A thorn in each other’s side

What Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan was able to keep under wraps for more than 10 years has eluded Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi to cover up for less than a year. Hence, the link between growing tensions in Cairo and the unprecedented anti-government protests in Istanbul. Oddly enough, Egyptians may be the closest observers-- outside Turkey—in following up the Turkish turmoil.

Few weeks after Mursi took office last summer, many people in the traditionally diverse Egyptian society saw through the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood from which the president hails.

It became increasingly clear that Mursi, who had portrayed himself during the election campaign as a “president for all Egyptians”, is only the president of his clan. His successive decisions and biased political discourse have exposed him as being manipulated by his group to impose a prejudicial cultural agenda.

In contrast, Erdogan was smart and shrewd enough to spend long years to carry out his ideological project during which he surmounted numerous obstacles, including a military coup bid in 2007. Thus, he was able to lead Turks into believing that he followed a secular ruling system and that his key objective was to achieve economic development, which has shown steady success in recent years.

Erodgan also demonstrated commitment to the Western-style democracy. On his re-election in 2007, he pledged to advocate freedom, justice, welfare and democracy for all Turks, confirming respect for those who did not vote for him.

In July last year when the Brotherhood followers were celebrating Mursi's win of the presidential post, Mohamed Al Beltagui, a leading official in the group’s Freedom and Justice Party, went on the record as saying that the 48.5 per cent of the Egyptians who had not voted for Mursi are “mere ghosts.”

Pathetically, around five months into office, Mursi’s decisions and addresses as well as his group’s actions sharply divided Egyptians into backers and opponents. Each side espouses an identity and an agenda alien to the country’s age-old features. This division has been repeatedly reflected in massive rallies staged by the Brotherhood and its allies aimed at flexing muscles against opponents.

Last week, Erdogan said he could mobilize millions of his supporters in response to the massive anti-government protests held in several Turkish cities.

Years into a rule often termed as wise, Turkey now figures prominently among countries infringing freedom of the press. Weeks after Mursi took office, his backers encircled the state-run Media Production City and filed a flurry of lawsuits and even made threats against media figures.

Contrary to his calls on the Egyptian regime to observe secular rules, Erdogan has recently enforced anti-freedom codes including monitoring the people’s public conduct.
Such laws are not yet in place in Egypt. Yet, artists in Egypt have recently become the target of Islamist radicals on religious TV stations. The militant TV clerics have also accused their critics of defaming religion, a charge on which several Egyptian politicians and media personalities have recently been quizzed.

However, the ruling systems in the two countries are different on one score. It took Erdogan many years before trying to do this. For its part, the Mursi regime has been unwise enough to rush into carrying out its project at cultural, political, social and legal levels.

Egyptians and Turks share the possibility of confronting their own rulers to block the controversial ideological project, regardless of whether it has already fulfilled achievement as in Turkey, or proved a fiasco as in Egypt.

Coincidently, the Egyptian and Turkish rulers have come to be a burden for each other. The matter is not limited to the similarity in the names of the ruling parties in both countries. It’s the Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt; Erdogan’s party is called Justice and Development.

Egypt’s Islamist rulers have often portrayed Erdogan’s ruling system as their ideal example. Erdogan, meanwhile, has presented himself in the past two years as the regional sponsor of the new rulers in Tunisia and Egypt. Erdogan’s Turkey has also been involved in triggering changes in Libya and the war in Syria.

With Egypt’s economy in the doldrums, Turkey has repeatedly unveiled economic support for Cairo, showing Ankara as a staunch backer of Egypt’s Brotherhood rule. The Brotherhood's opponents have come to view Ankara as throwing its weight behind bids to change Egypt’s cultural identity.

In a Facebook comment, Erdogan described Mursi as “an example that should be followed by youths". During a visit to Cairo last September, Erdogan called the situation in Egypt “an awakening that spreads like waves in the world".

In the meantime, Brotherhood officials, mainly the deputy supreme guide Khayrat Al Shater, have made a series of trips to Turkey in recent months. Mursi himself attended a recent congress of Erodgan’s Justice and Development Party.

This interrelationship between two types of Brotherhood emphasizes the similar suffering facing society in Egypt and Turkey. Each is in the grip of a renewed identity crisis, which dates back to long decades.

Irrespective of intrinsic differences including those between Ataturk’s project in Turkey and Nasser’s in Egypt, both leaders have instilled in their own people deep-seated values, which cannot be changed overnight.

In the past two weeks, Egyptians have shown sympathy for Turkish protesters probably more than some Turks have done. The reason is that the Egyptian sympathizers hope to see the model widely publicized by Egypt’s Brotherhood as their ideal will be politically routed.

Most Egyptians have no idea about the demands made by the Alawite minority in Turkey or reasons for the heated conflict between Ataturkists and Erdoganists. Still, these Egyptians eagerly want to frustrate the Brotherhood backers, who vehemently advocate Erdogan’s ideology in Egypt.

At the same time, the Brotherhood’s ruling in Egypt and the resultant problems have made the Turkish public aware of the outcome of Ankara’s support for governing Islamists in the Arab world and the shift Erdogan’s ruling system has taken.

With demonstrations mounting in Turkey amid political uncertainty, Egyptian protest groups brace for mass nationwide rallies on June 30, which marks the first anniversary of Mursi’s presidency. The protesters will call for withdrawing confidence from Mursi.Read the full story at www.ecived.com/en!

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."

Art's Window Into the Climate Crisis

Paul Douglas considers himself an "albino unicorn." A moderate Republican, he's also a meteorologist who believes climate change is real. That position was met with scorn by some of the right, who called him a "RINO [Republican In Name Only] climate poser," a "global warming hoax promoter," and worse. Theater artist and musician Cynthia Hopkins didn't need much convincing about the dire consequences we face if we don't address the climate crisis, but two events were pivotal in pushing her to take up the subject in her art--a talk on sustainability at the 2009 Tipping Point conference and a residency with Cape Farewell, a program that aims to "instigate a cultural response to climate change." In 2010, she joined Cape Farewell's Arctic Expedition, in which artists and marine scientists experienced the very environment most threatened by global warming.

While their career paths are sharply divergent, Douglas and Hopkins share twin tools when addressing climate change--science and spirituality. A longtime fixture in Twin Cities media, Douglas is founder of the Media Logic Group, which runs several companies dedicated to collecting, analyzing, and presenting weather data. He's also an evangelical Christian, and biblical principles of environmental stewardship shape his stance on global warming. While deeply informed by research, Hopkins aims for a "wider, vaster lens" in her new work, the Walker co-commissioned music-theater piece This Clement World, which she says looks at both the spiritual and scientific sides of the issue. In advance of the Midwest premiere of This Clement World, Douglas and Hopkins sat down with me to discuss their personal climate journeys and ways that art and science can cooperate in changing minds about a changing planet.

As soon as someone takes on "political" themes in their art, the perception of the work's goals often seems to change: it's not art for art's sake but includes an element of advocacy. Cynthia, do you notice that audiences or critics respond to the premise of this piece differently than past works? What is your aim with the work as a whole, and how does advocacy--the changing of minds--factor in?

I'm always baffled when I hear this issue is politicized. I think it's only politicized insofar as politics is so influenced by the financial markets, and I think that's sad and horrifying. I don't think of it as a political issue. I'm just transmitting a disturbance I've been learning about. I'm filtering that information through my own perspective and experiences and transforming it into a work that hopefully inspires people to learn more on their own. I wouldn't call it a political piece. In terms of effect, I make a strident effort to ignore any idea of how something might come across when I'm making it because I find that to be a poison that can destroy the process. I think that is the advantage of art as a form of communication, in distinction from political, journalistic, or even scientific communications, because there isn't an agenda. I'm in service to the work itself, and the work is like an organism. It's not a means to an end.

I was skeptical in the '80s. In the '90s, I saw evidence--just tracking the weather day in and day out--that something had changed, and these changes were consistent with what climate scientists have been saying for 20 or 30 years. Then I dug into the peer-reviewed research and came to the conclusion--independently, before Al Gore made his movie--that, hey, this is real. This is a real trend, and we ignore it at our peril. My politics are moderate. I'm fiscally conservative and socially progressive. I'm also an evangelical Christian and I'm concerned about climate change--which basically makes me an albino unicorn. I feel like that some days. "Wow, you're a freak!" But, you know what, there are a lot of Republicans out there, especially anybody under the age of 30 or 35, who still respect science and the scientific method.

A lot of this comes down to science literacy, and the fact that many Americans really aren't willing to dig into the science. It's much easier to turn on a cable news show with bloviating talking heads going back and forth, and it's kind of sad. You know what's ironic? Mother Nature is now accomplishing what climate scientists have had a hard time doing--getting people's attention. The past two years have been the most extreme, weather-wise, in America's history. In 2011, four out of five Americans surveyed personally witnessed severe weather. One out of three were personally injured by severe weather. We've had $188 billion in severe-weather damage in the last two years, so Mother Nature is accomplishing what climate scientists cannot, and that is, convince a majority of rational, god-fearing people that something has changed. It's not your grandfather's weather.

