settled within 30 days.
To ensure and enhance transparency in listing of hospitals, a district insurance committee was formed under the chairmanship of the district magistrate at district levels. This committee comprised of the district magistrate, the chief medical officer/DKMA and the representatives of the selected insurance company and after due deliberations, the recommendations to list hospitals was sent for approval to SACHI.
Owing to the prompt process and quick decision making, 1486 hospitals have been listed so far, of which 823 are private hospitals while 663 are government hospitals. Aware of road blocks for the first time a two tier complaint redressal system was set rolling in which claimants dissatisfied with decisions could appeal to district and then to the state level committee.
The scheme, kick started to benefit the BPL families, as per the 2002 census provides a smart card at a basic fee of Rs 30 which is used to meet all administrative expenses incurred in the scheme. The field key officer (FKO) is named for the completion of the nomination process in which a family, with considered unit of five, is listed on the smart card. The hitherto used 32 kb card has been replaced by a 64 kb card so that the beneficiaries can avail the benefits of both the state and central schemes.
To smart card holding families a sum of Rs 30,000 is entitled on floater basis for one year and a total of 1090 pre decided diseases/packages is available through indoor patient facilities. The scheme also entails giving of food and Rs 100 per day for transport on discharge from hospital but a maximum of Rs 1,000 in a year. 75% of the annual premium on the scheme is borne by the central government and the remaining 25% by the state government.
The cost of a smart card (Rs 60) is separately borne by the union government. Till March 31, 2013 48 lakh smart cards have been made in Uttar Pradesh and nomination process is underway in 21 districts, by the end of which 58 lakh beneficiary families are likely to be assimilated in the scheme. The scheme is an added benefit for residents of the state who are already availing the 108 ambulance service for emergency services.
I have no views on the musical abilities of Canadian-born pop star Justin Bieber. But I do have strong views about the new prepaid debit card he has recently endorsed, called the SpendSmart Prepaid Mastercard. Although Justin Bieber says this prepaid card will help teenagers learn how to manage their personal finances, it will ultimately teach teenagers only one fundamental truth: Prepaid debit cards are not a good product. Teenagers and anyone else — including college students — are better off getting a savings and checking account with a local credit union than buying a prepaid debit card.
In the abstract, prepaid debit cards sound like a great idea. A person doesn’t have to worry about opening up a savings or checking account with a bank or another analogous financial institution to use plastic. But the abstract benefits of prepaid debit cards don’t coincide with the basic reality of the harms they inflict on average American consumers. As Mitchell Weiss, co-founder of the University of Hartford’s Center for Personal Financial Responsibility, said to U.S. News, “These cards prey on the under- and unbanked, who mistakenly believe they’re more economical than having a traditional checking account.”
Weiss is entirely correct. These prepaid debit cards don’t help consumers. This is evident from the multitude of fees these cards charge their users. For example, let’s look at the SpendSmart prepaid debit card that Justin Bieber is so enthusiastic about. It charges a monthly fee of $3.95, a $1.50 fee each time a card user withdraws funds from an ATM, a $0.50 fee each time a card user checks his or her card balance using an ATM and a $3 fee each time a card user does not use his or her card for a 30-day period.
The SpendSmart card is not the only prepaid debit card to charge exorbitant and excessive fees. Of 15 prepaid debit cards that Consumer Reports examined, five charged card users for not using their debit cards during a certain time period, 13 charged card users monthly fees and 14 charged card users for withdrawing funds from an ATM. Thus, it seems obvious from the empirical evidence that these prepaid debit cards do not serve the interests of consumers. Instead, they mainly serve the interests of wealthy corporations. As Michelle Jun, a lawyer with Consumers Union, said to The New York Times, “We would not recommend that parents use prepaid cards for their teens. It doesn’t help your teen establish a credit history or a relationship with a financial institution, so we recommend going the traditional route and opening up a checking account at your bank or credit union of choice.”
Recently, some of the biggest American financial conglomerates — including JP Morgan — have gotten into the prepaid debit card business, an activity these institutions avoided in the past. Why are these institutions suddenly so interested in the prepaid debit card business? The biggest reasons are the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and regulations subsequently enacted pursuant to Dodd-Frank and the Credit CARD Act of 2009, which include new restrictions on how much financial institutions can earn from debit card fees.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Social Welfare And the Future of Indonesia
The election of Joko Widodo as Jakarta governor is rightly seen as heralding a new kind of politics. As a political outsider, his fresh approach to practical issues like public transport, flooding and clean water demonstrated a keen familiarity with the concerns of most Indonesians. The campaign itself was positive and youthful, built around a personality that was modest and authoritative. And his victory, despite running with a deputy gubernatorial candidate of “double minority” status (both Chinese-Indonesian and Christian), sends a strong message that democracy is alive.
Significantly, the campaign of the man better known as Jokowi emphasized social welfare. The new governor has introduced the Jakarta Health Card (KJS), which provides free access to medical services, and the Jakarta Smart Card (KJP), which provides a monthly stipend for school fees. Related measures, including low-cost apartments and minimum wage rises, are part of the platform.
The promise of Jokonomics is evident. Increasing the minimum wage, against the persistent lobbying of big business, is a necessary tool to narrow the gap between price inflation and purchasing power. Access to health and education has improved dramatically. This effort at equality of opportunity is important because it allows talent and hard work to be rewarded.
