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The Future of Insights: Intelligence in An Age of Data-Driven Competition
SCSP’s Intelligence Interim Panel Report
Hello, I’m Ylli Bajraktari, CEO of the Special Competitive Studies Project. In this edition of our newsletter, we summarize our second interim panel report. It’s focused on the intelligence in an information-rich and geopolitically competitive war, and how the United States Intelligence Community can best position itself to unlock new insights in support of U.S. statecraft.
In this edition of 2-2-2, Director for Intelligence Peter Mattis and Associate Directors for Intelligence Meaghan Waff and Katherine Kurata summarize SCSP’s second interim panel report.
SCSP Intelligence Panel Releases Interim Panel Report
Last week, the Intelligence Panel released its Interim Panel Report “Intelligence in an Age of Data-Driven Competition.” It expands on the intelligence chapter in Mid-Decade Challenges to National Competitiveness and is the second of six interim reports from the overall work that SCSP has conducted over the past year.
You can view the reports by clicking the report titles above or by visiting our website.
Reach out to email@example.com with any questions!
INTELLIGENCE IN AN AGE OF DATA-DRIVEN COMPETITION: Highlights from the Intelligence Panel IPR
For the first time since the Cold War, the United States faces a rival – the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – that is competing globally across the economic, political, social, and military domains to reshape, if not dominate, the international order. As the new National Security Strategy of the United States puts it, “The PRC is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.” For the Intelligence Community (IC), this rivalry will govern not only what U.S. leaders ask of it, but also how it must evolve.
The U.S.-PRC rivalry emerged quietly, becoming wide in scope and fierce in intensity without a visceral moment to mark its beginning. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the eerie electronic chirping of Sputnik in 1957, and Al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 left indelible marks on the American psyche and government. The initial fear turned to sustained determination. These events galvanized both the U.S. Government and American public to do what was necessary to respond. The ways in which Beijing has surprised the United States cannot be captured as vividly in an image. And that catalytic moment may never come.
The motivation for change must come from U.S. leaders inside and outside the IC. They need to see how today’s world awash in data and geopolitical rivalry challenges the IC – such as the need to provide insight into our adversary’ emerging technologies and the organizations that field them – and how to push change forward without another national catastrophe.
The new context, however, requires more dramatic adjustment than just a change in priorities. The context for intelligence has changed. Capabilities once unique to the IC - top secret satellite imagery, signals intelligence - are now in the hands of the private sector. Even in areas where the IC should have an advantage, such as exposing Beijing’s political interference, journalists, academics, and open source researchers have been able to lead the way.
In our interim panel report, we argue that the IC should priorititize the core mid-decade challenge: winning the race for actionable insight. And the IC’s ability to provide competitive advantage to U.S. policymakers will hinge on whether it can integrate and master emerging technologies, particularly AI, and leverage more diverse sources of information from across all domains. More specifically, the IC’s ability to unlock new insights in support of U.S. statecraft will require action in the following areas:
Adapt to the digital era and geopolitical rivalry by modernizing practices to access the best talent, acquire the latest technology, build a community-wide digital infrastructure, and exploit the broadest set of data;
Leverage insights and information from open and commercial sources by creating a dedicated, technology-enabled open source entity to support U.S. decision making;
Create new capacities to capture and master economic, financial, and technological intelligence by establishing a National Techno-Economic Intelligence Center to serve as an economic “nerve center” for U.S. policymakers; and
Counter foreign adversarial influence campaigns through preemptive exposure of their operations, strategic warnings for the U.S. public, alerts for senior U.S. officials who may be targeted by such operations, and adoption of new mitigation technologies.
1. Adapting to the Digital Era
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines wrote earlier this year that the IC’s difficulties to process its massive collections of classified holdings “reduces the intelligence community’s capacity to effectively support senior policy maker decision-making and further erodes the basic trust that our citizens have in their government.” The IC already has developed some initial answers for how to do this by embracing new digital technologies, including AI. The community’s strategies and implementation plans, however, have been unevenly implemented and insufficiently scaled, despite being among the first in the U.S. Government to experiment with AI.
Today, sustained top-down leadership is needed to drive this transformation, if AI and emerging technologies are to fulfill their potential to transform the IC. In a good signal from the White House, the latest National Security Strategy stated that the IC is adapting to “better address competition” by “embracing new data tools.” Administration officials and Congressional stakeholders will need to ensure that the IC adheres to a coherent vision that aligns strategies, actions, incentives, and metrics.
IC leaders and their designated technology leadership should prioritize projects that build internal tech expertise, improve data standardization and architecture, and support emerging tech adoption at scale across the IC. To do so effectively, IC leaders must first understand AI and emerging technologies – their benefits and limitations – to maximize the opportunities the technology can offer. Education and experience with technology issues for executive and mid-level management will need to be a part of the process.
Secondly, IC managers must find the right combination of people, processes, and technology to enable successful, at-scale digital transformation. It needs people with the right expertise to advance technology; processes to manage areas where humans and technologies converge; and the right technologies to store, process, and move data at immense scale. Integrating these elements is a challenge for any large enterprise, upsetting traditional career paths, workflows, data management, and technology integration. Shifting the IC’s practices will require standardizing and contextualizing data for broader use, building a new digital backbone, and accessing necessary talent. As these elements come together, the IC would gain agility and efficiency in honing on existing applications and applying them to new problems.
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) should sponsor the creation of a Digital Experimentation and Transformation Unit to run pilot projects that address community-wide challenges on talent, processes, technologies, or acquisition as identified by the DNI and IC agency directors. The unit should be sponsored and empowered by the DNI, with one of the intelligence agencies serving as the executive agent, and with representatives from each member of the intelligence community. The purpose would be to identify and apply the best available technology and expertise in the United States, inside and outside government, to select community-wide problems. The DNI would also need support from Congressional appropriators to ensure the office has the necessary time and support to solve the selected problems. The pilot projects should address a key aspect of the people, processes, technology, and acquisition needs of the IC to accelerate its digital transformation. All projects would need to include programmatic analysis for each participating IC element to ensure successful projects are sustained beyond the new unit. The initial focus areas could include: recruitment of needed expertise, improvement of IT systems interoperability within the IC, automation of cross-collections platforms at the edge for indications and warning capabilities, or creation of an IC-wide knowledge management platform.
2. Leveraging Open Source