Environmentalists of the '60s, '70s, and '80s came to understand the power of imagery as a rhetorical tool. Striking photography of photogenic animals coated in oil, toxic rivers on fire, and formerly pristine forests clear-cut played a key role in changing minds on the environment. It was argued around the turn of the millennium that the gradual nature of climate change--as well as the distance we are from places where its effects are most prominent (the Arctic, say)--meant that those tactics were less effective. Perhaps that's changing again, with dramatic events such as Hurricane Sandy or Katrina, and with social media making us more connected. Take the movie Chasing Ice, about photographer James Balog, who documented Arctic glaciers melting using 25 time-lapse cameras over three years. One scene--showing the "calving" of a glacier the size of the island of Manhattan--went viral, getting more than 3.7 million views on YouTube. Could you talk about that--about how activists and artists have a new set of tools, which is a dramatic set of images and videos?

I've seen that. It's breathtaking. But I think the most effective image, especially for a denier over the age of 55 or 60, is a photograph of their grandkids. There are nearly 1,000 references in the Bible--Old Testament and New Testament--to caring for God's creation. A thousand. For me, that's powerful. Are you looking out for your kids or your grandkids, or is it, "Hey, let's get the most we can grab right now and to hell with future generations." We're accountable. My dad taught me that actions have consequences. You can't pump trillions of tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere and pretend it's not going to come back and bite us. It's biting us in the weather.

[German philosopher Arthur] Schopenhauer said something once that really resonates with me: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." And we are now coming out of phase two. And it's because--as Cynthia said--so much money is on the line. You've got the largest corporations that have ever been on the planet, and their business model is in danger. They feel threatened. They don't want to be regulated out of existence, so they're fighting back. They're keeping this confusion going, and they're funding this ongoing confusion. It's not just springing up organically. We're talking about tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars going into these think tanks, the Heritage Foundation-type enterprises that made the news last year, that are keeping confusion going. It's like the tobacco debate that Philip Morris had in the '70s times 10,000, because there's so much more money on the line. That's why we have so much push back right now in this country.

I often ask people, "How much evidence is enough? How much do you need?" The North Pole Arctic ice has lost four fifths of its volume since 1979. Ninety percent of the world's glaciers are shrinking. Sea level has risen 8 to 12 inches depending on the location. The oceans are warmer, the oceans are more acidic, coral reefs are dying. We've got all these fingerprints out there. For me, it's been an accumulation of coincidences.

What is going wrong with Indian society?

Without doubt, one is compelled to salute the manner in which thousands across the country have protested against gang rape of a 23-year-old woman, earlier this month in India’s capital city. At the same time, one cannot but speculate on whether this actually spells an end to heinous crimes of this nature.

Sadly, even demonstrations at Delhi’s India Gate have not been tension-free. Attempts made by some factions to politicise the issue and perpetuate violence have led to clashes between the police and demonstrators. And this brings us to square one. Demonstrations can attract media attention and create some political pressure but cannot be expected to end such crimes. Rather, they can also provoke tension, social as well as political.

Besides, how can it be forgotten that this is not the first time that women in India have been victimised in such a brutal manner. During Gujarat carnage, hundreds of Muslim women faced sexual assaults, murders of their family members, including that of unborn children carried by pregnant ones. The surviving ones have yet to recover from that trauma.

Criminals in only a handful of these cases have been imprisoned. Capital punishment has not been announced for any of the accused, even though many were guilty of committing crimes such as rape, murder, causing injury, damaging property and riotous behaviour repeatedly over a considerable stretch of time. It would be fair if the respected protesters move beyond demanding justice for the victim and capital punishment for criminals only in case of this 23-year-old girl.

It is shameful that the girl was subjected to this heinous crime in a public transport. No less shameful is the fact that criminals, during Gujarat carnage, attacked women in their places of residence. Why there is no demand for similar punishments for crimes of the same nature?

Assuring punishment, however, does not guarantee that crimes of this nature will cease occurring in India. The heinous manner in which the 23-year-old girl was gang-raped and wounded reflects the degree to which the country’s polity, society and administration are afflicted by several evils. It is a tragedy that the country which till date has been hailed for its cultural values and norms is now being looked down upon by its own citizens because of the shameful act. And this demands introspection into what has really wrong. The incident may not have taken place if even one or two of the gang had objected and prevented others from moving ahead.

True, the local police cannot be absolved of their responsibility of not being on patrol in the area. Yet, simply passing on the blame onto the police, government and other officials does not remove the malaise from where it really begins. Even capital punishment for criminals does not guarantee this.

The malaise is increasing frenzy with which people, particularly new generations, have become callous toward what was once viewed as their social and cultural duty as well as obligation. They have started giving more importance to abusing the same. This appears to be trend, among those for whom values such as respect for women and elders carry no importance. What has led men in Indian society to this stage? What is responsible for a certain number of them turning to crime?

Here, it may be noted, urban areas have in recent years reflected an increase in criminal activities such as murder, drunken-driving and also rapes. Should neo-rich culture be to a degree blamed for this? Or does the actual fault lie in certain basic values being absolutely ignored by new generation, particularly males? There is no denying that tendency prevails among males of poorer sections to start earning as soon as possible. The earning is needed to partly supplement the family income. With the additional earning, the new generation of males also have tendency to adopt fast track, “fashionable” habits. Apart from dress, the latter include cell phones, having a good time and being with “girl friends.”

Superficially, nothing seems wrong with this trend. Yet, this also marks a break in this generation’s desire to spend more time at home with their family members thus abandoning socio-cultural values literally for the lust to be the “modern,” “fast-moving” type.

One may note here, little importance is given in several Indian sections to ensure that male children imbibe strong values. Their being money-earners is assumed to be enough.

A male child is still given greater preference than a female. While the former is viewed as two extra hands to earn, the latter is regarded as an extra mouth to feed and also a dowry burden. Despite dowry being illegal, the trend continues. The dowry is now linked with fashion and socioeconomic stature of involved parties. The male, in comparison with female, has the right and authority to lead his life as he wants to, with the latter viewed as a secondary citizen, submissive to desires of the former. True, there is no denying that there is nothing surprising or new about this trend in India. This needs to be linked with increasing aggressiveness in new generations of males to care little about rules and laws when it comes to fulfilling their desires.

Let us accept it. The Indian society is afflicted by a deep-rooted malaise which needs to be checked. The 23-year-old medical intern was not simply a victim of gang rapists, but of a deep-rooted ailment that led the latter view and uses her as nothing more than a sex commodity. Of course, it is great that young ones across the country have risen in protest against this incident. But till substantial efforts are undertaken to change the mindset of Indian males, females cannot be assured absolute security in India. The age-old belief, education begins at home, needs to be given greater importance. Education is not confined to simply learning how to read and write but also includes adhering to basic socio-cultural values, being mannered with respect for all, particularly elderly and women!

Nottingham High tracking indoor progress

They are not allowed to compete within their own county, they are not funded, they only have volunteer coaches, and the athletes have to pay to compete in every meet and find their own transportation to get to there.

They are the Nottingham High School boys’ and girls’ indoor track teams, eliminated from budget cuts two years ago and now resurrected with club status. Though allowed to represent the school and use its facilities to train, they nonetheless are for the third straight season without an official winter program.

But it could be worse. Township rivals Steinert and Hamilton don’t even have a club team.
If not for a Business Education teacher, Nottingham wouldn’t either.

Melissa Foley, head coach of the school’s girls’ track and field team in the spring, felt it was time to attempt to keep up with most of the state’s spring programs by providing an organized winter program. The hope is to maintain what has become a strong spring program for both the girls’ and boys’ teams.

“The program has meant a lot to me,” Foley said last week. “My senior year I was hurt, and that’s when I realized I loved coaching. I went to school for business (she has a business/marketing degree), but because of coaching, I fell into education. So I appreciate that aspect because coaching introduced me to my career.

“I love working with kids, and I love seeing them be successful. And I don’t want to see the kids who can get a full ride to college and who can go on and do better things outside of school fall behind. And that’s what’s going to happen. You need to be able to compete during the winter in order to stay competitive with everyone else.”

Assistant boys’ track and field coach Jon Adams feels the same. He coaches sprints in the spring and will be helping Foley once or twice a week after the holidays. Fresh off coaching the football team to the Central Jersey Group III championship, he feels the absence of the winter program caught up to the track team last spring.

Two years ago, the Northstars won the state sectional and nearly won the overall Group III title, and last year they came up short in the sectionals.

“We should have repeated, but we didn’t have the depth like the year before,” Adams said. “We didn’t have a chance to train in the offseason, and without that, it will be difficult to compete for titles. Still, with us volunteering, kids are not there every day.”

Foley has been holding training sessions four days a week; twice on Saturdays when they run in Veterans Park in the morning and then back at the high school.

During the week if the weather is nice they warm up outdoors, where obviously field events are practiced. Inside runners do laps in the hallways, and everyone hits the weight room.

“This still puts us way back,” Foley says about the bridge to spring. “I’ve witnessed this for two years. People say, ‘You say that, but your boys’ team is so successful.’ But think how much more successful could they be?

“We have so many athletes in this school who don’t do anything in winter — specifically track. A lot of kids were discouraged when they heard they had to pay their own way.”

The Northstars’ competitive season begins Jan. 3. Among the meets they will take part in are the state relays and sectionals, and they will compete a couple of times at the New York Armory. She also is trying to line up other invitationals.

Because the team is not sanctioned, it is not allowed to compete in Mercer County events such as the relays or the county championships.