On the other hand, constraints to increased welfare are emerging. City-owned hospitals have been inundated by patients seeking free healthcare, with an approximately 70 percent increase in patients in some wards. In many areas, people waited in lines from 5 AM on.Even deaths have been reported due to inadequate treatment from overcrowding. Such resource constraints are understandable and will take time to catch up.
Another bigger question is fiscal sustainability. Jokowi’s KJS will, in its inaugural year, add to the Jakarta budget around Rp. 900 bn in a total budget of Rp. 50 tn. This figure will undoubtedly grow as we create new capacity to fix overcrowding, and as population ages.
Who will pay for it and what taxes will be raised? With politicians focused on the next electoral cycle and civil servants for the most part lacking sophisticated modeling capabilities, few are thinking about the long term.
Jokonomics is important because it is a microcosm of what is happening on a national scale. In fact, it is part of the broader ramp-up of social spending in Indonesia. In 2004, a law was passed authorizing the creation of the National Social Security System (SJSN), the foundation of the new Indonesian welfare state. SJSN — scheduled for 2019 implementation — encompasses anti-poverty, health and pension programs.
Second, government spending will increase dramatically, from about 19 percent of GDP today to something closer to 30 percent — like Malaysia today. Depending on the number of people to be covered by the programs (as yet undecided), total government spending for pensions, health care and old-age savings could jump by nearly 9 times over 50 years, potentially blowing out the budget. As life expectancies increase and the working population ratio decreases, what seems sustainable at first may become steadily less so.
Third, as the public acclimates to low-priced social services, the programs will develop a prestige and momentum of their own, becoming effectively unrepealable. Future reformists trying to improve the system’s sustainability may be attacked for trying to “privatize” essential services.
Fourth, the state will likely become a major actor in the economy. A vast centralized procurement bureaucracy for all sorts of pharmaceutical, disability care, and financial services will develop, with significant possibilities for corruption and market inefficiencies.
This is a very strong critique of a program that has not, after all, started. But undeniably, this is also the normal way welfare states have developed all over the world, not just in the West but also in Asian countries like India, Japan and Malaysia — all of which have prohibitive debt-to-GDP ratios.
First, the principle of inter-generational sustainability. Fairness and justice are not just about redistribution today, but also about what is fair for our children and their future generations. Subsidizing welfare is pointless if that means consuming future income from the next generation and saddling our children with debt.
An independent commission of experts should be set up to cost social programs, project tax revenues and economic growth — in line with the US Office of Management and Budget. Programs must be revenue neutral: for example, the SJSN should only be rolled out as energy subsidies are eliminated.
Second, we need policies that incorporate market prices to provide a disincentive against overconsumption. This was the fall of the US health care system. Patients weren’t paying for enough of the cost of health care, so they overconsumed, doctors had no competitive environment to keep them innovative, and the hospitals were also happy to keep their beds full.
Third, we need better budget reporting from the state. Without a reliable budgeting system, nothing can be measured, and what isn’t measured, most often isn’t achieved. At the moment nobody can fully track central government welfare spending. The “social assistance” (bantuan sosial) category overstates social spending because it includes education programs (like School Operational Aid, or BOS), but not state pension programs. The other indicator, “social protection” (perlindungan sosial), is too narrow, and does notinclude most welfare programs.
These are massive changes and the next few years are crucial. If we can implement them sustainably, we will have created a more prosperous and fairer society. If not, our failure will haunt us for generations to come.
Today, at Universitas Pelita Harapan, Jokowi will be delivering his first university public lecture as governor. We are proud to welcome him and hope to contribute to his vision for a new Jakarta. We should harness this energy for the betterment of Indonesia, but keep in mind the perils of welfare, lest we fall into the trappings of our European cousins, mired in debt, social upheaval, economic chaos, and
geopolitical decline.
Significantly, the campaign of the man better known as Jokowi emphasized social welfare. The new governor has introduced the Jakarta Health Card (KJS), which provides free access to medical services, and the Jakarta Smart Card (KJP), which provides a monthly stipend for school fees. Related measures, including low-cost apartments and minimum wage rises, are part of the platform.
The promise of Jokonomics is evident. Increasing the minimum wage, against the persistent lobbying of big business, is a necessary tool to narrow the gap between price inflation and purchasing power. Access to health and education has improved dramatically. This effort at equality of opportunity is important because it allows talent and hard work to be rewarded.
On the other hand, constraints to increased welfare are emerging. City-owned hospitals have been inundated by patients seeking free healthcare, with an approximately 70 percent increase in patients in some wards. In many areas, people waited in lines from 5 AM on.Even deaths have been reported due to inadequate treatment from overcrowding. Such resource constraints are understandable and will take time to catch up.
Another bigger question is fiscal sustainability. Jokowi’s KJS will, in its inaugural year, add to the Jakarta budget around Rp. 900 bn in a total budget of Rp. 50 tn. This figure will undoubtedly grow as we create new capacity to fix overcrowding, and as population ages.
Who will pay for it and what taxes will be raised? With politicians focused on the next electoral cycle and civil servants for the most part lacking sophisticated modeling capabilities, few are thinking about the long term.
Jokonomics is important because it is a microcosm of what is happening on a national scale. In fact, it is part of the broader ramp-up of social spending in Indonesia. In 2004, a law was passed authorizing the creation of the National Social Security System (SJSN), the foundation of the new Indonesian welfare state. SJSN — scheduled for 2019 implementation — encompasses anti-poverty, health and pension programs.