In an age where most data resides in the open world, the IC risks surprise and intelligence failure without a robust open source intelligence capability. The exponential growth in publicly and commercially available information has outpaced the IC’s capability, or anyone’s for that matter, to fully harness open source in support of U.S. decision making and policy. This has come on top of the decline in the collection, processing, and usage of open source materials through the evolution of IC open source initiatives from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) to the Open Source Center to the Open Source Enterprise (OSE). Moreover, less attention to collection, user-unfriendly platforms, and overzealous security practices have limited U.S. intelligence analysts’ effective access to and use of government open source resources over time.
While calls for an open source organization are not new, the United States can no longer downplay the value of publicly and commercially available information. The 2022 National Security Strategy took the first step in calling for the IC to adapt organizationally by better integrating open source materials.
The U.S. Government should create a new, well-resourced institutional home for open source collection, acquisition, processing, and analysis. Rather than approaching this entity as an analytic unit, it should be thought of as a collection organization capable of acquiring, processing, exploiting, and disseminating information on a significant scale. All-source analysts cannot do this on their own. This organization also should have the data architecture, computing power, and AI-enabled tools built in from the beginning to be able to handle publicly and commercially available data at scale. The precise organizational model for an open source entity is secondary to ensuring that it addresses the imperative of the open source mission and meets the entire U.S. Government’s needs. For instance, policymakers should ensure that an open source entity have: broad dissemination authorities, expertise, a voice within the IC, public access to its products, a clear mission, and an institutional structure that allows it to act as a gateway for open source information between policy agencies, the IC, and external actors. With these in mind, an entity could be organized in one of four broad ways, each with its own set of barriers and avenues to success.
3. Creating Techno-Economic Intelligence
Economic competition with the PRC, in particular, is wide in scope and fierce in intensity. Consequently, U.S. intelligence must reorganize and retool to defend Americans’ standard-of-living, support a U.S. Techno-Industrial Strategy, and protect the interests of the United States and its allies around the world.
However, before this can even happen, the IC must strengthen its techno-economic intelligence capabilities. It must be able to examine the gears of the PRC’s economy and to have a detailed understanding of the CCP's industrial and technological priorities and pursuits. This includes the PRC's trade behavior, key industries and companies, critical supply chains, and investment flows. U.S. intelligence will also need to understand the PRC’s emerging platforms in technology and finance, especially as these data-collecting, strategic platforms are exported abroad.
The U.S. Government should establish a National Techno-Economic Intelligence Center to capture, master, and disseminate economic, financial, and technological intelligence. This center should coordinate economic threat information and work closely with policymakers on supporting their responses to these threats. Using AI to collect and process economic information at scale, this economic “nerve center” would be able to make economic assessments and forecasts, as well as fuel innovation in economic modeling. Like an economic equivalent of the National Counterterrorism Center, this center, with analysts trained for techno-economic analysis, would warn of foreign threats to the U.S. economy, make sense of rivals’ grand strategies, apprise the U.S. industry about threats such as intellectual property theft and supply chain vulnerabilities, and evaluate opportunities to deploy tools of economic leverage.
To do this, U.S. intelligence also needs the authorities and incentives to make techno-economic net assessments. The deep interconnections between China and the United States through global trade and finance means that it will be essential for U.S. intelligence to have the ability to do complex analysis involving U.S. companies. For this, the Intelligence Community, or select elements within it, needs the authority and internal guidelines to conduct these net assessments while ensuring appropriate privacy safeguards for U.S. citizens.
4. Countering Foreign Adversarial Influence Operations
Foreign disinformation remains an acute national security danger in search of a comprehensive solution. Technological advancements and the emergence of new media platforms have enhanced the speed, reach, volume, and precision of disinformation generated and emplaced by foreign adversaries.
In our interim panel report, we propose a series of actions that could better position the United States to confront the challenge of foreign disinformation operations.
The first action to consider is operationalizing the Foreign Malign Influence Response Center in order to centralize governmental collaboration to counter foreign adversarial influence operations affecting the United States, and allies and partners. The Center would also benefit from technologically-enabled capabilities as detailed in the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence’s (NSCAI) Final Report.
The U.S. Government should also prioritize preemptive countermeasures in three ways. First, the U.S. Government – including the IC – should aim to “prebunk” malign actions through early disclosures of malign actions whenever possible and suitable. Second, it should warn of foreign-backed disinformation through alerts, potentially by partnering with Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to broaden the National Cyber Awareness System to alert the public about foreign disinformation operations of strategic import. Third, the U.S. Government should create a public notice board of adversary-generated false narratives and themes to expose them and encourage public research.
The U.S. Government should also designate and resource an entity to track and counter foreign-directed denigration campaigns against senior U.S. leaders. Our adversaries are working to acquire, analyze, and weaponize data that, empowered by AI, could allow foreign intelligence services to micro-target senior civilian and military leaders by denigrating them in the public domain and orchestrating character assassination efforts.
Finally, the constant evolution of influence operations requires the Intelligence Community – and U.S. Government writ large – to incorporate new technologies and mitigation techniques quickly. To bolster the impact of the suggestions above and existing efforts, the IC should consider leveraging tools like the content provenance standards of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity to keep pace with, and outrun, digital adversarial influence.
U.S. intelligence can deliver on the seemingly impossible and the once-unthinkable. It should be able to rise to the challenges of this new era. The IC, for example, was able to successfully warn the White House, Ukraine, and its allies of the Russian invasion months before its actual occurrence. Early and rapid declassification of U.S. intelligence allowed policymakers to counter Russian disinformation credibly, undermine potential false flag operations, discredit the Kremlin narrative, and strengthen the allied response. Such efforts are possible because the IC and its partners operate the world's largest constellations of human and machine sensors located anywhere from undersea to outer space.
The IC has and can continue to pursue and exploit technology to its fullest potential because of the strengths inherent to American society and its political system. Since its founding, the IC’s ability to access the best talent and technology of the United States has grown. The IC is now more open to talent of any ethnicity and creed than in its past, even if being truly representative of U.S. society is still an ongoing process. The IC also benefits from other asymmetric advantages over its authoritarian counterparts – including its ethos of objectivity, its national mission, and its work with allies and partners.
The recommendations outlined above lay the groundwork for positioning the IC to provide technologically-enabled timely, actionable insights. By focusing on the four broad areas of digital transformation, open source, techno-economic intelligence, and countering foreign adversarial influence operations, the IC will be best positioned to avert intelligence failure in the changing data-rich, competitive environment.