Although some spring track and field athletes are involved in other winter sports, Foley estimates that the spring turnout for the girls’ and boys’ teams should at least triple and maybe even quadruple.

The autostradas — the ones that don't languish, unfinished, for decades as corrupt politicians pad their salaries with highway money — are a thing of beauty. True engineering masterpieces, they swoop gracefully through the rugged interior, across graceful arch bridges and long, curving causeways. You can safely drive 200 kph on some stretches, but the speed limit is typically around 100.

As far as roads go, the problem areas tend to be one-way streets in small towns that were built during the Middle Ages — when donkey carts full of citrus and semolina were the norm — and traffic-choked thoroughfares in the island's major cities. Rush hour traffic in Palermo, Catania, Messina, or any of the other more populated areas can be a brutally slow schlep that takes all the joy out of the novel scenery.

Drivers in Sicily are less about observing traffic laws and courtesy than they are about getting where they want to go as quickly and directly as possible, regardless of obstacles. Excessive horn honking is commonplace, as is shouting out the window and gesturing wildly with arms and dramatic facial expressions. But more often than not, the guy yelling "Stronzo!" out the window of his car is driving like a stronzo himself.

Don't be surprised if, when you're driving down a narrow one-way street, the car in front of you stops, and its driver jumps out and scurries into the nearest bread shop for a few minutes. You may be a bit peeved that your progress has been slowed by this apparent insensitivity to your needs, but there's only one thing you can do: depress your car's horn button without letting go until the car deserter returns, and then yell obscenities involving that person and the Madonna out the window until he drives off. When in Sicily...

As a rule of thumb, tiny cars fare better in Sicilian towns and cities than do large ones. Navigating narrow streets is easier, and there are a lot more little spots you can find for parking. Another really good reason to go with a small car on this beautiful Mediterranean island is that gasoline goes for more than $9 per U.S. gallon right now. That's a lot of moneta. Think Fiat 500, Renault Twingo, Toyota Yaris, or Volkswagen Lupo. Anything bigger is truly massive by Italian standards.

But on the other hand, if there's one thing Sicilians respect (as do other Italians, and Americans, too for that matter), it's wealth. If you have a big, fast, expensive car, not only will people get out of your way on the autostrada, you can also park wherever you want without any regard for actual available space or traffic flow. Pull up in a Maserati Quattroporte saloon and most people will assume that you're a big muckety muck who should be treated with deference. On the open road, all you have to do to rid the left lane of that awful Fiat Panda in your way is approach them at twice the legal speed with your lights flashing and your horn blaring. Works like a charm. Most of the time.

But if you have the money, forget all that other stuff and get yourself a classic GT car — something like a Ferrari 250 GTO, Alfa Romeo 8C, Lancia Aurelia, a Mercedes 300 SL, or even a Maserati A6GCS. They're made for these roads, and you'll enjoy yourself immensely if you pick something classic and sporty. You can also grab a modern-day Ferrari or Alfa, but there's a reason why the Targa Florio ended in the late '70s — the cars had become too powerful for Sicily's tight roads, and more fatal crashes were the unfortunate result.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams' polarizing term ends

Why, someone at his table asked, was the city about to add fluoride to drinking water? What about health concerns? Adams jumped in, asking questions, challenging assertions and spouting statistics. Within 12 hours, Adams would cast the final vote approving fluoride.

"He was definitely into it," said Jessica Moskovitz, a former campaign manager for Mayor-elect Charlie Hales who saw the episode from nearby. "I thought it was great that my mayor was staying up late, arguing policy in a bar."

The September scene reflects what many Portlanders saw in Adams when they enthusiastically elected him mayor in 2008: hip enough to be at Beech Street Parlor, smart enough to have fluoride facts at the tip of his tongue, and wonkish enough to share them over late-night drinks. Perhaps he would be Portland's next great mayor, another Neil Goldschmidt without the later scandal.

But it also reflects the Adams they got: Like much else in his term, the vote on fluoride turned divisive and messy. And scandal was right on Adams' heels.

Just three weeks into his term, Adams -- the first openly gay mayor of a major U.S. city -- was cornered into admitting he lied about his relationship with a teenage Beau Breedlove. He survived a state criminal investigation and two recall attempts. But his reputation was so damaged that he made the all-but-unprecedented decision last year not to seek a second term.

And yet through sheer will and hard work, Adams rammed through an ambitious priority list, easily eclipsing the record of predecessor Tom Potter. The scandal forced Adams to adapt, to become more collaborative and reliant on others.

Instead of moving into the spacious corner office in the mayor's third-floor suite, Adams opted for a tiny room near staff cubicles to be closer to the action. From his time as Katz's enforcer and deal-finder, Adams learned the importance of being a regular in city commissioners' second-floor offices. He continued making the rounds even after he began calling the shots. He found a particular ally in Commissioner Randy Leonard, the two of them almost always voting in lockstep.

And he became the first mayor in decades to hand off responsibility for the Police Bureau to a city commissioner, Dan Saltzman, a move that drew heavy criticism. His rationale? Adams wanted more time to focus on creating jobs and improving education, vitally important but largely out of the mayor's control.

Adams' tenure may be best known for his many, many plans. On economic development. On biking. On climate change. On the future of the city. Those plans helped guide decisions to cut a special redevelopment loan to retain wind-energy company Vestas, eliminate plastic bags at retail stores, end weekly trash pickup in lieu of curbside composting, and nearly double the miles of dedicated bike boulevards to almost 60.

Adams worked with Commissioner Amanda Fritz to create the Office of Equity, especially meaningful to a gay man who grew up poor on the Oregon coast. During planning, officials sponsored five "leadership dialogues" where participants shared stories of disparity.

"People were astonished," Fritz said. Each time, "people were expecting Sam to show up for the intro and leave. He stayed the whole day."

Adams created a green initiative that increased utility rates but paid for land purchases, invasive-species removal and curbside bioswales.

"His accomplishments probably stand alone in terms of the breadth and complexity in the work he's done for the environment," said Bob Sallinger, conservation director for the Audubon Society of Portland.

Adams also hopped flights to New York (where he wooed apparel company H&M without an appointment), Chicago (to persuade owners of Pioneer Place to hold tight), San Jose (to win SoloPower expansion plans) and Spain (to get Iberdrola Renewables to keep its North American headquarters in Portland).

"He'll definitely press and say, 'It's important to us,'" said Scott Andrews, the city's urban renewal chairman, recalling a conversation Adams had with the CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue. "And when the answer is, 'I can't do it,' the question is, 'Why can't you do it?'"

Although Adams didn't hit his long-stated goal to cut Portland's high school dropout rate in half, he did steer money toward education.

His scholarship program sent hundreds of students to community college, although it gained notoriety when he proposed -- then backed off -- a funding plan that would have tapped the city's water and sewer ratepayers. This spring, he bailed out Portland Public Schools, persuading the City Council to give the district $5 million even though city bureaus faced cuts of their own. In November, voters passed a $12 million annual tax that Adams championed to pay for arts teachers and programs.

"Sam figured out how, as mayor, to harness the community in supporting success in the classroom," Portland schools Superintendent Carole Smith said.

Last month, Adams drew a standing ovation from hundreds of education advocates gathered at Concordia University. When he ascended a stage to accept a large plaque, Adams' voice broke as he said, "Thank you, all."

Although polling shows that Portlanders have warmed to Adams, more than 40 percent of voters still have negative feelings. That's the highest level veteran pollster Tim Hibbitts said he can remember for a Portland politician.

"There is no way that I'd vote for him in any election, now or in the future," said John Acree, a 42-year-old Northwest Portlander, reflecting a common sentiment. "He hasn't proven that he is worthwhile of my trust and my respect."

Commissioner Nick Fish isn't shy about saying that Adams' scandal created a "lost year" that "damaged our ability to do the people's work." Fish said he had "volcanic" conversations with Adams this year over his lack of support for Adams' ultimately doomed project, the $62 million Oregon Sustainability Center.

At City Council meetings, Adams would coordinate lengthy presentations with glowing commentary for his projects but was prone to grill those who testified in opposition. He would sometimes lecture reporters who asked a question he didn't like. Asked about his desire to cut Sellwood Bridge costs but hang onto his streetcar visions, he snapped, "I'm the decider on whether or not I am getting what I asked for, not you!"

Adams created advisory groups to develop a plan for the Rose Quarter, to add a downtown urban renewal district, bring parking meters to Northwest Portland and annex West Hayden Island. In each instance, the process imploded. So Adams maneuvered behind the scenes to strike deals where he could, West Hayden Island being a glaring exception.

"At the end of the day, Portland right now is a great city, and Sam played a role in that," said Multnomah County Chairman Jeff Cogen, who considered a run for mayor and butted heads with Adams over urban renewal and Sellwood Bridge funding. "Some of the contributions were positive, some less so. It's a complex job. He's a complex person."

Emergency services face social media storm front

Australian social media expert Laurel Papworth stressed that Twitter and Facebook had also provided people with a powerful tool for good during Sandy.

''They were able to rescue someone who tweeted their location, there was another couple of people who tweeted things like photographs of the exact insulin they needed and they were able to rush insulin over to them. Social media just means people talking to people,'' she said. ''We have to make a judgment call when we get a piece of information … and say 'who's passing the information to me and how trustworthy are they?'''

It is an issue that emergency service organisations such as the Rural Fire Service are battling.