Second, government spending will increase dramatically, from about 19 percent of GDP today to something closer to 30 percent — like Malaysia today. Depending on the number of people to be covered by the programs (as yet undecided), total government spending for pensions, health care and old-age savings could jump by nearly 9 times over 50 years, potentially blowing out the budget. As life expectancies increase and the working population ratio decreases, what seems sustainable at first may become steadily less so.
Third, as the public acclimates to low-priced social services, the programs will develop a prestige and momentum of their own, becoming effectively unrepealable. Future reformists trying to improve the system’s sustainability may be attacked for trying to “privatize” essential services.
Fourth, the state will likely become a major actor in the economy. A vast centralized procurement bureaucracy for all sorts of pharmaceutical, disability care, and financial services will develop, with significant possibilities for corruption and market inefficiencies.
This is a very strong critique of a program that has not, after all, started. But undeniably, this is also the normal way welfare states have developed all over the world, not just in the West but also in Asian countries like India, Japan and Malaysia — all of which have prohibitive debt-to-GDP ratios.
First, the principle of inter-generational sustainability. Fairness and justice are not just about redistribution today, but also about what is fair for our children and their future generations. Subsidizing welfare is pointless if that means consuming future income from the next generation and saddling our children with debt.
An independent commission of experts should be set up to cost social programs, project tax revenues and economic growth — in line with the US Office of Management and Budget. Programs must be revenue neutral: for example, the SJSN should only be rolled out as energy subsidies are eliminated.
Second, we need policies that incorporate market prices to provide a disincentive against overconsumption. This was the fall of the US health care system. Patients weren’t paying for enough of the cost of health care, so they overconsumed, doctors had no competitive environment to keep them innovative, and the hospitals were also happy to keep their beds full.
Third, we need better budget reporting from the state. Without a reliable budgeting system, nothing can be measured, and what isn’t measured, most often isn’t achieved. At the moment nobody can fully track central government welfare spending. The “social assistance” (bantuan sosial) category overstates social spending because it includes education programs (like School Operational Aid, or BOS), but not state pension programs. The other indicator, “social protection” (perlindungan sosial), is too narrow, and does notinclude most welfare programs.
These are massive changes and the next few years are crucial. If we can implement them sustainably, we will have created a more prosperous and fairer society. If not, our failure will haunt us for generations to come.
Today, at Universitas Pelita Harapan, Jokowi will be delivering his first university public lecture as governor. We are proud to welcome him and hope to contribute to his vision for a new Jakarta. We should harness this energy for the betterment of Indonesia, but keep in mind the perils of welfare, lest we fall into the trappings of our European cousins, mired in debt, social upheaval, economic chaos, and
geopolitical decline.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Learning to become more eco-friendly
The College at Brockport loves advertising the fact that we are considered to be a “green” campus. And for the most part, we are. Every week the blue recycle bins located in the dorms are set out in the hallway, full of empty pizza boxes and old notebook papers, and every week they are magically emptied. Wherever we look, a new recycle bin has popped up, whether that be by the bus stop across from Tower Fine Arts or at Kinetic Kafe, Brockport’s newest on-campus eatery which probably house the best recycle bins on campus.
It’s great that we are all being so eco-friendly on campus. However, there is still so much that isn’t being done to support the environment. Things as simple as throwing your pizza box in the recycle bin instead of the garbage at Trax. Yet these simple actions will never be taken if they are not addressed.
Let’s talk food. Brockport is known for its food. On a larger scale, the United States is known for its food, too. We are a nation of people who stereotypically love to eat, and we don’t like to skimp on the portions.
But what happens to all the food we don’t eat? Often at home it gets thrown away. Sure, there are health codes preventing anything but this from happening, but one health code shouldn’t mean the waste of plates upon plates of food.
What about compost? The amount of food students leave uneaten on their plates at dinner alone is mind-blowing. There are people all over the world who have nowhere near the same access to food as us, yet we swipe our Eagle One card and are offered an open buffet of all kinds of food imaginable, and are encouraged to put as much on our plate as is physically possible.
Once dinner is over, we dump the food in the garbage and go on our way. How hard would it be to have one garbage can for paper napkins and un-compostable material — such as dairy products — and one container for compostable food? This uneaten food could then be used to make fertilizer, instead of simply being thrown in a landfill somewhere.
The untouched trays of food in the dining halls, too, could be composted, instead of simply being thrown in the garbage at the end of the breakfast, lunch or dinner shift.
Composting our discarded food shouldn’t be limited to the dining halls. It wouldn’t be difficult to make a separate trash receptacle in our houses and apartments for compostable food and then create a community compost bin.
According to dosomething.org, “We generate 21.5 million tons of food waste each year. If we composted that food, it would reduce the same amount of greenhouse gas as taking 2 million cars off the road.”
Paper products are also constantly being wasted. One of the most popular places to hang out on campus after a Friday or Saturday night out is Trax. The tables are always full, and there are often times when people have to be kicked out once closing time comes around.
If this is such a popular place to eat, why is nothing offered except to-go boxes? Even if the campus wants to stick with using paper products at Trax, a paper plate uses half the amount of paper a box does. While a plate is an option at Trax, most people don’t know about it. Because servers do not ask whether orders are going to be eaten at a table or taken to-go, boxes wind up being the go-to for almost every meal.
Utensils used at Trax are also discarded. It would take barely any work to insert a container for recyclable plastic next to the garbage and paper containers at Trax, as is done at Kinetic Kafe, yet this is not done.
Does BASC or the student population hate the Earth? Of course not. However, often people simply do not open their eyes to reality. We are the generation of today, and everything we do has an impact on this earth, no matter how small.