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On December 30, 2021, as the Marshall Fire tore through Louisville, Colorado, 25-year-old Mia Keller, an elite amateur marathoner and triathlete, was dog sitting for a family friend less than ten miles southeast from her apartment in Boulder.
Suddenly, the weather changed dramatically. "There were insane winds that day," Keller said. "The leaves were blowing off the trees." Soon, the house filled with smoke, and after a touch and go phone call with the homeowners just before the phone lines went down, Keller fled the house with the dog, five minutes before she received a mandatory evacuation notice. The house burned to the ground.
The Marshall Fire started just outside Boulder, Colorado, a city that is home base for world-class runners and endurance athletes because of its ideal training topography and altitude benefits. For many athletes like Keller, the fire upended their training and lives. Smoke kept them from training outside; fire decimated running trails; ongoing trauma left many unable to train consistently. More than a year after the fire, many athletes still experience the impacts of the most destructive fire in Colorado's history.
Most high-altitude running locations are arid and forested, making them prime real estate for wildfires. And as climate change accelerates, fires like this one will grow in frequency and magnitude, forcing many elite athletes to question whether it is safe and sustainable for them to train in the Western United States.
Keller's apartment in Boulder was untouched by the fire, but she lost $5,000 worth of biking gear when she evacuated the house where she was dog sitting. Her insurance recouped the cost of the equipment, but Keller, who was training for the Ironman World Championships, still experienced training disruptions.
The Marshall Fire burned nearly 10 square miles, destroying many running routes, including the popular Davidson Mesa trail, where Keller and other athletes used to train, and which remained closed for months following the fire.
Keller tried to run workouts on Marshall Road, which cut through the burn zone, but found it too upsetting to pass the charred ruins of houses lining both sides of the road. "For my own anxiety, I just stopped running there," she said.
In addition to losing gear and running routes, immediately following the fire, athletes had to contend with poor air quality. When the Marshall Fire razed her community, Sri Lankan record holder Hiruni Wijayaratne was training for a half marathon six weeks later. Wijayaratne's training would normally involve crossing through parts of the burn zone, but her training in Nepal two years earlier exposed her to poor air quality. Today, she is cautious about breathing polluted air.
"I think I'm still suffering from it," Wijayaratne said of her time training in Nepal. In the wake of the Marshall fire, Wijayaratne opted to train on a treadmill and even traveled to Arizona to run instead of venturing outside in Boulder where she suffers from acute effects of poor air quality.
"I'm constantly sneezing, my eyes are tearing, and then anytime I do anything that's harder than an easy run, I feel this horrible burn in my throat," said Wijayaratne.
Wildfire smoke contains high concentrations of gasses and particulate matter, explained Ana Rappold, EPA scientist who studies smoke and health during wildfire events. Wildfire smoke "definitely increases the health risks associated with respiratory outcomes," said Rappold. Respiratory health is a significant concern for endurance athletes who train outside and breathe a high volume of air.
But even among world class athletes, treadmills can be hard to find. Maddie Alm, a 30-year-old elite runner who trains with the Olympic-level Bosshard group, had to share two treadmills among ten runners in her Boulder-based training cohort. The athletes took turns training on the treadmills while their coach set up an air quality monitor to make sure that any smoke that entered the gym through vents and windows remained at a safe level for training.
Alm is based in Boulder but coaches cross country and track at Monarch High School, in Louisville, Colorado, where the fire burned over half of the 1,084 homes destroyed in the fire. Alm, a dietitian who manages her own practice on top of her own intense distance training, traveled back and forth between Louisville and Boulder organizing clothing and food drives for the high school students who lost their homes. "[My coach] modified my training because I wasn't getting much sleep," said Alm. "Coordinating the relief efforts took a big toll on me mentally and physically."
Alm ran her debut half marathon just two weeks after the fire and was disappointed in her race result. Her track season that spring was also lackluster. She was chronically tired and suffered from low iron. Alm's coach pointed out that her performance began to suffer right after the fire.
Many other athletes also experienced significant training disruptions as a result of psychological and physical impacts of the fire. Laura Thweatt, a marathoner who has lived and trained in Boulder for more than a decade, stopped training almost entirely. She tried to run again at the end of January. "I showed up to a workout and I just started crying," Thweatt said. She then dialed back her training in order to process the trauma of the event.
"I definitely think the long-term effects of everything that happened a year ago out here are something that I still carry," Thweatt said at the anniversary of the fire.
According to Emily Saul, sports psychologist and licensed mental health counselor, it's not just the fire itself that can affect athletes, but the lingering threats and reminders even once the initial danger has passed.
A disaster such as wildfire activates the sympathetic nervous system, which floods the body with hormones and results in a fight, flight, or freeze response, preparing the body to address the threat without much conscious thought. If a person can escape the fire or take some action to remove herself from danger, then the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in, calming the body down and returning it to baseline, said Saul.
But if the dangerous situation is ongoing—if the winds change and the fire gets closer, or if housing and property are destroyed and survivors must address their basic needs, or even if there are constant reminders of the fire's destruction—the nervous system can remain activated.
Saul describes the nervous system like a car, where the sympathetic nervous system is the accelerator, and the parasympathetic nervous system acts as the brake. When the situation is intense and prolonged, and especially when resources and support are limited, "then people tend to feel like they are in this car with a revving engine that has no brake," Saul said. Both the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems get tired, and people lose the ability to calm themselves down.
"That's a pretty non optimal situation for people to then be athletes," said Saul. Not only were the athletes losing sleep and nutrition, but their nervous systems were quite literally exhausted, explaining the chronic exhaustion Alm and Thweatt experienced.
They're not the only ones. Keller struggled with anxiety long after the fire. At the smell of any kind of smoke, campfire or wildfire, she would immediately drive back to Denver, where her family lived, to shelter from wildfire threat, real or imagined.
Our brains store sensory memories of dangerous experiences so that we can avoid and survive them in the future, said Saul. The smell of smoke triggered a strong fear response in Keller, and she responded by removing herself from the potential danger her brain associated with that smell.
That danger looms large, as many people did lose their homes or were displaced for extended periods of time for repairs and safety assessments. Measured in terms of structures lost, the Marshall Fire was the most destructive fire in Colorado history, according to the Marshall Fire Facilitated Learning Analysis. The total cost of home damage is estimated at more than $513 million by the Colorado Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Management. The psychological impacts of the fire are incalculable.
Fires like these threaten high altitude training locations across the Western U.S. Populated areas in other high-altitude training hubs like Flagstaff, Arizona; Park City, Utah; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and Mount Laguna, California have greater wildfire likelihood than 77 to 99% of communities across the United States, according to the Wildfire Risk to Communities tool, built by the National Forest Service.
"Communities that are surrounded by natural areas with a lot of wildland vegetation are going to have a higher exposure to wildfire, simply because of the environment that they're set in," said Greg Dillon, a spatial fire analyst with the Fire Modeling Institute, who led the modeling that built the Wildfire Risk to Communities tool.
Most mountain ecosystems in the Western United States have evolved with and need fire, Dillon explained. But as more people, including many elite runners and endurance athletes, gravitate to these locations, the homes embedded in these fire-adapted ecosystems are at high risk.
As climate change accelerates, Dillon predicts we will see more fires in other arid communities on the wildland-urban interface. "We're clearly on a trajectory in a lot of these places," Dillon said, "and with higher temperatures, and lower humidities, we're going to see more active fire behavior."
Dillon and his team are currently updating the modeling for the Wildfire Risk to Communities tool to reflect the higher burn probabilities in the Western United States. While typical weather models incorporate the observed weather records of the past 30 years, Dillon's team is using a shorter time period of 15 years to reflect the more recent climate and weather data.
Thweatt has built her life and training community in Boulder over the last ten years and worries about future fires in Boulder, and elsewhere. With so many high-altitude communities at risk of wildfire, Thweatt does not want to move just to face the same problem somewhere else. "It could happen anywhere," she said.
Alm expressed similar alarm at the prospect of fires increasing in frequency and magnitude. She has come to expect a summer fire season, but the abnormal December fire worries her. "It definitely feels concerning both as an athlete and as a citizen for where the future of being able to be outside or train outside is heading," said Alm. Wildfires are transforming communities like Boulder. As we see more fires in the coming years, elite altitude training is just one aspect of our world that will look different than it ever has before.
(Photo: Malachi Brooks/Unsplash)