Responsible for 95 per cent of the land mass of NSW, the RFS needs to communicate quickly with vast numbers of people in a disaster.

It has embraced the tools of social media and has 18,300 friends on its Facebook page and 6300 Twitter followers.

The media manager for the RFS, Ben Shepherd, said social media was increasingly important but in no way superceded traditional media, door knocking and community meetings.

''It's really good for spreading the word, and spreading it quickly, but you can't always hit the people you want to target,'' Mr Shepherd said. ''People whose homes are under threat aren't checking Facebook and Twitter.''

And anyone can post a misleading tweet using the hashtag #NSWRFS or set themselves up on Facebook as an unofficial bushfire expert.

The RFS media team does its best to monitor what bushfire information is going out on social media, correct misinformation and get in touch with those spreading it to ask them to stop. However, particularly at times of crisis, it is an impossible task.

Mr Shepherd said the service encouraged its firefighters and the general public to send photos and information to RFS media first to put out on Facebook and Twitter, rather than doing it themselves, ''to make sure operations advice is only given by the service''.

Ms Papworth said emergency services needed to recognise that huge numbers of people now relied on social media for information and had to make sure they had a prominent social media presence.

Williams and colleagues recorded the electrical impulses from the brains of rhesus monkeys trained to remember a sequence of two locations on a computer screen and, after a short pause, move the cursor to those locations.

They found that the two movements could be decoded, using computer algorithms, from separate, small groups of neurones in the premotor cortex – a part of the brain involved in planning and executing limb movements.

“Our results reveal a new functional structure within the premotor cortex that allowed for accurate and concurrent decoding of two planned motor targets across multiple spatial locations,” the authors wrote in the paper.

“Only a small number of neurones was sufficient to accurately predict the location of both targets, making the decoding of such information highly robust.”

The two distinct subpopulations of neurones allowed the two planned targets of the movement to be simultaneously held, without degradation, in the ‘working’ memory – a brain system that provides temporary storage and real-time processing of the information necessary to perform complex tasks.

Exploiting these mechanisms, the team then developed a BMI that could not only predict both of the intended movements simultaneously, but also drive the movements in real time alongside the monkey’s motor response.

How Store Shelves Stay Stocked Even After a Sandy-Sized Disaster

The day Hurricane Sandy made landfall, the Jersey City, New Jersey, warehouse for food distribution giant Sysco Corp. (SYY) sent out 30,000 cases of food and drinks. Most of the shipments were headed across the Hudson to New York City. On Tuesday, the day after the storm ravaged the city, the warehouse sent out none.

Yet while news of flooding, power outages, downed trees, and other storm-inflicted wreckage abounds, you won’t hear stories of mass starvation in the streets. Food may not be moving in or out of the city, but the data-driven supply chains perfected by some of the world’s biggest companies in the pursuit of profits have become so resilient that even a cataclysm like Sandy registers as little more than a logistical hiccup. While the subways have stopped indefinitely, few in the storm’s path will have to deal with empty shelves for long, if at all.

In fact, the main problem facing Sysco as its trucks sit idle while waiting for the bridges and tunnels into New York to clear is what to do with too much stuff still coming in from suppliers not stopped by the storm. “With that lull, we’ll be filling up shelves in our warehouses faster than we can get product out,” says Charley Wilson, a Sysco spokesman, adding that generators in the Jersey City warehouse have kept refrigerators there working.

Wilson says the key adjustment Sysco made ahead of Sandy was to shift shipments to mainly non-perishable goods to ensure customers would have food to last through power outages. The company also prioritized getting orders to institutions that would have to keep large numbers of people fed through the storm, such as hospitals, hotels, airports, shelters, jails, and college campuses. Restaurants will stay near the bottom of the list as the recovery proceeds. But Wilson says the process of getting back to normal won’t drag out. “It’ll be a week or so of business-not-as-usual. But we’ll get back to business-as-usual eventually.”

Large companies like Sysco with nationwide reach and a long history of managing supply chains can adapt quickly to natural disasters because they’ve been there before, and they have the data to show for it. Over the years, as real-time inventory tracking and analysis has become the norm, companies know what people buy before and after disasters. They know how demand has varied between a Gulf Coast hurricane and a New England blizzard. By cross-referencing that granular data with the latest weather predictions, companies can forecast changes in their supply chain needs in parallel with coming storms.

Shoshanah Cohen, director of the Global Supply Chain Management Forum at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, says the most flexible supply chains have three things going for them: Scale, transparency, and leverage. The bigger the distribution network, the more easily a company can reroute its supply chain to pull merchandise from warehouses beyond a disaster’s reach. The more transparent a company’s inventory — that is, the more closely a company can come to knowing the exact location of every item in real time — the more easily a store can know if a particular product it needs is available. Lastly, the more leverage a retailer has over its suppliers, the more likely that retailer is to get resupplied first.

Taken together, these factors combine to prevent a few broken links from severing the whole chain. “It’s a network effect. And what that does is dampen the risk,” Cohen says.

It comes as no surprise that Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer, exploits that effect better than anyone else. Walmart’s just-in-time supply chain has propelled the company to its dominant spot among shoppers. That same retail agility allows it not just to respond quickly to storms like Sandy, but to prepare as soon as a potential weather disaster shows up in the long-range forecast.

At Walmart’s Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters, the company’s disaster response center has a staff of 50 that since Sunday has been operating much like an incident command center set up by first responders, though with a different goal. An in-house meteorologist works with specialists in everything from energy and transportation, to inventory and communications, to make sure stores stay open as long as possible and reopen as soon as possible. Walmart uses its predictive analytics not just to keep stores well stocked with emergency supplies ahead of storms like Sandy, but to “backfill” distribution centers with what the company knows customers will need afterward.

Obama needs to come clean on what happened in Benghazi

There is an urgent need for full disclosure of what has become the “Benghazi Betrayal and Cover-up.” The Obama national security team, including CIA, DNI and the Pentagon, apparently watched and listened to the assault on the U.S. consulate and cries for help but did nothing. If someone had described a fictional situation with a similar scenario and described our leadership ignoring the pleas for help, I would have said it was not realistic—not in my America – but I would have been proven wrong.

We now know why Ambassador Christopher Stevens had to be in Benghazi the night of 9/11 to meet a Turkish representative, even though he feared for his safety.  According to various reports, one of Stevens’ main missions in Libya was to facilitate the transfer of much of Gadhafi’s military equipment, including the deadly SA-7 – portable SAMs – to Islamists and other al Qaeda-affiliated groups fighting the Assad Regime in Syria. In an excellent article, Aaron Klein states that Stevens routinely used our Benghazi consulate (mission) to coordinate the Turkish, Saudi Arabian and Qatari governments’ support for insurgencies throughout the Middle East. Further, according to Egyptian security sources, Stevens played a “central role in recruiting Islamic jihadists to fight the Assad Regime in Syria.”

In another excellent article, Clare Lopez at RadicalIslam.org noted that there were two large warehouse-type buildings associated with our Benghazi mission. During the terrorist attack, the warehouses were probably looted. We do not know what was there and if it was being administrated by our two former Navy SEALs and the CIA operatives who were in Benghazi.  Nonetheless, the equipment was going to hardline jihadis.

Once the attack commenced at 10:00 p.m. Libyan time (4:00 p.m. EST), we know the mission security staff immediately contacted Washington and our embassy in Tripoli.  It now appears the White House, Pentagon, State Department, CIA, NDI, JCS and various other military commands monitored the entire battle in real time via frantic phone calls from our compound and video from an overhead drone. The cries for help and support went unanswered.

Our Benghazi mission personnel, including our two former Navy SEALs, fought for seven hours without any assistance other than help from our embassy in Tripoli, which launched within 30 minutes an aircraft carrying six Americans and 16 Libyan security guards. It is understood they were instrumental in helping 22 of our Benghazi mission personnel escape the attack.

Once the attack commenced, Stevens was taken to a “safe room” within the mission. It is not known whether his location was betrayed by the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, the local force providing security to the consulate, which had ties to the Ansar al-Sharia terrorist group conducting the attack, and to al Qaeda. Unbelievably, we still do not know how Ambassador Stevens died.

The Obama national security team, including CIA, DNI, State Department and the Pentagon, watched and listened to the assault but did nothing to answer repeated calls for assistance. It has been reported that President Obama met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in the Oval Office, presumably to see what support could be provided. After all, we had very credible military resources within striking distance. At our military base in Sigonella, Sicily, which is slightly over 400 miles from Benghazi, we had a fully equipped Special Forces unit with both transport and jet strike aircraft prepositioned. Certainly this was a force much more capable than the 22-man force from our embassy in Tripoli. 

I know those Special Forces personnel were ready to leap at the opportunity. There is no doubt in my mind they would have wiped out the terrorists attackers. Also I have no doubt that Admiral William McRaven, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, would have had his local commander at Sigonella ready to launch; however, apparently he was countermanded—by whom? We need to know.

I also understand we had a C-130 gunship available, which would have quickly disposed of the terrorist attackers. This attack went on for seven hours. Our fighter jets could have been at our Benghazi mission within an hour. Our Special Forces out of Sigonella could have been there within a few hours. There is not any doubt that action on our part could have saved the lives of our two former Navy SEALs and possibly the ambassador.