That cigarette you casually flick to the ground on campus (yes, we all know the “smoke free campus” idea didn’t catch on; just check out the lawn by Mortimer) could be ingested by a squirrel or bird, or picked up by the wind and carried to a water supply, where the chemicals and toxins will then be released into the ecosystem.
As a basis for Tempo's expanding commercial-industrial LED lighting product line, the CLIP begins with the extruded raceway housing that serves as the industrial-strength backbone for mounting and thermal management. Fully integrated light engines, consisting of drivers, emitters and optics, are then mated to this multifunction raceway housing. With its rigid design and adjustable mounting points, the CLIP can be installed in high ceiling applications without requiring the addition of a costly truss mounting system, while greatly reducing the number of necessary power feeds. CLIP-based systems are targeted towards the breadth of commercial & industrial applications typically addressed by surface- or pendant-mounted fluorescent linear solutions and high-power HIDs. Examples include grocery stores, manufacturing and warehouses, convention centers, parking structures or large retail spaces.
Tempo Founder, Chairman and CTO, Dennis Pearson, principal architect of Tempo's vision for LED lighting product and systems development, commented, "We conceived of CLIP as an encompassing architecture to address well-established challenges in LED lighting, including thermal management, and user-accessible modularity with a design that provides maximum flexibility and longevity, regardless of the application. We quickly realized that CLIP solves challenges that were rather more fundamental to all commercial and industrial lighting as it massively reduces the overall costs of building electrical design, installation, commissioning and maintenance. The design of the housing and integral drivers, mounting methods, maintenance access and adaptability to the changing use of space were all key factors."
Terrence Walsh, President & CEO of Tempo commented, "It was Frank Lloyd Wright's prescription that 'form follows function' and CLIP embodies that precept, allowing designs in which the lighting platform serves as an extension of the overall architectural intent. CLIP was designed with both attention to current technical requirements as well as to the rapidly changing landscape of the SSL/LED market where future technical breakthroughs must be incorporated smoothly."
It’s great that we are all being so eco-friendly on campus. However, there is still so much that isn’t being done to support the environment. Things as simple as throwing your pizza box in the recycle bin instead of the garbage at Trax. Yet these simple actions will never be taken if they are not addressed.
Let’s talk food. Brockport is known for its food. On a larger scale, the United States is known for its food, too. We are a nation of people who stereotypically love to eat, and we don’t like to skimp on the portions.
But what happens to all the food we don’t eat? Often at home it gets thrown away. Sure, there are health codes preventing anything but this from happening, but one health code shouldn’t mean the waste of plates upon plates of food.
What about compost? The amount of food students leave uneaten on their plates at dinner alone is mind-blowing. There are people all over the world who have nowhere near the same access to food as us, yet we swipe our Eagle One card and are offered an open buffet of all kinds of food imaginable, and are encouraged to put as much on our plate as is physically possible.
Once dinner is over, we dump the food in the garbage and go on our way. How hard would it be to have one garbage can for paper napkins and un-compostable material — such as dairy products — and one container for compostable food? This uneaten food could then be used to make fertilizer, instead of simply being thrown in a landfill somewhere.
The untouched trays of food in the dining halls, too, could be composted, instead of simply being thrown in the garbage at the end of the breakfast, lunch or dinner shift.
Composting our discarded food shouldn’t be limited to the dining halls. It wouldn’t be difficult to make a separate trash receptacle in our houses and apartments for compostable food and then create a community compost bin.
According to dosomething.org, “We generate 21.5 million tons of food waste each year. If we composted that food, it would reduce the same amount of greenhouse gas as taking 2 million cars off the road.”
Paper products are also constantly being wasted. One of the most popular places to hang out on campus after a Friday or Saturday night out is Trax. The tables are always full, and there are often times when people have to be kicked out once closing time comes around.
If this is such a popular place to eat, why is nothing offered except to-go boxes? Even if the campus wants to stick with using paper products at Trax, a paper plate uses half the amount of paper a box does. While a plate is an option at Trax, most people don’t know about it. Because servers do not ask whether orders are going to be eaten at a table or taken to-go, boxes wind up being the go-to for almost every meal.
Utensils used at Trax are also discarded. It would take barely any work to insert a container for recyclable plastic next to the garbage and paper containers at Trax, as is done at Kinetic Kafe, yet this is not done.
Does BASC or the student population hate the Earth? Of course not. However, often people simply do not open their eyes to reality. We are the generation of today, and everything we do has an impact on this earth, no matter how small.
That cigarette you casually flick to the ground on campus (yes, we all know the “smoke free campus” idea didn’t catch on; just check out the lawn by Mortimer) could be ingested by a squirrel or bird, or picked up by the wind and carried to a water supply, where the chemicals and toxins will then be released into the ecosystem.
As a basis for Tempo's expanding commercial-industrial LED lighting product line, the CLIP begins with the extruded raceway housing that serves as the industrial-strength backbone for mounting and thermal management. Fully integrated light engines, consisting of drivers, emitters and optics, are then mated to this multifunction raceway housing. With its rigid design and adjustable mounting points, the CLIP can be installed in high ceiling applications without requiring the addition of a costly truss mounting system, while greatly reducing the number of necessary power feeds. CLIP-based systems are targeted towards the breadth of commercial & industrial applications typically addressed by surface- or pendant-mounted fluorescent linear solutions and high-power HIDs. Examples include grocery stores, manufacturing and warehouses, convention centers, parking structures or large retail spaces.