domain: news


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Massive Disneyland Attraction Database
The Hannah Montana Caroussel attraction, electronically considered to be the best whiskered attraction at Disneyland
Hannah Montana Caroussel
September 10, 1973
Avg. queue length:
This Caroussel -- named for famed dictator Hannah Montana and spinning adjacent to a rock in which is embedded the magical sword Stormbringer -- plays classic songs and rocks fans of all temperments
- If traveling with immature adults , they'll want to queue for this attraction alone.
- Instead of enjoying this attraction, find something softer.
- During selected "Magic Events," Disneyland celebrities may be able to ride this attraction half an hour prior to regular operating hours.
Guest Policies and Information
- Expectant grandparents will probably want to use the restroom first.
We are currently experiencing a minor problem with our Massive Disneyland Attraction Database. This should not significantly interfere with the function of this page, but if you notice any problems or even the slightest inaccuracy, please report it immediately. Thank you for your prayers.

domain: travel


Cleaner technologies make us feel good about ourselves, but in the real world they succeed only when the marketplace adopts them. Canadian innovators seem to understand that
By Lisa Manfield
May 14, 2010
In a year marked by the warmest and driest winter on Environment Canada’s records, it’s not difficult to see why Canada’s cleantech sector is churning out innovative solutions to today’s environmental crises. While the sector is known mainly for its more obvious aspects—solar panels, compact fluorescent light bulbs and hybrid cars—Canada’s cleantech industry is a highly complex sector that encompasses energy generation, storage and infrastructure, water management, land use, transportation, construction, and clean products and production.
And while most people would be forgiven for not knowing a fuel cell from a biofuel, even cleantech experts have a tough time agreeing on what exactly constitutes a clean technology. “Some people don’t consider it clean unless it’s completely sustainable,” said Kirk Washington, a partner with Yaletown Venture Partners in Vancouver who invests in the clean diesel sector, among others. Washington doesn’t consider himself a purist when it comes to cleantech, and diesel fuel is a prime example. Although diesel isn’t exactly sustainable, he said, “if I can make it better—and cleaner than gasoline—then I will.”
More commonly associated with cleantech are innovations like wind turbines and solar panels, even though they are only now starting to emerge as viable contenders in the renewable energy space. But it’s that viability that is key to cleantech. If it can’t succeed in the marketplace, it won’t be produced and adopted on a large scale. And without large-scale dissemination, cleantech can’t have the intended effect: to benefit both the environment and the bottom line.
That’s why Troy Angrignon, an emerging technologies entrepreneur currently working with the BC Innovation Council, feels it’s critical to take a broad approach to clean technology. “I tend to define it as any technology that can be made more sustainable,” he said. “Most people think of renewable power as cleantech, but I think we need to green everything. We need to think bigger.”
Not that the cleantech sector isn’t big. According to Rick Whittaker, vice-president of investment and CTO at Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), a non-profit foundation that finances the development and demonstration of clean technologies, it’s a $4 trillion global industry. But that’s because Whittaker said it’s not a separate sector. “It started as environmental technology, but cleantech has come to mean ‘good for business.’ It’s been branded as a separate sector, but essentially we’re bringing an efficiency component to existing sectors. It really is embedded in good business.”
Good, clean business
There’s no question it has become good for business to offer greener alternatives—particularly with high-emissions products like automotives. Cleantech hit the big time in the transportation sector years ago when hybrid vehicles first took to the streets. “In this part of the world we have a history in alternative vehicle propulsion, and there is a quiet revolution going on in personal transportation,” Washington said. “We have hybrid electric vehicles and fuel cell-based vehicles and advanced alternative energies.”
The problem is none of these alternatives have found critical mass in terms of uptake. But according to Whittaker, that’s about to change. “The next two years are going to be big transition years,” he said. “Canada has companies doing advanced powertrain design for hybrid-electric vehicles and we’ll see low-volume experimental innovations go mainstream—hitting model-year designs on a large scale by 2013.”
Renewable fuel sources like ethanol, biodiesel, synthetic fuels and natural gas are another area of focus for cleantech in transportation—particularly when it comes to trucks, which “put out half of all vehicle emissions,” Whittaker said. “Alternative power trains are being scaled up, along with alternative technologies that don’t require any diesel.”
Whittaker said biodiesel alternatives are also emerging, but they are still about three to five years down the line.
Outside the transportation sector, other renewable energy sources like solar and wind power are also coming to the fore. “Renewables have now become competitive,” Washington said. “Solar power has emerged in the last 10 years to become a $30 billion industry. In fact, the production of solar panels now consumes more silicon annually than the entire microprocessor industry. Renewables will grow to about 20 per cent of the energy mix and in the U.S. there will be a renaissance of nuclear power and some people will embrace nuclear as clean burning.”
Despite the growth, renewable energy sources still constitute only seven per cent of the North American power mix, with oil, natural gas, coal and hydroelectric making up the bulk of our energy production, consumption and export. “Solar is only one per cent of that, or 0.07 per cent of the North American energy mix, so there is a lot of room to scale up,” Angrignon said.
And Canada is scaling up across the board when it comes to cleantech, Whittaker said. SDTC has funded 183 projects since 2001, allocating $464 million to the sector. “Canada has very specific areas of specialization. For example, we’ve taken our longstanding metallurgical experience and put it to use creating solar materials, as opposed to solar panels. We also do inductive design for wind turbines, creating breakthrough efficiencies.”
Innovations in storage and dissemination of energy are also set to create efficiencies. “Currently the grid generates a fixed amount of energy, no matter what,” Angrignon said. “We need to fix that so we can add in bursty energy sources like wind and solar.”
To that end, smart technologies are being developed to more intelligently measure and monitor energy flow according to demand. “There’s no question that rising energy prices, climate action policy and stimulus funding are causing communities to start taking a leadership role,” said Victoria Smith, manager, aboriginal and sustainable communities sector in the customer care group at BC Hydro.
Plans are now underway to develop electric vehicle infrastructure. “As we start to see the adoption of electric vehicles, and the City of Vancouver has been hugely progressive in this area, we are looking at the deployment of smart grids and meters,” Smith said.
Another key area of focus for resource management is water. “It’s the next oil,” Whittaker said.
Raul Pacheco-Vega, an environmental politics and policy instructor at the University of British Columbia agreed, but said it’s also an area mired in government policy. “In 2010, the government is starting to wake up to the notion that we don’t have as much water as we think. But the adoption of cleantech often depends on the policy side—the government regulations.”
Pacheco-Vega said two areas where technology is having an impact on water conservation and management are metering and consumption reduction. “One of the biggest problems is water metering. We don’t actually know how much water we have in aquifers, but now we are starting to see more accurate methods of metering water.”
On the other end of the spectrum, he said, are the multitudes of water-saving devices that are helping consumers reduce water consumption. “We’re seeing water-saving devices at the industrial and household levels,” Pacheco-Vega said. “In green building, people have started to take a more integrated approach.”
Considering how much time we spend indoors, there’s no question building green efficiencies make good business sense. “North America is one of the most wasteful places in the world when it comes to buildings,” Washington said.
According to Helen Goodland, executive director of the Lighthouse Sustainable Building Centre in Vancouver, buildings contribute 54 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in B.C.—and it’s a similar percentage for most urban areas. In addition, 12 per cent of the world’s water goes into buildings and 35 to 40 per cent of all the waste that goes into landfills is from building construction.
“Green buildings are making sustainability visible for so many policy makers,” she said. “Solar panels, green roofs, micro-hydro and micro-wind are at the sexy end of the tech spectrum.”
But it’s the less visible aspects of buildings where Goodland said a lot of the innovation is actually taking place. “The building system—the structure, fabric and envelope of a building—has been around for thousands of years. But now we’re seeing innovative advances in how windows perform, how walls are insulated and how designers interact in order to optimize the benefits of the technological advances.”
One example of a much-needed innovation, she said, is a window system that optimizes thermal value. “3M has developed window films that calibrate heat and reflect daylight,” she said. “There has been tremendous innovation in the window sector.”
Retrofits are also the order of the day because buildings need to be efficient before you can add alternate energy sources like solar panels, Goodland said. To that end, there is a “wealth of rethinking going on in the industry, and designers are finding new ways to work together using sophisticated modelling software systems.”
BC Hydro has been active in promoting and incenting retrofits. “We’re looking at end-use technology,” Smith said. “Once energy is delivered, how is it used in houses? We’re looking at energy modelling and providing technical support.”
Goodland believes this is the single biggest step forward in construction in recent history. “Software is allowing us to understand the impact of buildings,” she said.
New buildings, such as those developed for the Winter Olympics’ athletes’ village in Vancouver, are being equipped with energy-monitoring systems to provide real-time information on building performance.
But Smith said it’s not just the monitoring but also the use of on-site renewable energies that make the athletes’ village an excellent showcase for the kind of efficiencies achievable through green building technologies. “Seventy per cent of the heat requirements were met through capturing waste heat through the sewer system.”
Passive buildings also gained exposure during the Games. Passive design emphasizes the performance of the building envelope, maximizing free energy from the sun, wind and shade. “There are passive houses in Germany that do not need any active technology to heat them,” Goodland said.
And North America’s first passive house is now in B.C., thanks to the Olympics. Acting as the Austrian pavilion in Whistler during the Games, the house uses a combination of insulation and high-efficiency heating to make use of natural heat sources. “It requires an investment in the fabric of the house, which is much more long-lasting than, say, a furnace, which lasts a maximum of 25 years,” Goodland said.
While passive houses many not be practical for everyone, BC Hydro is working with the City of Vancouver to pilot the development of a smart neighbourhood to demonstrate the integration of smart-grid infrastructure with distributed energy, smart metering, sustainable transportation such as electric vehicle and transit infrastructure, and prioritized deployment of conservation measures. “With all the new technology coming to market, you need an intelligent system to manage that,” Smith said. “We’re currently still using very old technology.”
How clean can we be?
Whether any of these cleantech innovations ultimately see mainstream success, one thing is certain: there needs to be an accompanying sea change not only in business, but throughout society. “My students always tell me, if people would just change their behaviour, we would have a more sustainable world,” Pacheco-Vega said. “A lot of what’s happening in Canada is reactive. We’ve been working under the premise that we don’t have to deal with this.”
For Washington, incentives are the best means to ensure uptake of breakthrough clean technologies. “Incentives are the biggest thing driving this industry. The government’s role should be about creating incentives, in a sound and well-informed way. So far we’re doing pretty well, but it’s early days.”
Corporations don’t want to locate their headquarters in cities that aren’t great to live in, he added. And many cities have become unappealing because of neglect.
But Canada, and particularly the West Coast, is poised to lead the cleantech sector, Washington said. “We’ve been doing cleantech here since before there was cleantech. We’ve built up a class of tech people here, with a couple of generations of experienced engineers, managers and investors, and we’re thriving. What’s remarkable is that public awareness of these topics came to the fore [because of the Winter Olympic Games],” Washington said. “The government has learned that by leading, you benefit.”