Having been in a number of similar situations, I know you have to have the courage to do what’s right and take immediate action. Obviously, that courage was lacking for Benghazi. The safety of your personnel always remains paramount. With all the technology and military capability we had in theater, for our leadership to have deliberately ignored the pleas for assistance is not only in incomprehensible, it is un-American.

Somebody high up in the administration made the decision that no assistance (outside our Tripoli embassy) would be provided, and let our people be killed. The person who made that callous decision needs to be brought to light and held accountable. According to a CIA spokesperson, “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need.” We also need to know whether the director of CIA and the director of National Intelligence were facilitators in the fabricated video lie and the overall cover-up. Their creditability is on the line. A congressional committee should be immediately formed to get the facts out to the American people. Nothing less is acceptable.

Top 10 strategic technology trends for 2013

Gartner highlighted the top 10 technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2013.

Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.

A strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years. These technologies impact the organization's long-term plans, programs and initiatives.

“We have identified the top 10 technologies that will be strategic for most organizations, and that IT leaders should factor into their strategic planning processes over the next two years,” said David Cearley, vice president and Gartner fellow. “This does not necessarily mean enterprises should adopt and invest in all of the listed technologies; however companies need to be making deliberate decisions about how they fit with their expected needs in the near future.”

Mr. Cearley said that these technologies are emerging amidst a nexus of converging forces - social, mobile, cloud and information. Although these forces are innovative and disruptive on their own, together they are revolutionizing business and society, disrupting old business models and creating new leaders. As such, the Nexus of Forces is the basis of the technology platform of the future.

Gartner predicts that by 2013 mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide and that by 2015 over 80 percent of the handsets sold in mature markets will be smartphones. However, only 20 percent of those handsets are likely to be Windows phones. By 2015 media tablet shipments will reach around 50 percent of laptop shipments and Windows 8 will likely be in third place behind Google’s Android and Apple iOS operating systems. Windows 8 is Microsoft’s big bet and Windows 8 platform styles should be evaluated to get a better idea of how they might perform in real-world environments as well as how users will respond. Consumerization will mean enterprises won't be able to force users to give up their iPads or prevent the use of Windows 8 to the extent consumers adopt consumer targeted Windows 8 devices. Enterprises will need to support a greater variety of form factors reducing the ability to standardize PC and tablet hardware. The implications for IT is that the era of PC dominance with Windows as the single platform will be replaced with a post-PC era where Windows is just one of a variety of environments IT will need to support.


The market for tools to create consumer and enterprise facing apps is complex with well over 100 potential tools vendors. Currently, Gartner separates mobile development tools into several categories. For the next few years, no single tool will be optimal for all types of mobile application so expect to employ several. Six mobile architectures – native, special, hybrid, HTML 5, Message and No Client will remain popular. However, there will be a long term shift away from native apps to Web apps as HTML5 becomes more capable. Nevertheless, native apps won't disappear, and will always offer the best user experiences and most sophisticated features. Developers will also need to develop new design skills to deliver touch-optimized mobile applications that operate across a range of devices in a coordinated fashion.

Developers and publishers need each

The recent Casual Connect casual-gaming conference posed an interesting question: What is Publshing 2.0, and how do you make it happen? I heard this provocative during Applifier CEO Jussi Laakkonen’s panel on digital publishing.

As the former publisher of Saturday Night Magazine, a traditional print magazine, and currently head of publishing, licensing & distribution at SGN (Social Gaming Network), I have experienced the shift in the publisher-to-content-developer relationship across the board. As such, I can tell you that what we’re seeing in the mobile/social games business today is something that we’ve seen before in other content mediums.

Historically, the publishing model for games, and most industries for that matter, was quite simple: One party makes the content, and another party markets and distributes the content. It’s the common theory taught in business school, the principle of specialization: that groups are better off specializing and “trading” based on one’s comparative advantage.

We have seen shifts in this publisher/content developer relationship in the music, film, book, and magazine industries as digital distribution models opened channels for content holders to reach their respective markets directly. The video game business is no different.

The key difference in today’s environment is that the publisher no longer entirely controls digital distribution channels and, even worse, distribution is readily available to content holders. Just look at the music business: Napster and MP3s took distribution out of the hands of the record labels and made music readily available to consumers. Not long after, websites and services such as MySpace, iTunes, and Amazon enabled musicians to speak and market themselves directly to customers, essentially eliminating the traditional record labels and giving rise to popular indie artists.

The same took place in the magazine business, where the publisher historically controlled or owned the distribution channel. Content producers, aka writers, were at the mercy of the publishers who controlled the media and medium. But now, with that crazy thing called the World Wide Web, writers can distribute their content directly to consumers, instantly and for free. The speed at which information is processed makes the morning newspaper old news before the presses even fire up.

Now we’re seeing this affect the games industry. In the past, the major game publishers controlled the consoles or were large enough to fund the manufacturing and distribution of game cartridges, and thus the content maker/publisher relationship made for one happy family. But now Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon, among other daily entrants such as the Desura, the digital download service for independent games, have flipped this model upside-down. Any yahoo can develop and distribute their own game, reaching millions of potential customers practically instantly and for free (minus the app store royalties, but there is no real upfront cost). Just as the music and magazine industry experienced, distribution has been ripped from the game publishers’ hands, and content developers now have a direct line to customers. Essentially, the barrier to entry has been removed.

Just because it’s now “easier” for developers to release their own titles, both the mobile and social gaming space is incredibly crowded and competitive. Yahoos launch games every day, hundreds daily on Apple’s app store alone. Yet nearly two-thirds of apps on the app store are so-called “Zombie Apps” that generate no downloads, a good number of which are smaller developers who poured their heart and soul into developing the content. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some diamonds in the rough, but we’ll never find them because of the lack of monetary and/or marketing support.

You can roll the dice and do everything on your own: develop, distribute, market, and promote your own game. Or you can stick with the principle of specialization and focus on what you do best while relying on others to handle the rest. As a game developer, your time is better spent developing games than optimizing marketing plans, leveraging CPIs, and analyzing LTVs. Publishers continue to play a major role in the ecosystem, providing support, best practices, brand value, funding, access to the store operators (for promotional opportunities, tech support, and new feature sets), an existing user base, marketing dollars, and marketing expertise. As this business matures, the publisher’s role will only become more valuable. So how do we all get along?

Survey Says Hindus Thrive

A abstraction of the lifestyles and attitudes of Asian-Americans based on their adoration has appropriate that Indian-American Hindus are the a lot of accomplished and best-paid accumulation in the country.

“In agreement of apprenticeship and income, Hindus are at the top of the socioeconomic ladder – not alone a part of Asian-American religious groups but aswell a part of all the better U.S. religious groups,” the Pew Forum on Adoration and Accessible Life, based in Washington, D.C., said in a report.

The advisers said it was the aboriginal absolute abstracts accumulating from Hindus active in America, the all-inclusive majority of whom are of Indian descent.

But Vinay Lal, assistant of Asian-American Studies at the University of California and columnist of “The Added Indians: Politics and Culture of South Asians in America,” has criticized the abstraction for presenting a narrow, “naive and inaccurate” assuming of the bearings for Indians active in the U.S.

Mr. Lal told India Real Time that the analysis provided a “comforting annual of the attributes of the American clearing experience” that was “highly inaccurate” and masked the absoluteness for bags of Indian Americans who plan in low paid and low accomplished jobs in the country.

“As able-bodied as a able elite, we accept cogent numbers of Indians who plan in places like Dunkin’ Donuts or alive area they are exploited, for instance in some address yards,” Mr. Lal said.

“The botheration with these letters consistently is that they don’t get into those differences… it disguises some of the struggles aural this community,” he added.

Mr. Lal aswell questioned the apriorism of a analysis that uses adoration as the capital chic for anecdotic respondents, calling it a “colonial” estimation of the Asian community.

“It goes aback 200 years, they [colonialists] captivated to the appearance that in the Indian Subcontinent adoration was by far the a lot of important character – afore you are American you are a Hindu or a Muslim. Afore you are annihilation else, your adoration is what differentiates you.”

In his book, Mr. Lal gives examples of groups of Indians abrading a active in America, such as auto drivers in New York who accept to acquire at atomic $250 a day just to awning costs of petrol and renting their cab.

In the Pew Forum survey, those who articular themselves as Indian-American Hindus were decidedly added acceptable to accept advised to post-graduate akin compared to 36% of non-Hindu Indian-Americans and 12% of the accepted public.

Over bisected of Hindu Indian-American adults reside in households earning at atomic $100,000 annually, compared with 34% of non-Hindu Indian-Americans, the abstraction said.

Some commentators appropriate that the abundance of Hindus in the U.S. was a aftereffect of the success of college degree Hindus in India who had confused away as awful accomplished migrants.

But Mr. Lal acicular out that although Indians who came to America afterwards acceptance reforms in 1965 did so to accompany college education, they after brought their families who were not so able-bodied educated.

“These humans go into added businesses such as owning motels,” he said.

“There ability be eight to 10 ancestors associates who are in fact alive in the motel, abounding of them are not accepting accomplishment just lath and lodging. These complications are not captured by admirable statistics in this report,” Mr. Lal said.

“The abstraction is giving the ample ambit of this association and aggravating to appearance that this is the ability of America – that humans can appear actuality from anywhere in the apple and they can achieve,” he added.

Cary Funk, a chief researcher on the Pew Forum’s study, said it was a “representative analysis of all U.S. Asians, which is appealing rare.”