Tempo Founder, Chairman and CTO, Dennis Pearson, principal architect of Tempo's vision for LED lighting product and systems development, commented, "We conceived of CLIP as an encompassing architecture to address well-established challenges in LED lighting, including thermal management, and user-accessible modularity with a design that provides maximum flexibility and longevity, regardless of the application. We quickly realized that CLIP solves challenges that were rather more fundamental to all commercial and industrial lighting as it massively reduces the overall costs of building electrical design, installation, commissioning and maintenance. The design of the housing and integral drivers, mounting methods, maintenance access and adaptability to the changing use of space were all key factors."
Terrence Walsh, President & CEO of Tempo commented, "It was Frank Lloyd Wright's prescription that 'form follows function' and CLIP embodies that precept, allowing designs in which the lighting platform serves as an extension of the overall architectural intent. CLIP was designed with both attention to current technical requirements as well as to the rapidly changing landscape of the SSL/LED market where future technical breakthroughs must be incorporated smoothly."
Monday, April 8, 2013
Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 Review
The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 convertible laptop, is essentially a smaller version of the Yoga 13 we previously reviewed. Unfortunately, with its smaller form-factor, comes some sacrifice. The Lenovo Yoga 11 runs Windows RT as opposed to the full version of Windows 8. It’s also powered by NVIDIA Tegra 3 1.4ghz Processor, which offers less performance than its Intel powered Ultrabook counterparts. That said the IdeaPad is still a very capable system. Under the hood you get 2GB of DDR3 Ram, a 64GB drive, bluetooth, wi-fi, HDMI out, and a 720p HD camera. It also comes with plenty of ports – including an SD card slot and two USB ports
And like its bigger brother, the IdeaPad Yoga 11 offers a truly unique form-factor – it can operate in several modes, including tablet mode, laptop mode, tent mode and stand mode – each opening up a world of possibilities. Plus, made of magnesium aluminum alloy with a soft-touch finish, it also offers a similar excellent build quality. The Yoga 11 however, offers a smaller form-factor thanks to 11.6″ display. This display is very good – it’s able to get pretty bright, it offers pretty vivid colors, and sports a healthy 1366×768 resolution. The Yoga 11 also measures just .61 inches thick and weighs nearly a pound less than the the Yoga 13. But weighing in at 2.6lbs, it’s definitely heavier than your typical tablet, yet a lot lighter than your typical laptop. As a matter of fact, it weighs over a pound more than the Microsoft Surface. The Yoga 11 also sports the same excellent chicklet style keyboard that the 13 has. Unfortunately, its touchpad is a bit too sensitive for our taste.
The system comes loaded with Windows RT which limits you to only RT compatible apps that are available in the Windows store. On the plus side, Microsoft Office 2013 RT is included which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and One Note.
General performance on the Yoga 11 is good. The system mostly feels responsive to swipes and most apps load quickly and perform well. Boot time for our system is 45 seconds Our biggest gripe however is with internet explorer which seems to experience frequent lags when loading up pages and clicking on links. We’re not sure if the Yoga’s hardware is to blame, or its software.
Battery life for the Yoga 11 is nothing short of spectacular. We experienced an average battery life of 12 hours on a higher brightness setting with Wi-Fi turned on. And we’ve seen others with reports of 17 hours on lower brightness settings! The Yoga is also able to quickly charge up. To that effect, in less than an hour it can charge over 80% full of its capacity.
The smaller display makes the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 super travel friendly, yet it’s large enough to use comfortably on the road. As a matter of fact, we feel like the Yoga 11′s form-factor offers the best of both worlds for travelers. To that effect, it’s easy to carry in your bag while providing ample display real estate, and at the same time it elliminates the need to carry around a tablet. We also appreciate that it comes in two color choices – a fun orange or in a silver gray color. Overall, the Yoga 11 is a great alternative to the Microsoft Surface, as long as you don’t mind the extra heft. It also offers great build quality, an ergonomic keyboard, excellent battery life, and overall it’s a dream form-factor for a traveler. You just need to take into consideration that this is a laptop first, and a tablet second.
That said, If you’re looking for better performance, and you desire the same convenient form-factor, we highly recommend waiting for the Yoga 11s Ultrabook to come out in the summer. The Yoga 11s will offer the same great compact form-factor as the IdeaPad Yoga 11, but it will be powered by a more powerful Intel Core processor and will run a full version of Windows 8. And it shouldn’t cost more than $150 more than the current Yoga 11 model. In any case, the Yoga 11 we reviewed here is currently available for just $499 on Amazon, making it quite the steal for the quality you’re getting.
Relegated to coming off the bench, Josh Gatt played the final 32 minutes but couldn't keep Molde from falling into last place in the Tippeligaen in a loss to Brann on Saturday.
Having lost the first two matches of the season, Molde coach Ole Gunnar Solskj?r, in whose reign the defending back-to-back Norwegian champions had never lost two consecutive matches, made multiple changes to the starting lineup. One of those changes included Gatt losing his starting spot on the right wing.
The changes seemed to work on the offensive end in the first half as Molde had a plethora of chances, but so did Brann. At the end of 45 minutes, a lack of finishing on both ends kept the match scoreless.
It continued to be scoreless even after introducing the American winger, who managed a shot on net in the 75th minute, but that changed in the 80th minute, when Amin Askar scored the match's only go for Brann. Martin Pusi? played a long ball through to Askar, who beat Molde goalkeeper Ole S?derberg one-on-one.
Aalesund doubled its lead in the 15th minute through a Leke James goal. After the ball ricocheted off a couple of players around the edge of the 18-yard box, James ended up with the ball and fired it past Clark.