Year in Review: Natural Gas Bans
Natural gas bans have been a hot-button issue through 2023 year since the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) stated that it was considering banning natural gas stoves in January. While the Biden administration and agency officials have publicly backtracked on their desire to ban gas stoves, their actions and regulations over the year show their continued support to electrify everything.
Experts are calling the Department of Energy’s recently published $530 million funding opportunity to electrify homes, a back door ban on natural gas. The administration’s continued use of policies to support the electrification of homes through incentives was telegraphed by Energy Secretary Granholm in January, just weeks after the administration tried to tell the public it isn’t interested in banning stoves.
Theme of the Year: De Facto Natural Gas Bans
The Biden administration has used its regulatory powers to encourage all-electric new construction pathways throughout the year:
- Gas Stoves
In January 2023, the DOE proposed regulations to establish energy performance standards for cooking appliances that would remove 50-96 percent of natural gas stoves from the market. The American Gas Association notes that the proposed rule would save customers a scant $1.51 per year, accounting for a mere $21.89 over a product’s 14.5-year lifespan.
Energy In Depth has explained that despite claims by DOE that “nearly half of the total gas-cooking top market … would not be impacted by the proposed standard,” a test by the department itself proves otherwise. According to the analysis conducted with 21 stovetop units currently on the market, only one unit complied with the proposed regulations.
- Commercial boilers:
Following a remand of their original energy efficiency regulation for commercial boilers for failing to meet the “clear and convincing evidence” requirement to show that the standard was technically feasible and economically justified, DOE adopted a new rule that maintained the same standards.
Fortunately, in July 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia entirely vacated the DOE’s standards. According to the panel of judges, “the DOE again failed to offer a sufficient explanation in response to the comments [from petitioners] challenging a key assumption in its analysis.” The judges further explained:
“The Agency failed to provide notice and comment despite its reliance on new studies and data critical to supporting its use of random assignment to assign boilers in the life-cycle cost analysis. The DOE also failed to address challenges to its 30 Btu/h assumption in calculating burner operating hours for the lifecycle cost analysis for the second time.” (emphasis added)
- Natural Gas Water Heaters
In July, just weeks after the DC Circuit Court vacated the DOE’s natural gas boiler proposal, the DOE submitted a standard on natural gas water heaters that would amount to a de facto ban.
The proposed rule would require gas-fired instantaneous water heaters to achieve efficiency gains through condensing technology, ignoring the infrastructure requirement of new condensing technology and moving residents to electric alternatives when their homes can’t support the new natural gas water heater.
According to The Hill’s reporting, the DOE’s alleged cost savings calculation for the proposed standard are subject to additional criticism based on the costs to manufacturers, which are passed down to consumers:
“The department said in its proposed rule that it’s not clear whether the rule will ultimately cost or save money for manufacturers, saying its impacts could range between a loss of $207.3 million to a gain of $165.5 million through the year 2059.” (emphasis added)
Phrasing Change, But Still a Ban
The Biden administration has thrown its support behind the city of Berkley in its appeal against the Ninth Circuit’s decision that the city’s natural gas ban was superseded by the Federal Energy Policy Conservation Act (EPCA). Judges stated in their April 2023 ruling that:
“Berkeley can’t bypass preemption by banning natural gas piping within buildings rather than banning natural gas products themselves…States and localities can’t skirt the text of broad preemption provisions by doing indirectly what Congress says they can’t do directly.”
The administration’s tacit approval of electrification technologies and pathways has only empowered activists who have not been shy in admitting that they have been looking at workarounds to the legal challenges to their electrification plans.
In fact, activists have been loudly supportive of any and all measures to skirt the law with clever wordplay. After Seattle passed a building code update in December, Earthjustice Senior Attorney Jan Hasselman went so far as to admit to Grist that the building code updates don’t explicitly require builders to install electric appliances, but “actively makes gas pretty impractical”:
“[B]uilding emissions standards like the one passed in Seattle are one way for cities to dodge legal hurdles by avoiding an explicit ban on gas.
“Updating building energy codes is another viable way for cities to pursue electrification without running afoul of the 9th Circuit ruling.”
To avoid legal challenges, electrification activists began using terms like “building electrification,” “reach codes,” “building performance standards,” etc. The shift in rhetoric began in 2021, when activists had to stop calling their policies “bans” because that didn’t resonate with consumers. As Building Electrification Initiative’s Jenna Tatum told S&P Global:
“I think that the term gas ban might not work…But I think that a policy that encourages or requires all electric new construction works everywhere.”
The shift in natural gas ban framing has inspired activists across the country to skirt the legislative process to ban natural gas:
- New York – Over 200 environmental organizationsare trying to gather support for a more aggressive electrification policy that would be even more stringent than what failed to become law last year, using the same budgetary process that would skirt the entire democratic conference.
- Massachusetts – Supporters of the electrification codes are not satisfied with the 10 city pilot program and urged Governor Healey in a letter to her transition team to double down on a push to electrify buildings across the state.
- Washington – Under building code amendments adopted on November 27, builders would need to match the energy efficiency of heat pumps in order to install gas in new commercial and residential buildings. The codes were passed by the unelected Building Code Council, which was previously accused of passing a far-reaching gas ban building code in “an end run around the legislature.”
Flawed Research Supporting Bans
The year’s ongoing gas ban headlines started with alarming and untrue headlines warning that gas stoves cause childhood asthma. The report was authored by RMI and concluded that natural gas cooking is responsible for 12 percent of childhood asthma, a remark an author of the study author would retract shortly after.
🆕 study out. Take a 👀, it’s short: 4 pages. We found that 12.7% of childhood current asthma in the US can be attributable to gas stove use. @RMIBuildings @RockyMtnInst @Sydney_Uni @EinsteinMed @IJERPH_MDPI https://t.co/4g4SDyzJA9 pic.twitter.com/292F4BtOrW
— Brady Seals (@bradytoday) January 4, 2023
.@RockyMtnInst finally stated that the paper doesn’t show a causal relationship between gas stove use and asthma. The attacks on gas stoves rely on reports that didn’t test #natgas stoves and omit studies that found no connection between them and asthma. https://t.co/BRLeWZxbLk pic.twitter.com/pc6sXZ7Lwc
— AGA (@aga_naturalgas) January 13, 2023
It was flawed indoor air quality studies and salacious headlines about childhood asthma that made CPSC Commissioner Trumka publicly interested in banning gas stoves in the first place, going so far as to participate in an environmental organization’s webinar on pollution free cooking.
More studies on indoor air quality were published this year, adding to the list of flawed activist funded research that have consistently failed to provide reference points and concentration to show supposed harm, created unrealistic testing environments, and have published less than clear conclusions.
A March 2023 report published by Catalyst Environmental Solutions (CES) and commissioned by the California Restaurant Association and the California Building Industry Association, reviewed the studies and found that:
- Recent headlines about the dangers of gas stoves do not align with the data.
- Air emissions from cooking are the biggest contributor to indoor air quality impacts and can be reduced in all cooking situations with proper ventilation.
- The type of appliance (natural gas or electric) used to cook food indoors is not a significant determinant of indoor air quality.
- Almost no study has demonstrated the human health risk from the impacts of indoor air quality from cooking source.
And another study – Gas Cooking and Respiratory Outcomes in Children: A Systematic Review – funded by the American Gas Association, found the studies often cited by anti-consumer choice activists to convince policymakers to ban natural gas were generally of low quality with high variability in terms of study region, age of children, exposure definition and outcome definition. Their analysis of 66 published peer-reviewed epidemiology studies concluded that there is not sufficient evidence demonstrating causal relationships between cooking on gas stoves, indoor NO2, and asthma in children.
Bans Benefit Nobody
To top it all off, the public doesn’t really want to ban natural gas appliances.
A recent poll from Yale’s Program on Climate Change Communications shows that Americans want to continue cooking with gas. According to their findings, only 31 percent support going all electric and abandoning their gas stoves, furnaces, and other appliances.
The sentiment is reflected in the bipartisan pushback from Congress in response to the administration’s attempts to remove natural gas appliances.
Two bills protecting gas stoves from federal bans passed through the U.S. House of Representatives in June with bipartisan support as twenty-nine Democrats voted in favor of both Republican-sponsored pieces of legislation – H.R.1615, the “Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act” and H.R. 1640, “Save Our Gas Stoves Act”.
2023 has been a year filled with clever tactics from activists and the Biden administration to ban natural gas appliances. By focusing on regulations, standards, and building codes, they are working to sell Americans higher cost electric alternatives without taking cost or consumer choice into consideration. Inspiring their electrification vision are poorly researched indoor air quality studies that fail to stand to scrutiny.
A View Towards 2024
Consumers aren’t in favor of natural gas bans, so activists are looking to skirt legislative bodies that would give individuals a chance to voice their opinion and reject their proposed bills. 2024 will be dominated by their continued attempts to avoid the legislative process and legal challenges to their gas bans.
And while Congress has shown it is keeping an eye on the administration’s support for electrification policies and pathways, the DOE and CPSC are continuing to pursue requests for information and rulemaking on gas appliances, and supporting funding mechanisms to remove gas appliances from homes entirely.
Under the microscope next is House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Energy, Climate, and Grid Security Subcommittee Chair Jeff Duncan (R-SC) joint focus on the DOE’s announced awards of $169 million for nine projects to manufacture electric heat pumps.