“We were allegory the after-effects a part of the better religious groups… With any accumulation boilerplate it’s consistently accurate that there is a assortment of adventures abaft the average,” Ms. Funk said.

“The address doesn’t try to go into data of the affidavit [behind the statistics] but we do try to admit some of the above factors, for instance careful immigration,” she added.

The admeasurement of Asian Americans in the U.S. has added from 1% of the citizenry in 1965 to 5.8% in 2011, according to the latest census.

Over bisected of Hindus surveyed (59%) admired themselves as “very different” from the archetypal American, compared to 53% of all Asian Americans questioned.

The Pew Research Center begin that Christians accomplish up 42% of Asian Americans, followed by 26% who chic themselves as unaffiliated.

Buddhists annual for about one-in-seven Asian Americans (14%), followed by Hindus (10%), Muslims (4%) and Sikhs (1%), the abstraction said. Followers of added religions accomplish up 2% of U.S. Asians.

Hindus were the accumulation with the accomplished assimilation amount - 81% of those aloft as Hindus told the advisers they remained Hindus, 12% were now agnostic, agnostic or annihilation in particular, and the blow had switched adoration or did not accord a accepted faith.

Art while you wait

Durham has come a long way from its “Amshack” days. City Councilman Howard Clement coined the phrase, combining “Amtrak” and “shack,” to describe the spare and uninviting passenger shelter that sat next to the railroad tracks on Pettigrew Street.

Now Durham has a true transit station, and Tuesday the city unveiled two new bus passenger shelters on the Bull City Connector route, complete with public art. Visual artist David Wilson’s shelter at Oldham Towers on East Main Street was unveiled in an official ceremony on the lawn of the towers. Wilson’s art takes images from historic Durham photographs and intersperses them with a map of downtown Durham.

To create his art, Wilson said he looked back into the history of transportation in Durham. “I did a lot of research to tie in the history,” Wilson said. His idea of public art is to make a connection with history, and when riders are waiting for the bus at the Oldham Towers site, they can perhaps learn something about Durham’s history, he said. Wilson’s art has images of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, the Durham Hosiery Mill Band and many downtown buildings.

Farther north on Main Street, artist Chris Vespermann’s tribute to blues icons Rev. Gary Davis, Sonny Terry and Blind Boy Fuller also opened for the public Tuesday.

In the next year, nine more shelters with public art will dot the Bull City Connector route, a free bus that connects Duke University with Golden Belt and other areas downtown. The shelters are part of Durham’s Public Art Program. In August 2010, the nonprofit group Durham Area Designers, which advocates for better public spaces, teamed with the Durham Arts Council and issued a call for artists to design shelters with art. The artists’ charge was to reflect in some way Durham’s history and culture.

A selection committee picked artists Wilson of Apex, Vespermann of Cary, Sharon Dowell of Charlotte and Al Frega of Durham to create the shelters. Future shelters will be at Ninth Street, Duke Street, Brightleaf Square, West Village, Five Points and Durham County Human Services Complex.

Lisa Hemingway, a resident of Oldham Towers who also is vice president of the building, had high praise for Wilson’s design. “I think it’s beautiful,” Hemingway said. Too often visitors vandalize bus shelters, but with the art work “hopefully people will think of it as the city giving back, that we have a chance to grow, that better days are coming,” she said.

Vespermann’s design takes three photos of Davis, Terry and Fuller, who made the Bull City a center for the blues, and gives them an op-art effect. Vespermann was inspired by the musicians, who not only had to contend with being African-American in the 20th century with its segregation laws, but also in the case with Davis and Fuller, dealt with blindness, he said. They did not have benefit of formal lessons or music theory, he said. “These gentlemen, never having access to that, were able to express themselves unbridled,” Vespermann said.

He is still working on the sun shade part of the courthouse shelter. It will have a Braille translation of a song that Davis, Terry and Fuller recorded together: “I’ve got fiery fingers/I’ve got fiery hands/And when I get up in heaven/Going to join that fiery band.” Vespermann calls the technique “painting Braille with light.” Vespermann is working on a shelter for Duke’s East Campus commemorating President Theodore Roosevelt’s 1905 speech there.

Dowell has two shelters in design – one for Brightleaf and one for Golden Belt. Some photographs of her concept were on view at the unveiling. The Brightleaf design takes advantage of the district’s architecture. The Golden Belt art will have images of the tobacco bags that were once manufactured there, along with the building’s wooden beams. “I like to work with architecture a lot,” Dowell said. “My art is about place.” Dowell added, “This is really fun to work on.”

NCSU affairs helps acceptance yield inventions to market

Charlie West is harder at plan abaft the microscope, his soldering accoutrement aural ability as he puts calm apparatus to body his own robot.

“It's my aboriginal time accomplishing this, which, hopefully, is why I'm messing up so much,” he said.

But messing up is all allotment of the acquaintance at North Carolina State University’s Entrepreneurs Garage.

Located on Centennial Campus, the Barn is a business startup incubator – a abode area any apprentice can brainstorm, coact and appear up with new articles and inventions.

West, a alum apprentice in computer science, wants the apprentice to ability his new business, Vision Mosaics, which would actualize big bottle mosaics out of pictures that can be uploaded to his website.

“We're aggravating to actualize pathways for acceptance advancing out of their own jobs, for themselves and others,” said Tom Miller, controlling administrator of the Entrepreneurship Initiative at N.C. State.

Founded in 2008, the affairs teaches acceptance how to alpha companies, address business plans, bazaar their articles and acquisition allotment through courses, training and networking.

Red Hat sponsors the garage, which is accessible to any student. Campus admiral said the university hopes to accession money to aggrandize the abstraction into an Entrepreneurs Village on the Centennial Campus in the next few years.

As West works on his robot, contempo alum Angela Hollen is searching over website designs.

She acclimated the Barn to barrage Spitter Spatter -- her own band of stain- and bacteria-resistant accouterment for breed and toddlers.

“The acute boards were absolutely helpful,” she said. “I could account out designs and patterns, save the book and forward them to my pattern-maker.”

Junior architecture apprentice Sharon Bui has launched Frill, a business that allows sororities to get custom accouterment for blitz week.

She says the Barn has accustomed her a big advantage.

“Instead of affair at Panera, I accept a able amplitude to accompany in investors and clients,” Bui said.

Students say it's a abode area they can about-face their dreams into absoluteness – and barrage account that could change the world.

West says if the glass-mosaic business works out, he will set his architect even higher.

Gallery Night will be captivated from 5 to 9 p.m. Saturday, July 14, in Downtown Racine. Not alone will added than 200 artists be represented in 34 locations, there will be 20 artists demonstrating their work.

Fired Up will present Jameson and Stephanie Bell talking about artistic bowl pieces and painting on ceramic. Anything’s Possible has Tom Martin demonstrating copse burning, Sherry Lou Martin painting and Tom Clark demonstrating “Ricassiette” torn China mosaic. Funky Hannah’s Beads appearance bottle bean maker Debbie Morgan demonstrating assorted techniques. Hot Shop Bottle will accept bottle alarming demonstrations by artists Amanda Paffrath, Doug Chausee and Liz Gabriel. Third Coast Bicycles will host copse turner Harold Solberg authoritative appropriate copse medallions for visitors.

Racine Arts Council ArtSpace will accept demonstrations by Leah Schreiber, Brooklyn Henke and Zoe Darling. Potters Kevin Pearson and Alex Mandli will authenticate caster throwing techniques at the Racine Art Museum. Jim Chaplin will be alive on his a lot of contempo painting at E.H. Mathis II Conservation Framing. Northern Lights Gallery welcomes Don Nedobeck, nationally accepted artist, cheat and artist and one of added than 40 artists represented. Judy Olsen and Austin Schultz will authenticate wax abstraction for gold plan at Plumb Gold.

Google Demands Repayment Of Acknowledged Fees

In what may able-bodied be a case of acceptable the action but accident the war, Oracle, which was awarded amid $150,000 and $200,000 in amercement during a barbaric patent-based acknowledged action with Google beforehand this year, has been hit with a bill for $4 actor in acknowledged costs from the Menlo Park tech giant, John Paczkowski of All Things D and others accept reported.

Google arch admonition Robert Van Nest filed the abrupt gluttonous agreement of those costs in federal cloister on Thursday night, arguing that back his applicant had “prevailed on a abundant allotment of the litigation” and that Oracle had “recovered none of the abatement it approved in this litigation.” As such, Van Nest wrote that Google was “the prevailing affair and is advantaged to balance costs,” Wired‘s Caleb Garling appear on Friday.

Oracle, who sued Google in 2010 claiming that the aggregation had abandoned aloft copyrights and patents in the conception of the Android adaptable operating system, was handed defeat in about every affirmation brought alternating during the six-week balloon this spring, Garling said. They had accused Google of cloning 37 Java appliance programming interfaces (API) and annexation absolute software cipher from the platform, he added.

Ultimately, a board did aphorism that Google had taken nine curve of cipher and a brace of analysis files, and awarded the $150,000 to $200,000 in amercement to the Redwood City, California-based firm, according to Paczkowski. Now, however, Google is gluttonous to compensate costs incurred during the trial, including a appear $2.9 actor spent artful and acclimation a whopping 97 actor abstracts during the trial, as able-bodied as archetype fees of about $143,000, court-appointed able fees of $987,000, Wired and All Things D reported.