H?nefoss answered five minutes later. Heiner Mora sent in a cross from the right side of the field to the middle of the box that met Remond Mendy, who, unmarked around the penalty spot, placed it with his head to the right side of the net.
In the 33rd minute, Kevin Larsen equalized for the away team, sending in a low 23-yard shot into the back of the net.
After halftime, H?nefoss got its first and only lead of the match through a Riku Riski goal in the 50th minute. Mora sent in a long ball to Riski which allowed the Icelander to get behind the defense, and Riski placed the ball past a helpless Sten Grytebust.
Two goals within a six-minute span gave Aalesund the win, though, starting in the 60th minute. Peter Orry Larsen beat his man to a Jo Nymo Matland cross and beat a diving Clark to equalize, while Phillips scored in the match-winning goal when Barrantes played a long ball to get him one-on-one with Clark. Phillips didn't miss from 13 yards out.
And like its bigger brother, the IdeaPad Yoga 11 offers a truly unique form-factor – it can operate in several modes, including tablet mode, laptop mode, tent mode and stand mode – each opening up a world of possibilities. Plus, made of magnesium aluminum alloy with a soft-touch finish, it also offers a similar excellent build quality. The Yoga 11 however, offers a smaller form-factor thanks to 11.6″ display. This display is very good – it’s able to get pretty bright, it offers pretty vivid colors, and sports a healthy 1366×768 resolution. The Yoga 11 also measures just .61 inches thick and weighs nearly a pound less than the the Yoga 13. But weighing in at 2.6lbs, it’s definitely heavier than your typical tablet, yet a lot lighter than your typical laptop. As a matter of fact, it weighs over a pound more than the Microsoft Surface. The Yoga 11 also sports the same excellent chicklet style keyboard that the 13 has. Unfortunately, its touchpad is a bit too sensitive for our taste.
The system comes loaded with Windows RT which limits you to only RT compatible apps that are available in the Windows store. On the plus side, Microsoft Office 2013 RT is included which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and One Note.
General performance on the Yoga 11 is good. The system mostly feels responsive to swipes and most apps load quickly and perform well. Boot time for our system is 45 seconds Our biggest gripe however is with internet explorer which seems to experience frequent lags when loading up pages and clicking on links. We’re not sure if the Yoga’s hardware is to blame, or its software.
Battery life for the Yoga 11 is nothing short of spectacular. We experienced an average battery life of 12 hours on a higher brightness setting with Wi-Fi turned on. And we’ve seen others with reports of 17 hours on lower brightness settings! The Yoga is also able to quickly charge up. To that effect, in less than an hour it can charge over 80% full of its capacity.
The smaller display makes the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 super travel friendly, yet it’s large enough to use comfortably on the road. As a matter of fact, we feel like the Yoga 11′s form-factor offers the best of both worlds for travelers. To that effect, it’s easy to carry in your bag while providing ample display real estate, and at the same time it elliminates the need to carry around a tablet. We also appreciate that it comes in two color choices – a fun orange or in a silver gray color. Overall, the Yoga 11 is a great alternative to the Microsoft Surface, as long as you don’t mind the extra heft. It also offers great build quality, an ergonomic keyboard, excellent battery life, and overall it’s a dream form-factor for a traveler. You just need to take into consideration that this is a laptop first, and a tablet second.
That said, If you’re looking for better performance, and you desire the same convenient form-factor, we highly recommend waiting for the Yoga 11s Ultrabook to come out in the summer. The Yoga 11s will offer the same great compact form-factor as the IdeaPad Yoga 11, but it will be powered by a more powerful Intel Core processor and will run a full version of Windows 8. And it shouldn’t cost more than $150 more than the current Yoga 11 model. In any case, the Yoga 11 we reviewed here is currently available for just $499 on Amazon, making it quite the steal for the quality you’re getting.
Relegated to coming off the bench, Josh Gatt played the final 32 minutes but couldn't keep Molde from falling into last place in the Tippeligaen in a loss to Brann on Saturday.
Having lost the first two matches of the season, Molde coach Ole Gunnar Solskj?r, in whose reign the defending back-to-back Norwegian champions had never lost two consecutive matches, made multiple changes to the starting lineup. One of those changes included Gatt losing his starting spot on the right wing.
The changes seemed to work on the offensive end in the first half as Molde had a plethora of chances, but so did Brann. At the end of 45 minutes, a lack of finishing on both ends kept the match scoreless.
It continued to be scoreless even after introducing the American winger, who managed a shot on net in the 75th minute, but that changed in the 80th minute, when Amin Askar scored the match's only go for Brann. Martin Pusi? played a long ball through to Askar, who beat Molde goalkeeper Ole S?derberg one-on-one.
Aalesund doubled its lead in the 15th minute through a Leke James goal. After the ball ricocheted off a couple of players around the edge of the 18-yard box, James ended up with the ball and fired it past Clark.
H?nefoss answered five minutes later. Heiner Mora sent in a cross from the right side of the field to the middle of the box that met Remond Mendy, who, unmarked around the penalty spot, placed it with his head to the right side of the net.
In the 33rd minute, Kevin Larsen equalized for the away team, sending in a low 23-yard shot into the back of the net.
After halftime, H?nefoss got its first and only lead of the match through a Riku Riski goal in the 50th minute. Mora sent in a long ball to Riski which allowed the Icelander to get behind the defense, and Riski placed the ball past a helpless Sten Grytebust.