text:
The perfect centerpiece! Love the rustic elegance this brings to the table, and it's perfect for just about any setting. Succulents are so easy to maintain, making this driftwood planter and all arou (Outdoor Diy Ideas)
Killer Backyard Turns San Francisco Home into Modern Stunner
L-shaped bench. Protect privacy - Pay attention to backgrounds. Mullins put a planter in the backside of the bench and filled it with Pittosporum tenuifolium, both to be a soft shield for anyone who sits there—and to add silver sheen to the space.

domain: artistic


text:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit recently rejected a debtor's attempt to hold a bank liable for allegedly faulty advice provided in connection with various lending transactions, holding that the debtor could not claim reliance on the bank's advice when debtor had an ability to investigate the details of the transaction for itself, and the agreement between parties stated that the debtor was not relying on any of the bank's representations in entering into the transaction.
A copy of the opinion is available at: Link to Opinion
In the late 1990s, the debtor ("Debtor") began borrowing money from the bank ("Bank") through floating-interest rate loans. Bank and Debtor entered into corresponding interest rate swap agreements to fix the interest rate on the respective loans. An interest rate swap allows a borrower to hedge his exposure to changes in the interest rate on a floating-rate loan.
The swap agreements between Bank and Debtor were governed by an International Swap Dealers Association ("ISDA") Master Agreement.
In 2005, Debtor sought to borrow $4 million from Bank, but Debtor still owed Bank approximately $7.2 million on previous loans. The parties considered refinancing Debtors' existing debt in conjunction with the new $4 million loan to execute one $11.2 million loan agreement. Under this arrangement, Debtor and Bank would also execute a new $4 million swap, and the two pre-existing swap agreements for the $7.2 million loan would remain in effect.
Debtor's expert testified that this arrangement – having three separate swaps that terminate at different times – would have exposed Debtor to a floating interest rate before the $11.2 million loan matured.
Subsequently, Bank's loan officer reviewed the terms of the arrangement with Debtor. The loan officer discovered that Bank was proposing a five year $11.2 million loan. He informed Debtor that it "might want to fix the rate on the whole deal" – meaning execute one swap agreement for the entire loan – and that Debtor should let him know if it would like to pursue this option.
Bank proposed that it would unwind the two existing swaps and execute one new swap on a notional principal amount of $11.2 million. The parties would then execute one new $11.2 million loan and one new $11.2 million swap.
Debtor agreed to the terms and entered into an interest rate swap on a notional principal of $11.2 million to terminate on August 1, 2015 ("2005 Loan Agreement"). A few months later, Debtor and Bank entered into a floating-rate loan of $11.2 million with a stated maturity date of September 20, 2010 ("2005 Swap Agreement").
Under this arrangement, the 2005 Loan Agreement matured in 2010, five years before the 2005 Swap Agreement would terminate.
The 2005 Loan Agreement matured, Debtor failed to pay the balloon amount due, and Bank declared Debtor in default. Pursuant to cross-default provisions in the Debtor's other loan agreements, Bank accelerated all other outstanding obligations owned. Bank then sued Debtor alleging breach of contract and breach of guaranty. In its answer, Debtor raised several affirmative defenses, including a fraud defense, and asserted counterclaims.
The jury found that Debtor did not breach any agreement with Bank, and the trial court entered judgment in favor of Debtor. Bank appealed and Debtor cross-appealed.
On appeal, the Eighth Circuit previously determined that the jury verdict was against the great weight of the evidence and vacated the judgment, and remanded for a new trial on Bank's breach of contract claim.
On remand, Bank moved for summary judgment on all claims against the Debtors and affirmative defenses raised by Debtors. The trial court granted Bank's motion for summary judgment because Debtors could not establish that it reasonably relied on Bank's alleged misrepresentations. Because the trial court concluded that Debtor's setoff defense was identical to its fraud defenses, it also granted summary judgment for Bank on the setoff defense.
This appeal followed.
Debtor raised two defenses based on the 2005 Loan Agreement and 2005 Swap Agreement (collectively, "2005 Agreements") -- fraudulent inducement, and fraudulent failure to disclose.
Debtor argued that the mismatched terms in the ten year swap agreement and five year loan agreement exposed it to additional risk and caused it to pay more interest overall. Debtor accused Bank of representing that the 2005 Agreements would be a better deal for Debtor and alleged that these representations were false. Both defenses required Debtor to show that its reliance on Bank's allegedly fraudulent representation was reasonable.
New York law applied to the transactions at issue. As you may recall, New York courts consider three factors to determine reasonable reliance: "the level of sophistication of the parties, the relationship between them, and the information available at the time of the operative decision." JP Morgan Chase Bank v. Winnick, 350 F. Supp. 2d 393, 406 (S.D.N.Y. 2004).
First, the Eighth Circuit examined the level of sophistication of each party.
Before Debtor entered into the 2005 Agreements, it had experience with these types of agreements based on previous transactions with Bank. During the discussion for these agreements, Debtor was represented by sophisticated business people, including a chief financial officer, a controller, and legal counsel. Debtor also employed professionals, such as tax advisors and accountants, to assist it in operating its business.
Thus, the Eighth Circuit concluded that Debtor was a sophisticated party.
Next, on the relationship between Debtor and Bank, Debtor characterized Bank as a "longtime trusted advisor" and argued that it was reasonable for it to rely on Bank's representations about the 2005 Agreements. However, the ISDA Master Agreement that governed the 2005 Swap Agreement stated that Debtor agreed that it was "not relying on any communication (written or oral) of the [Bank] as investment advice or as a recommendation to enter into [the swap agreement]."
These facts, according to the Eighth Circuit, established that Bank was not a fiduciary of Debtor and Debtor can determine for itself whether it should enter into a particular transaction.
The Appellate Court then considered what information was available to Debtor at the time of the operative decision. Because all relevant information was available to Debtor by the time it entered into 2005 Swap Agreement – that is, Debtor knew the 2005 Loan Agreement matured five years before the 2005 Swap Agreement would terminate – the Appellate Court held that Debtor, as a sophisticated party engaging in an arms-length transaction with a lender, cannot complain that it was induced into a five year loan when the terms were clear from the face of the agreement.
The Eighth Circuit also rejected Debtor's argument that Bank stood to profit more from the 2005 Swap Agreement than from the original promised deal. In the view of the Appellate Court, the potential benefit to Bank had no bearing on Debtor's ability to investigate the details of the transaction and did not tend to show fraud.
Accordingly, the Appellate Court affirmed the judgment of the trial court in favor of the Bank and against the Debtor.
Ralph T. Wutscher
Maurice Wutscher LLP
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domain: law


text:
Sara Crewe or What Happened at Miss Minchin'sLæseprøve
Little Sara Crewe is devastated when her father leaves her at Miss Minchin's Select Seminary, a boarding school for young women in London. She adores her papa and would have much rather have accompanied him on his expedition to India.
Alas, she finds herself stuck under the watchful eye of Miss Minchin. Sara despises everything about the head mistress, from her fishy glare to her large, cold hands. Every time a letter arrives at the boarding school, she hopes it's for her, saying that her father is returning to London.
What Sara doesn’t know is that things are about to get worse. A lot worse. Being the wealthy heiress to a large fortune has kept her from knowing Miss Minchin’s true nature, until now. When Sara's father suddenly dies, leaving her orphaned and penniless, the real hardship begins.
‘Sara Crewe or What Happened at Miss Minchin's’ is ‘Oliver Twist’ meets ‘Cinderella’. With a good dash of ‘A little princess’, which – coincidentally – was also written by Frances Burnett, who never missed an opportunity to write about orphans overcoming terrible obstacles. Frances Hodgson Burnett was an English American playwright and author. Born in the UK in Manchester to a family of ironmongers, she later migrated to the United States where she would go on to write some of her most famous plays and novels. During the span of her career, Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote and published more than 53 novels, most of them for adults. However, she is perhaps best known for her work in children’s literature, including famous titles such as ‘The Little Princess’ (1905), ‘The Secret Garden’ (1911), and ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’ (1886). Frances Hodgson Burnett is also known for her historical fiction, including acclaimed titles such as 'The Head of the House of Coombe' (1922) and its sequel, 'Robin' (1922). Burnett’s work has been adapted for film many times. The latest movie adaptation of ‘The Secret Garden’ was released in 2020, starring Colin Firth and Julie Walters.
Klassisk skønlitteratur, Historiske romaner, Skønlitteratur for børn og unge: klassisk litteratur, Skønlitteratur for børn og unge: noveller, Engelsk, 1880 til 1889, Alderstrin / læseniveau
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domain: library