Oracle has vowed to “vigorously accompany an appeal” of the aboriginal ruling, handed down by U.S. District Judge William Alsup on May 31, PCMag biographer Damon Poeter wrote. In that ruling, Alsup declared that Google had not abandoned absorb law, because such regulations do not “confer buying over any and all means to apparatus a action or specification, no amount how artistic the copyrighted accomplishing or blueprint may be.”

In the meantime, some tech experts accept the ample acknowledged bill is Oracle’s just desserts.

“On a claimed note, we anticipate Oracle deserves this,” Abhi, a biographer with The Droid Guy, explained. “Oracle conspicuously claimed contravention on an API alarm — which in aberrant agreement is artlessly the adjustment of accessing the basal functions. Had that been disqualified in favor of Oracle, all the GCC libraries, POSIX and codes accounting by clean-techniques would be beneath infringement. That allegedly would beggarly that the accumulation who is the aboriginal to address the API accomplishing can sue anybody which follows them.”

“It’s astute, abject and to some admeasurement base how the arch companies, instead of innovating and aggressive are active prosecuting anniversary other,” Abhi added. “If Oracle is smart, it would pay the sum appropriate abroad to abstain any abhorrent embarrassment. However, if it was smart, it wouldn’t accept filed the clothing in the actual aboriginal place.”

Oliver Stone relies on violence

Oliver Stone hasn't fabricated a cine as blood-soaked as Savages in years or one as absurd aback forever. Even in Accustomed Built-in Killers, one of the a lot of agitated boilerplate films ever, Stone chided American ability for its abhorrent faculty of celebrity and what constitutes entertainment.

Savages has no such aerial aspiration, alone a machete to bullwork with an admirers gradually deserting this once-important filmmaker. Stone went bendable in contempo years, demography it easier than anyone accepted on George W. Bush, revisiting Wall Artery and anniversary 9/11 heroes, hardly a arguable topic. The antiestablishment bobcat absent some teeth, and some admirers with them.

Stone won't win aback many, if any, with Savages, an amoral circuitous of annihilation and carnality, inhabited by SoCal marijuana growers, a DEA abettor arena both sides, and a Mexican bunch specializing in decapitations. Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch) are underground acclaimed for developing a awful almighty ache of marijuana, authoritative millions on the street, and the bunch is muscling in.

Ben is the quiet one, a Buddhist at affection who wouldn't apperception auctioning the marijuana business to focus aloft extenuative the world. Chon is declared as a "Baddhist," a war adept arena actual asperous if Ben's adroit affairs with audience aren't acceptable enough. They allotment a beachfront abode with O, abbreviate for Ophelia (Blake Lively), a animal chargeless spirit administration them and their aback adventure in a druggy voiceover.

The Tijuana-based bunch is led by Elena, played by Salma Hayek with a Cleopatra wig and Medea temperament. Elena runs her authority with Skype, spies and a arduous abettor called Lado, who kidnaps O to force Ben and Chong into a marijuana merger. Savages becomes a blood-soaked aisle of double-crosses and revenge, some including John Travolta's fun achievement as Dennis the DEA agent.

What emerges is a bleak, camp alloy of Pineapple Express (without the jokes) and Traffic (one segment, at least). Stone dotes on the acid or absorbing aspects of Savages in humorless, abashing fashion, inserting alternating blur stocks occasionally to admonish us who's directing.

Let's accede that Stone has every appropriate to bankrupt his crusader cape and accomplish a cine artlessly as lurid entertainment. Savages isn't entertaining, unless beheadings, broad ammo wounds and eyeball-ripping ache by bullwhip — generally denticulate with alarming classical music — is your cup of tea.

The action doesn't bout the screenplay's annihilation of Don Winslow's novel; allegedly Stone didn't butt the author's easy-money banter and appearance depth, alone the belly shocks. Oliver Stone abundantly griped about movies creating heroes from accustomed built-in killers. Now he has fabricated one.

Immigrants & America

President Barack Obama's contempo advertisement giving the accouchement of actionable immigrants the befalling to plan and the affronted acknowledgment of the GOP fabricated me footfall aback and anticipate "what makes anyone an American?" Is it an blow of birth? Having a appropriate skill? Or is it an attitude?

Immigration didn't use to be a political issue; humans were accustomed or denied on their merits. In those animal after-effects of immigrants who accustomed at Ellis Island were my grandparents, who came to the New World for a adventitious for a bigger life.

My affectionate grandmother was Mary Inez Ryan, from Ireland's County Limerick, and we grew up alert to her belief of leprechauns and bawl banshees. She affiliated Joseph Mendell, whose German ancestor had afflicted their name from Mendel aloft accession here. My dad's parents were aswell immigrants, with Louis Ljubon from Budapest marrying Bavaria's Aloysia Woelfl. Both families acclimatized in arctic New Jersey, struggled through the Depression, and again both my mom and dad enlisted in the Marines in WW2. Afterwards they were allotment of the aboriginal G.I. Bill chic at Montclair State Teachers Academy and formed harder to accord us kids a bigger activity and added opportunities.

With so abounding immigrants appear so abounding clearing stories... a few years ago in Afghanistan I met Tuan Pham, a Vietnamese refugee whose grandfathering and ancestor were dead by the Viet Cong. His mother and sister fled Vietnam as 'boat people,' and eventually got Pham out... now he's Major Tuan Pham, USMC. While his is absolutely a far added absorbing ancestors adventure than mine, it's agnate in that it started with association searching for a bigger life, authoritative their way to America, alive hard, giving back, and allowance body that which we alarm "The American Dream".

It's a abashment the GOP dead the "Dream Act," abnormally back 9/11 there accept been some 55,000 immigrants who became Americans through their account in the Armed Forces. The ranks of the Marine Corps, for example, are abounding with adolescent men and women with alluring accents who are "giving back" to their anew adopted country. Some of them "give back" a lot; Mexican-born Marine Sgt Rafael Peralta's endure act was to cycle assimilate a armament in Fallujah, sacrificing himself in adjustment to save the lives of the Marines abaft him. Again there's Sgt Michael Strank, one of the 5 Marines who aloft the banderole on Iwo Jima. He was built-in Mychal Strenk, in Jarabenia, Czechoslovakia, and abstruse English in a boxy Pennsylvania animate town. Strank was dead on Iwo, three canicule afterwards that acclaimed photograph was taken. Other countries should accept immigrants like these two.

They're the backbone of this country, this alloy of animate workers, farmers, and shopkeepers who accustomed actuality with little added than an billowing clothing and a angry assurance to "do better." They helped body America by acquirements the language, alive hard, and in assertive America to be a 'melting pot' and not a 'mosaic,' attenuated calm and gave this country a mind-set that equated harder plan with success.

And clashing the faux-patriotism consort by the brand of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and others who never served; they accepted that bellicism was something that was to be accomplished as against to harangued from the airwaves. On the morning afterwards Pearl Harbor, academy boys were antagonism acreage boys to enlist, and by 1945 America had 12 actor men beneath arms. Everyone volunteered; my ex-wife's ancestor artificial his father's name to the paperwork and abutting the Army arrears -- he grew up bound as he aboriginal fought in Italy and after in the Battle of the Bulge.

That's absolute patriotism. Everyone pulled calm for the accepted ambition of attention the American way of activity that their parents and grandparents formed to action them.

That's what makes today's clearing agitation so frustrating. A lot of of the illegals agilely plan hard, demography the bedraggled jobs that a lot of American citizens refuse. Sure abounding of them access not speaking English, but neither did my Grandfathering Ljubon or Mychal Strenk if they arrived. America is still a country of opportunities for those who wish to work, and accustomed the opportunity, attending at how Sgt's Strenk and Peralta accept become a allotment of American history.

Maybe getting an "American" is an attitude rather than an blow of birth. Back humans today aren't digging the Erie Canal or architecture the transcontinental railroad; today's settlers are instead alive in an Iowa meat-packing bulb or acid lawns in Bucks County, PA. Harder plan never aching anyone Grandpa Ljubon acclimated to acquaint me; and as Grandpa's Strenk, Peralta, and Pham absolutely told their boys; with harder plan you can achieve about anything.

Mummy Porn Meets Rom Vom

The appellation abandoned acquired bags of Literature undergraduates to accession their acquisitive heads, adenoids flared at the aroma of blood. E.L. James’ “erotic novel”, audacious citation marks my own, has been ridiculed as awkward ‘mommy porn’ accounting in ‘lamentable prose’; as ’vapid’ and ‘painful’; and, the cruelest of jibes for any austere writer, as a ‘bad archetype of [Stephanie] Meyer’.

Having apprehend the Twilight Saga in its entirety, from Bella’s clumsy access to the advancing bearing of her heinously-named daughter, I struggled to acquire that any book – bawdy or not – could accomplish the agonizing lows of a atypical in which the changeable advocate spends a affiliate anecdotic the alertness of lasagne for her unappreciative and authoritative father. Oh! how amiss I was.