Two goals within a six-minute span gave Aalesund the win, though, starting in the 60th minute. Peter Orry Larsen beat his man to a Jo Nymo Matland cross and beat a diving Clark to equalize, while Phillips scored in the match-winning goal when Barrantes played a long ball to get him one-on-one with Clark. Phillips didn't miss from 13 yards out.
Monday, April 1, 2013
A Guest Post by Brenda Rothman
Six years ago, the United Nations declared April 2 to be World Autism Awareness Day. For most of the 20th Century, autism was rarely talked about in public, because the psychiatric establishment — led by a psychologist and popular author named Bruno Bettelheim, considered the preeminent authority on the subject in the 1960s — blamed the condition on the emotional trauma of being raised by a cold, unloving mother. The “refrigerator mother” theory was utterly discredited long ago as an elaborate fraud, and autism is now understood to be a life-long disability caused by complex interactions between genes and the environment. Autistic people and their families are still subject to stigma, however, in part because many of the organizations that view Autism Awareness Day as a fundraising opportunity use fear-mongering language like Autism Speaks’ oft-repeated refrain that “more children are diagnosed with autism each year than with juvenile diabetes, AIDS or cancer, combined.”
In an age when it’s common to make the casual, even flippant observation that the guy in engineering or the socially awkward character on TV is “on the spectrum,” it’s hard to imagine that just 40 years ago, few pediatricians, special-education teachers, and therapists had even heard of autism. There was no spectrum. “Infantile autism,” as the condition was known at the time, was considered a very rare malady of childhood, in part because it was so narrowly defined. Children with intellectual disability (then called “mental retardation”) were excluded from a diagnosis by Leo Kanner, the child psychiatrist that discovered autism in America in the 1940s. Autistic children who could use speech were often diagnosed with something else, like childhood schizophrenia. Adults were never considered for a diagnosis of infantile autism, and teenagers who would now be diagnosed as having Asperger syndrome or PDD-NOS were said to have “residual autism” by the handful of specialists in the country who could recognize it.
That landscape changed radically in the 1980s and 1990s, when the diagnostic criteria were dramatically broadened to include the full breadth of what we now call the spectrum. The debunking of Bettelheim and his ilk freed families to talk about autism candidly and openly, and a brave generation of parents took up the cause of advocating for their children’s needs. In those days, promoting autism awareness was an effective remedy for years of silence and shame.
But that’s not where we are now. Our society is not only “aware” of autism, it’s obsessed with the subject. Unfortunately, though, this obsession is often misdirected. Instead of worrying about what families of autistic people are supposed to do when the services and support devoted to children run out after high school, or how autistic adults themselves are supposed to lead happy and productive lives without access to employment and health care, we perseverate about the latest theories of autism causation. Did you see the news that older grandfathers may contribute to autism risk? Have you heard the rumor that living near a freeway is somehow related to autism? Did you see the thing about mothers who take antidepressants or fail to take folic acid supplements? Have you read the story in the New York Times about that new inflammation theory? It’s enough to make young couples think twice about having a kid at all.
If you even skim autism headlines, you’re familiar with all of these things. But here’s something you may not have heard: only a tiny fraction of the money donated to fundraising organizations like Autism Speaks in April goes to making the lives of autistic people and their families happier, healthier, and more secure. Most of the money raised during high-profile promotional campaigns like Light It Up Blue goes to major universities and laboratories to fund research into the latest cause du jour.
I’m in favor of funding smart and ethical research. By studying autism, we’ve learned very valuable things about genetics, human development, and how the brain works. But if the hidden cost of this education is panic-inducing language that further stigmatizes autistic people and their families, it’s a bitter pill. That’s why I recently signed a pledge from the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network to only participate in public events that include autistic people offering an inside perspective of the reality of their own lives.
Three years ago, a professional book indexer and choirmaster at her church in Virginia named Paula Durbin-Westby, who is on the spectrum herself, decided to “take back” April 2 and devote it to autism acceptance, rather than mere awareness. By promoting the notion that autism is a life-long disability rather than a “disorder” or an “epidemic,” and stressing the fact that people at all points on the spectrum have valuable gifts to offer society as well as significant challenges in daily life, she hoped to refocus society’s efforts on initiatives that will help autistic people and their families succeed, such as the development of new, affordable technologies to enable communication for people who have difficulty using speech.
When Jack was a baby, he was diagnosed with classic autism, and is still developmentally delayed in many ways. But at 8 1/2, he is a handsome, sweet, tirelessly curious boy who notices minute details in keys, cars, and architecture, and can recall them easily. He enthusiastically designs and directs family projects like building a replica of Lincoln’s funeral train car, and loves bowling, old fire engines with no cabs, Kubota tractors, horses, cats, dogs, steam trains, propeller planes, presidents, and traveling.
Autism is part of my son Jack’s biology, as much as the shape of his nose and the color of his skin. I want the world to welcome him for the beautiful person he is. As a parent, an activist, and an ally of the autistic community, I want public acceptance of autistic people, not just autism “awareness.” I don’t want my son or any autistic person to be feared or pitied for a fundamental part of their being. I don’t want Jack to feel ashamed of himself, or to have to hide who he is, to be included. That’s why I support the autistic community’s celebration of April as Autism Acceptance Month.
I didn’t come easily to this place of acceptance. My experiences of becoming a parent and my friendships with autistic people led me to it. So let me share with you my journey of raising my son Jack. I’ll start way back, in the early days of my marriage.