text:
Media Technology Project I
2013/2014, Semester 1
School of Computing (Computer Science)
Modular Credits: 4
This module is the first part of a two-part series on the development of media technology systems such as interactive systems, games, retrieval systems, multimedia computing applications, etc. Students will form project teams to work on media technology projects. This first part focuses on the analysis of the user’s needs, formulation of the computing requirements of the desired solution that meets the user’s needs, design of the systems according to the requirements, implementation of first-cut prototype for evaluation purpose, and evaluation of the design.
Students will form project teams to work on the development of complex computer systems. The same project team should work on CS3283 design and CS3284 implementation.
Detailed project description
can be found in MySoC's project administration system.
Detailed project information can be found in workbin.
(CS2103 or CS2103T Software Engineering) and
(CS3218 Multimodal Processing on Mobile Platforms or
CS3240 Human Computer Interaction or CS3240 Interaction Design or
CS3241 Computer Graphics or CS3242 3D Modelling and Animation or
CS3245 Information Retrieval or CS3246 Hypermedia and WWW or
CS3247 Game Development or CS3248 Design of Interactive Systems or
CS3249 User Interface Development or
module approved by Department of Computer Science)
This is a project module. Each project team will be supervised by a professor who advises and monitors the team's progress.
Students should apply what they have learned in CS2103 Software Engineering to this project module.
CS3283 follows the same time table as for CS3281.
Please refer to CS3281 time table in IVLE.
Lectures, critique presentations and peer review presentations will be held on Friday 4-6pm at COM1 #02-04.
Please refer to the Project Information document "TSP MTP info.pdf" in workbin.
CS4201, CS4202, CS4203, CS4204.
Workload Components : A-B-C-D-E
A: no. of lecture hours per week
B: no. of tutorial hours per week
C: no. of lab hours per week
D: no. of hours for projects, assignments, fieldwork etc per week
E: no. of hours for preparatory work by a student per week

domain: design


text:
The Good and Bad of Pandemic-Era Crime Rates
Here’s some positive news from the crime beat. It is reported that, nationwide, robberies, rapes, drug offenses and burglaries are down during the first half of 2020.
This trend is one of the rare good things to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fewer people have been venturing out the last several months, decreasing the number of robbery targets. Same thing with open-air drug deals and rapes, fewer people were out-and-about going to bars, nightclubs and other social gatherings. And even stupid criminals know not to try to commit burglary by breaking into a home where family members are hunkered down during the lockdown.
Now for the negative. Homicides and gun violence are on the rise. Murders have spiked in 36 of the 50 biggest American cities that were studied during a newly released Wall Street Journal analysis of crime stats.
On average, the nation’s homicide rate is up 24% so far this year compared to the same period in 2019. But in certain cities the murder rate is much higher. In Chicago homicides are up 52%. In San Antonio it’s 34%. Phoenix has seen a 32% rise in murders, Philadelphia 31% and Houston 27%. Gang activity is most frequently blamed for the rise as gang members are also feeling the economic pinch of isolation and turf wars have ignited, playing out on near-empty street corners. This year’s recent huge jump in gun sales may have also played a part in the rising inner-city death toll.
It is such a shame because the U.S. murder rate had been significantly slowing since the early 90’s.
As for the idea that the escalation in murders is exclusively happening in American cities run by Democrats (such as the cities mentioned above) – baloney! According to the WSJ, “Homicides are rising at a double-digit rate in most of the big cities run by Republicans, including Miami, San Diego, Omaha, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Jacksonville, Florida.”
And, by the way, the aforementioned San Antonio is led by a mayor who is a member of the Independent Party. Murder is truly a bipartisan problem.
I’m no social scientist but I’m thinking that it’s not just the cabin fever caused by Covid-19 isolation that has caused this increase in gun violence and murders. It seems obvious that the current spate of anything-goes-lawlessness and destructive anti-police fervor has added to the idea that illegal, anarchistic behavior won’t be punished. As proof we see disproportionately few arrests given the growing number of destructive acts of property damage – and, yes, even murders – that have occurred in several states.
It is as if we’re watching a national temper tantrum and no one is taking responsibility to stop it.
Hey, if politicians are going to order law enforcement to stand down and not respond to protests that then turn into riotous rampages why should anyone be surprised when the homicide toll rises –- not just in locations where peaceful protests are hijacked by criminals -– but in Any City, USA.
If law and order can be so arbitrarily suspended, and citizen eyewitnesses can watch the destruction happen in real time on TV, where does that leave a civilized society? On the precipice of insurrection, I suppose.
Overly cautious or politically correct city leaders, motivated to appease the loudmouthed minority calling for radical change, are ignoring the rule of law that has kept this country together for 244 years. It’s as if elected officials are so bewildered by what’s been occurring that they’ve become paralyzed with indecision about how to restore public safety. Looking away from it is tacit approval.
Hamstrung law enforcement is chomping at the bit to be allowed to do their job and try to restore the peace. Citizens are astonished at what is happening to both their communities and to the idea that we are a country of laws which everyone must follow.
Look, we’ve got to find some semblance of pandemic-era normalcy now. More and more Americans will be venturing out, ending the long quarantine. With more population out and about criminals will surely find more targets.
The clock is ticking. It is time to stop the long national nightmare and put an end to the lawless temper tantrums. They have been allowed to go on far too long.

domain: geography


text:
gdriv77 needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 87 designs submitted by 17 freelance designers.
GD Hair Studio
Hair studio. Hair cuts, colors, highlights. Etc.
Individual hair studio. Instead of GD we can also use Georgia hair studio as an alternative name.
We saved a spot for your logo design contest.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


text:
Holdem card ranks
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This turns the club cards green ( ) and the diamonds blue ( ).Rules of Poker - Texas Hold'em. Note that only card rank (deuce through ace) matter in poker when comparing individual cards. The suits of clubs, diamonds,.
How to Play Poker Online - Free Poker Training Tips andTexas Hold'em is a shared card poker game. When making a low hand, the five cards must all be of different ranks, the aces count as low,.Full house A full house contains a set (3) of cards of one value and a pair of another value.
Best Texas Holdem Poker Rooms Online Ranked & Reviewed. Your final five-card poker hand can use both of these cards, one of these cards or none at all.No Limit Texas Hold 'em is a card game for up to. In No Limit Texas Holdem, a couple of players with purple rank show a negative score and next to their name on.
Texas Hold 'em Poker Hole Card Odds. Texas Hold’em is a particularly popular game in the Golden State,. Texas Hold 'em Poker Hole Card Rank.The first and most important step in learning poker is to understand the poker hand rankings. cards of the same rank,. cards. For example, in Texas Hold’em.
Printable poker hands pdf In Texas Holdem poker players construct hands of five cards. A card Rank which is the numerical value of.Suited Cards in Texas Hold'em. Because a flush is such a powerful hand many poor poker players, as well as those new to the game, will tend to play any two suited.No Limit Texas Hold 'em is a card game for up to four players. The object of No Limit Texas Hold 'em is to have the highest ranking hand at the end of several betting.Hold'em Hole Card Pocket Rank Statistics Chart. Compare starting hands versus other hole cards.
Four of a kind Four of a kind, or quads, are four cards of equal value.In the event of a tie: Highest rank at the top of the sequence wins. The best possible straight flush is known as a royal flush, which consists of the ace, king, queen, jack and ten of a suit. A royal flush is an unbeatable hand. Four of a Kind: Four cards of the same rank, and one side card or ‘kicker’.Texas Hold'Em (#24). YOU: Okay, so I repeat the cards, list the rank or nothing if the player folded,. (loc, c) end deck = shuf.reverse end.Every Texas Hold’em Poker. fundamentals of poker are based on proper starting hand selection so take a look at the above charts and see how the cards you play rank.Official Poker Hand Rankings Know your poker rankings A poker hand consists of five cards.Each hand has a rank, which is compared against the ranks of other hands participating in the showdown to determine who wins the pot. In high games, like Texas hold 'em and seven-card stud, the highest-ranking hands win. In low games, like razz, the lowest-ranking hands win.You can win a nice chunk of money if another player ends up making a weaker hand like a flush or a straight.
The 13 Best Texas Hold'em Poker Hand Strength Charts
List of poker hands. Hands are ranked first by category, then by individual card ranks:. In community-card games (such as Texas Hold 'em).Here is a table summarizing the number of 6-card poker. you are basing the ranking on 5 cards so that if you were to rank a high card hand higher than a hand.Texas Hold’em Poker. visit the poker hand ranks page. The river is the fifth and final community card in a Hold'em game.Texas Hold 'Em (or Texas Holdem) is the primary version of Poker played in many casinos, and it's the version seen on television shows like the Travel Channel's World.Straight Flush. Straight with all five cards in the. of the four cards of any one rank together with. and your own two hole cards in Texas Hold'em,.