Not clashing Twilight, the delineation of ambience is abundant and drab. Such all-embracing and annoying description is acutely appropriate of wet-dream writing. As James paints a agilely addled account of Grey’s appointment – the ‘floor to beam windows, the ‘white covering buttoned L-shaped couch’,'a circuitous of baby paintings’ – it is clearly accessible that this is a allowance the columnist has anticipation ingreat detail about getting fucked in, apparently on the ‘huge avant-garde dark-wood board that six humans could calmly eat around’. Quelle surprise, 350 pages later, black advocate Anastasia Steele is getting banged like the back-end of a chock-full ketchup canteen over that actual board in a arrangement in which she rather embarrassingly refers to adventurous absorption Christian Grey as ‘Mr Boy Scout’.

E.L. James’ “erotic” account doesn’t just resemble Twilight, it reeks of it. Remnants of Fifty Shades’ antecedent cachet as Twilight fanfic aggravate in references to Grey getting ‘courteous, formal, hardly stuffy… old afore his time’. Courting scenes amid Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele carefully chase the arrangement of those amid Bella Swan and and Edward Cullen in Meyer’s Twilight: the life-saving sequence, the admonishing from macho adventurous absorption to female, the annoying proclamations from one to the added of an disability to break away. Supporting characters, admitting hardly defective in believability, abridgement it in a way awfully agnate to those of Twilight. Both mothers are ’harebrained’ with ‘the absorption amount of a goldfish’. Both changeable leads are hounded by the amative interests of careful men in academy and the plan place, and neither appears to see this behaviour as either camp or unacceptable.

Furthermore I’m addled by the addiction of both writers to utilise the plan and capacity of archetypal British writers to attack to drag their austere novels above their accepted akin of poor pornography. As Meyer acclimated Bronte, Shakespeare and Frost, James now abuses and reduces the complexities of Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles to accomplish apparent comparisons with her own text.

Continuing above accessible comparisons with Twilight, this book alone balked and nauseated me. Does James apperceive any adverb but ‘gracefully’? Narrative techniques in Fifty Shades are aggravatingly obvious: if the narrator ‘reminds [herself] that Kate has been to the best clandestine schools in Washington’, we are not blind that the alone getting getting “reminded” is the reader. Description is at best stilted, at affliction excruciating. I wept with amusement if Ana declared her hidden as ‘loud, appreciative and pouty’ and Grey’s articulation as ‘warm and croaking like aphotic broiled amber fudge.’ Warm and croaking like blah on the cob, added like.

Former Dropouts Push Others To Reach Finish Line

In Pasadena, Calif., one teacher's adherence is allowance kids graduate. Mikala Rahn is the architect of Learning Works, a allotment academy for kids who accept alone out of acceptable schools.

Carlos Cruz is one of the aboriginal acceptance she helped graduate. If he started chief year, Cruz accomplished he was two years behind.

"[I remember] you searching at me and cogent me that aggregate was traveling to be OK," Cruz tells Rahn, "and me searching aback at you, and I'm like, 'How the [expletive] do you anticipate aggregate is traveling to be OK?' "

Rahn says it was optimism.

"That endure year, I formed harder than I accept ever, anytime even anticipation of even working," Cruz says. "I accept never absolutely even acquainted in my lifetime that I had abstruse until those canicule if I was in fact at your abode and tutoring."

He says they would plan sometimes until 2 a.m. Rahn's ambition was to get her acceptance a top academy diploma.

"Until this day, I candidly accept my authority in my trunk. It goes with me everywhere I go," Cruz says. "For me, that was I anticipate the better affair I accept anytime done."

Cruz now works at the academy Rahn founded. He is one of several advisers alleged "chasers." They basically do what Rahn did for Cruz: accomplish abiding the kids get to class, about-face in their assignments and abstraction for their tests. The chasers are anniversary amenable for about 35 students.

Many chasers were dropouts themselves, and a few accept been to prison, like Dominick Correy, who served time for break-in and generally works alongside Cruz.

"The capital ambition of aggregate we do is to annihilate any and every alibi that they can brainstorm to why they are not attempting to accomplish their top academy diploma," Cruz says.

Chasers, Correy says, serve as mentors, parents and anxiety clocks."Some humans say a cold-shoulder officer." Correy says he never anticipation he would be able to plan at a academy afterwards traveling to jail.

"I never anticipation somebody would even accord me a adventitious to plan with animal beings," Correy says. "It was like, I absent six years in bastille altogether, and I abashed the streets of Pasadena for so long. So, I anticipate if I save one kid from accepting shot, or if I save one kid for traveling to jail, I feel like my six years meant something."

Anthony Gonzales, one of Correy's students, was partially bedridden if he was afflicted in a drive-by shooting.

"Four years ago, I got attempt in the aback of the head. And afterwards the ammo hit, I acquainted like baking hot baptize just go down my analgesic cord, all the way down to my shoes," he says. "And I bethink falling to the ground, my arch bouncing off of the ground, and again blacking out for a little bit. And I assumption that's if I died 'cause the doctor said I died for like 27 seconds."

He remembers the ambulance, the paramedic allurement him questions. Again he went into a coma. He was out of academy for two years. His aboriginal day at Learning Works, he was limping.

"I saw everybody staring at me, and I was like, 'I don't anticipate I wish to appear actuality no more,' " Gonzales says.

But again he met Correy. Correy would aces up Gonzales aboriginal in the morning, animadversion on the aperture if he wouldn't acknowledgment his phone.

"Can't even besom your teeth, can't even go to the bathroom. It's just, 'Hurry up. We're backward already,' " Gonzales says.

But Gonzales doesn't authority that adjoin his teacher.

"You've consistently been air-conditioned with me, beeline up. You were one of us," he tells Correy. "I see you now as a brother."

What does he wish Correy to do this year to advice him graduate?

"Don't affluence up now. Now is if I charge you the most," Gonzales says.

Nokia cuts 10,000 jobs, streamlines to save costs

Nokia says it will slash 10,000 jobs and close plants as the ailing company fights fierce competition, and gave a grim outlook for most of the year, causing its shares to plummet 18 percent to close at (EURO)1.83 ($2.30).

The Finnish cellphone maker also on Thursday announced personnel changes and said it has agreed to sell its luxury phone brand, Vertu.

The measures, aimed at additional cost savings of (EURO)1.6 billion ($2 billion) by the end of next year, will shut down research and development facilities in Ulm, Germany, and Burnaby, British Columbia. Nokia said it will also close its main Finnish manufacturing plant in Salo, with 850 layoffs, but will keep its research and development center there.

Nokia Corp. updated its outlook, saying that heavy competition would continue to hit its smartphone sector in the second quarter, but to a "somewhat greater extent than previously expected" and that the downturn would continue in the third quarter.

Markets were disappointed, plunging Nokia shares to below (EURO)2.00 for the first time ever on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.

Nordea analyst in Helsinki, Sami Sarkamies, said Nokia's scale of the cost cutting took many by surprise and might not help to strengthen the company.

"When you make such drastic cuts you have to abandon a lot of things," Sarkamies said. "It may be that they just can't anymore afford to come up with innovative, new things."

CEO Stephen Elop said the planned cuts were "a difficult consequence of the intended actions we believe we must take to ensure Nokia's long-term competitive strength."

"We are increasing our focus on the products and services that our consumers value most while continuing to invest in the innovation that has always defined Nokia," he added.

The loss-making company has been struggling against fierce competition from Apple Inc.'s iPhone and other makers using Google Inc.'s popular Android software, including Samsung Electronics Co. and HTC of Taiwan. It is also being squeezed in the low-end by Asian manufacturers making cheaper phones, such as China's ZTE.

Markets had been expecting Nokia to signal some improvement in its earnings expectations for this year after it joined forces with Microsoft Corp. in 2011, launching several Windows Phone 7 models, including its sleek Lumia range.

But the new handsets have received mixed reviews and the company and made no mention of the much-anticipated Windows 8 version. Its revised outlook bodes ill for the former bellwether of the wireless industry that held the No. 1 cellphone maker spot for 14 years.

Elop said that more than a third of the global job cuts - 3,700 - will be in Finland, sending shivers through the small Nordic nation that has been intensely proud of Nokia's past success.

But he pledged to keep the company's corporate headquarters in Espoo, near the capital, Helsinki, and said much of the R &D will continue here.

"Nokia's core is in Finland. We firmly believe that at the heart of any company, the soul of a company, is something that includes its national identity," Elop said. "We continue to have significant operations in Finland. In fact, two-thirds of our Lumia team is in Finland."

The Espoo-based company said that although it plans "significant" cuts in operating expenses, it will continue to focus on smartphones as well as cheaper feature phones and intends to expand location-based services.

Nokia announced that private equity group EQT VI had agreed to acquire Vertu, its global luxury phone brand, but that the Finnish company would keep a 10 percent minority shareholding. No financial terms were announced.

The company said it would also overhaul its management team, with two long-time members of its top leadership - Mary McDowell, the head of the struggling mobile phones unit and Niklas Savander, head of the markets sector - leaving the company at the end of June. Chief marketing officer and brand manager Jerri DeWard, who joined Nokia in January 2011 will also step down.

Chris Weber, the current head of Nokia's U.S. operations, will take over sales and marketing on July 1.

In April, Nokia announced one of its worst quarterly results ever, blaming tough competition for a (EURO)929 million net loss in the first quarter as sales plunged, especially in the smartphone market. Last year, it was still the world's top cellphone maker with annual unit sales of some 419 million devices, but in the last quarter of the year it posted a net loss of (EURO)1.07 billion, a marked reverse from the 745 million profit a year earlier.