Like every couple, my husband and I transitioned from the honeymoon stage to the reality stage, complete with arguments about toothpaste tubes and dishwasher loading. Our ideas of what should be happening, and what was actually happening, were compounded by infertility. After trying to work through these difficulties on our own, my husband sought professional help. He sat on the couch with a psychiatrist who asked him, “How can I help you?” My husband replied, “It’s my wife. She’s having a really hard time. She’s very focused on having children. She doesn’t want to do anything fun. Even when we see a movie, she ends up crying.” My husband looked at the psychiatrist holding his pen and pad. The psychiatrist replied, “Well, now we know why your wife should be here. Why are you here?”
In an age when it’s common to make the casual, even flippant observation that the guy in engineering or the socially awkward character on TV is “on the spectrum,” it’s hard to imagine that just 40 years ago, few pediatricians, special-education teachers, and therapists had even heard of autism. There was no spectrum. “Infantile autism,” as the condition was known at the time, was considered a very rare malady of childhood, in part because it was so narrowly defined. Children with intellectual disability (then called “mental retardation”) were excluded from a diagnosis by Leo Kanner, the child psychiatrist that discovered autism in America in the 1940s. Autistic children who could use speech were often diagnosed with something else, like childhood schizophrenia. Adults were never considered for a diagnosis of infantile autism, and teenagers who would now be diagnosed as having Asperger syndrome or PDD-NOS were said to have “residual autism” by the handful of specialists in the country who could recognize it.
That landscape changed radically in the 1980s and 1990s, when the diagnostic criteria were dramatically broadened to include the full breadth of what we now call the spectrum. The debunking of Bettelheim and his ilk freed families to talk about autism candidly and openly, and a brave generation of parents took up the cause of advocating for their children’s needs. In those days, promoting autism awareness was an effective remedy for years of silence and shame.
But that’s not where we are now. Our society is not only “aware” of autism, it’s obsessed with the subject. Unfortunately, though, this obsession is often misdirected. Instead of worrying about what families of autistic people are supposed to do when the services and support devoted to children run out after high school, or how autistic adults themselves are supposed to lead happy and productive lives without access to employment and health care, we perseverate about the latest theories of autism causation. Did you see the news that older grandfathers may contribute to autism risk? Have you heard the rumor that living near a freeway is somehow related to autism? Did you see the thing about mothers who take antidepressants or fail to take folic acid supplements? Have you read the story in the New York Times about that new inflammation theory? It’s enough to make young couples think twice about having a kid at all.
If you even skim autism headlines, you’re familiar with all of these things. But here’s something you may not have heard: only a tiny fraction of the money donated to fundraising organizations like Autism Speaks in April goes to making the lives of autistic people and their families happier, healthier, and more secure. Most of the money raised during high-profile promotional campaigns like Light It Up Blue goes to major universities and laboratories to fund research into the latest cause du jour.
I’m in favor of funding smart and ethical research. By studying autism, we’ve learned very valuable things about genetics, human development, and how the brain works. But if the hidden cost of this education is panic-inducing language that further stigmatizes autistic people and their families, it’s a bitter pill. That’s why I recently signed a pledge from the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network to only participate in public events that include autistic people offering an inside perspective of the reality of their own lives.
Three years ago, a professional book indexer and choirmaster at her church in Virginia named Paula Durbin-Westby, who is on the spectrum herself, decided to “take back” April 2 and devote it to autism acceptance, rather than mere awareness. By promoting the notion that autism is a life-long disability rather than a “disorder” or an “epidemic,” and stressing the fact that people at all points on the spectrum have valuable gifts to offer society as well as significant challenges in daily life, she hoped to refocus society’s efforts on initiatives that will help autistic people and their families succeed, such as the development of new, affordable technologies to enable communication for people who have difficulty using speech.
When Jack was a baby, he was diagnosed with classic autism, and is still developmentally delayed in many ways. But at 8 1/2, he is a handsome, sweet, tirelessly curious boy who notices minute details in keys, cars, and architecture, and can recall them easily. He enthusiastically designs and directs family projects like building a replica of Lincoln’s funeral train car, and loves bowling, old fire engines with no cabs, Kubota tractors, horses, cats, dogs, steam trains, propeller planes, presidents, and traveling.
Autism is part of my son Jack’s biology, as much as the shape of his nose and the color of his skin. I want the world to welcome him for the beautiful person he is. As a parent, an activist, and an ally of the autistic community, I want public acceptance of autistic people, not just autism “awareness.” I don’t want my son or any autistic person to be feared or pitied for a fundamental part of their being. I don’t want Jack to feel ashamed of himself, or to have to hide who he is, to be included. That’s why I support the autistic community’s celebration of April as Autism Acceptance Month.
I didn’t come easily to this place of acceptance. My experiences of becoming a parent and my friendships with autistic people led me to it. So let me share with you my journey of raising my son Jack. I’ll start way back, in the early days of my marriage.
Like every couple, my husband and I transitioned from the honeymoon stage to the reality stage, complete with arguments about toothpaste tubes and dishwasher loading. Our ideas of what should be happening, and what was actually happening, were compounded by infertility. After trying to work through these difficulties on our own, my husband sought professional help. He sat on the couch with a psychiatrist who asked him, “How can I help you?” My husband replied, “It’s my wife. She’s having a really hard time. She’s very focused on having children. She doesn’t want to do anything fun. Even when we see a movie, she ends up crying.” My husband looked at the psychiatrist holding his pen and pad. The psychiatrist replied, “Well, now we know why your wife should be here. Why are you here?”
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