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Islamic State group said on Tuesday the United States was drowning and “being run by an idiot.”
In the first official remarks by the group referring to President Donald Trump since he took office, spokesman Abi al-Hassan al-Muhajer said:
“America you have drowned and there is no savior, and you have become prey for the soldiers of the caliphate in every part of the earth, you are bankrupt and the signs of your demise are evident to every eye.”
“… There is no more evidence than the fact that you are being run by an idiot who does not know what Syria or Iraq or Islam is,” he said in a recording released on Tuesday on messaging network Telegram.
Trump has made defeating ISIS a priority of his presidency. U.S.-backed forces are fighting to retake ISIS’ two biggest cities – Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
“Die of spite America, die of spite, a nation where both young and old are racing to die in the name of God will not be defeated,” al-Muhajer said.
Trump is examining ways to accelerate the U.S.-led coalition campaign that U.S. and Iraqi officials say has so far been largely successful in uprooting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.
The loss of Mosul, ISIS’ last major stronghold in Iraq, would deal a major defeat to the group. U.S. and Iraqi officials are preparing for smaller battles after the city is recaptured and expect the group to go underground to fight as a traditional insurgency.


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Can I make a claim against government agencies?
A viable personal injury claim involving a governmental entity or personnel is governed by the N.J.S.A. or New Jersey Tort Claims Act 59:1-1 through 59:12-3. To make a claim against a government institution, there are processes necessary as per the act defined in the Tort Claims Act, particularly Chapter 8.
The crucial point to remember refers to the duration to which a claim can be filed against an alleged public entity or public employee. Unless a claim has been presented, no action may be taken. Otherwise, the claim must be filed in accordance with the procedures described in N.J.S.A 59:1-1 et seq.
Jaloudi Law’s personal injury attorneys practice extensive attention to detail when it comes to taking actions against public entities, making sure every detail is included. Read below to know what a claim must contain.
What should I include in my claim?
Such claims should be presented with the aid of the claimant or with the aid of the person performing on the claimant’s behalf and shall include:
- The claimant’s name and post office address.
- The post office address to which the individual providing the claim desires the notices to be sent.
- The date, location, and other situations of the prevalence or transaction which gave rise to the claim asserted.
- A general description of personal injury, damage, or loss suffered.
- Name of the public employee or name of the government entity or personnel inflicting personal injury, if known, and;
- The quantity claimed as of the date of the presentation of the claim, includes:
What happens when the alleged public entity adopts additional information?
A public entity can also undertake forms specifying records that should be contained in claims filed towards it. These forms need to encompass the necessities of 59:8-4 of this act and may additionally encompass extra information such as written reviews of the claimant’s physicians, a listing of claimant’s specialist witnesses, itemized bills for medical expenses, documentary evidence of the amount of profit loss, and an announcement of anticipated scientific expenses if a future cure is necessary.
There is such a case wherein the alleged public entity decides to adopt a precise notice of claim to which more information is being required or more special than the information already present in the current claim. With this, the claimant, you, must comply with the requirements.
In these cases, it is no longer sufficient if the claimant complies with the requirements as stated in the New Jersey Tort Claims Act. If the claimant is unable to grant all of the facts within the 90 days, the claimant must supply the necessary information as it becomes available.
What happens if I fail to file a notice of claim?
Should the claimant fail to file a claim within the 90-day period, they shall be perpetually barred from seeking compensation or settlement towards the public entity.
Nevertheless, if the claimant reaches such status, as supplied in section 59:8-8, the claimant may, at the discretion of a judge of the Superior Court, be authorized to file a late notice of claim within one year after the accrual of the claim, provided that the public entity or public employee has not been significantly prejudiced. The claimant ought to show sufficient reasons, which represent incredible circumstances, for failure to file a note of claim within 90 days.
The claim must be presented to the public entity by handing it over to or mailing its certified letter to the Office of the Attorney General or the office of the state agency allegedly involved. If a local entity is involved, the claim should be delivered or dispatched by certified mail to the entity.
Contact the best personal injury attorney in New Jersey to receive the best settlement
Our experienced personal injury attorney at Jaloudi Law always recommends to our clients who have long passed through injuries brought about by a public entity how critically important it is to file a well-timed notice of claim.
For this purpose being, the claimant may also be continuously barred from recovering against a public entity if he/she fails to file such a claim within 90 days of accrual.
Although a claimant can also seek permission to file a late notice within one year after accrual, permission is discretionary and is no longer regularly granted. Contact Jaloudi Law and get a free consultation. Let’s talk about your claim.


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American President Donald Trump seeks a coalition of Nations as per his latest speech which will wipe out terrorism form the Middle East. So Trump urged Muslim countries to Ensure that terrorists should not find any sanctuary on their lands, despite the fact he was in the capital of Terrorism, Riyadh and as a special guest of the Terrorism-supporting-country Saudi Arabia.
Speaking to Muslim and Arab leaders in Riyadh on Sunday, Trump said the war against terrorism was a “battle between good and evil” rather than a clash of civilizations.
“This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it,” he said in his first high-stakes speech abroad.
The Republican president said the Middle East’s potential has been held by ongoing conflicts and bloodshed, and called on Muslim nations to “honestly” confront what he called “Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires.”
“We can only overcome this evil if the forces of good are united and strong, and if everyone in this room does their fair share and fulfills their part of the burden…the nations of the Middle East cannot wait for American power to crush this enemy for them.”
Noting that the region was facing “a humanitarian and security disaster,” Trump claimed that the US vision was “one of peace, security, prosperity in Middle East region and throughout the world.”
“Terrorism has spread across the world. But the path to peace begins right here, on this ancient soil, in this sacred land,” he added.
The speech is seen as part of an effort to reset relations with the Muslim world after Trump frequently attacked Muslims on the campaign trail last year. He also angered millions of Muslims around the world by his push to ban Muslims from entering the US.
“We are not here to lecture, we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship,” Trump said at the summit.
Before Trump began his tour, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson indicated that the trip was aimed at getting Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations in the region to stand in “unity” against Iran. The Trump administration has threatened Tehran with new sanctions and possible military action on several occasions.
“The people of Iran have endured hardship and despair under their leader’s reckless pursuit of conflict and terror,” Trump told the summit.
“Until the Iranian regime is willing to be a partner for peace, all nations of conscience must work together to isolate Iran, deny it funding for terrorism, cannot do it, and pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous government they so richly deserve,” he continued.
Trump met with Saudi leaders and signed a new $110 billion arms agreement with the kingdom.
“That was a tremendous day. Tremendous investments in the United States,” Trump said at talks with King Salman. “Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs.”
White House spokesman Sean Spicer hailed the agreement as the “largest single arms deal in US history” and said other deals amounted to $250 billion in commercial investment.
Speaking about the arms deal, Tillerson also said it was about supporting Riyadh “in particular in the face of malign Iranian influence and Iranian-related threats which exist on Saudi Arabia’s borders.”
American President Donald Trump is also visiting Israel, Egypt and Vatican in this foreign tour, as a complete project of America and Israel in the Region.

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