India will be in search of middle-order runs, while England need Joe Root's support system to fire as both teams look to draw first blood at Lord's
"This is exactly what we wanted to do, we wanted to start strong. On day five we knew we had our chances in front of us. We certainly felt like we were on top in the game. Getting that lead was crucial which kept us on top throughout the game.": Virat Kohli after the Nottingham Test.
India starting an overseas tour on the front foot is a rare occurrence and it's even rarer if the visiting country is England. India had the upper hand almost all through the first Test in Nottingham. And heading into Day 5 with 157 needed and nine wickets in hand, they were in the driver's seat to clinch that crucial first win to start off, but the rain gods had other plans. While it was disappointing, given that chances like these have been at a premium in recent years, Kohli exuded confidence in the post-match presentation and India would like to carry forward that confidence and momentum into the Lord's Test.
India were 'on top throughout the game' because of a combination of factors that brought out plenty of positives. KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma's patience and perseverance helped overcome the conditions, especially in the first innings. That 97-run opening stand in the first innings set the tone.
More importantly, India didn't let their perennial nemesis hurt them — the lower-order and the tail. In fact, they turned the tables to frustrate England as their own tail wagged (8-11 partnership) to add 73 crucial runs for the last three wickets. They capitalised on key moments and didn't loosen the stranglehold once in the position of ascendency, something which had pricked them time and again in the past.
Unlike previous tours to England, India didn't warm up in the first Test, they seized control. While they did most things right, the one area of concern that remained was the middle order.
Cheteshwar Pujara, Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane and Rishabh Pant combined to score 24 runs in the first innings. It's that mini middle-order collapse that allowed England a way back into the match after the openers had put on 97 runs.
The Kohli-Anderson battle resumed and after a wait of seven years, the England pacer finally had the wicket of the Indian captain. It was that wobble seam first ball that sent Trent Bridge into a frenzy. Kohli's indifferent form continued. He's played some class innings in challenging conditions but that consistency has eluded him recently, along with a three-figure score. In the last one and half years (Since 1 Feb 2020), he's averaged just 23 and hasn't scored a century in 15 innings. Rahane too hasn't scored a ton in 13 innings and averaged 20.61 in that period with just one fifty-plus score.
Pujara has averaged 19.11 in his last ten innings with just one fifty-plus score. He looked tentative at the wicket in the first innings in Nottingham. However, he started off confidently in the second innings and exuded positivity in that difficult last hour of Day 4. He will look to continue from where he left off in Nottingham and get back among the runs at Lord's.
Those horror memories of their last visit to Lord's, in 2018, will still be fresh in India's minds as they return to the same venue where they were blown away for 107 and 130 and suffered their first innings defeat under Kohli, inside three days. And that's why that middle order contribution is so crucial.
The combination conundrum is back again with Shardul Thakur ruled out due to a hamstring injury. A lot of eyebrows were raised when the in-form Ashwin was dropped from the first Test and India went in with four pacers. In the end, the fast bowlers vindicated the call, picking up all 20 wickets, just for the second time in history. Kohli has said that four pacers and one spinner will 'most likely be the template going ahead in the series'. Thakur's presence gave India some batting assurance in the lower-order. So should they go for Ashwin or Ishant Sharma/Umesh Yadav? Ashwin gives them the batting depth while Ishant/Umesh lengthens their tail.
With a better forecast compared to Nottingham, London might witness warm weather which would mean that Kohli could move away from his template as early as the second Test and tilt the balance in Ashwin's favour. However, Kohli hinted at replacing Shardul with another pacer on the eve of the Test. The Indian captain said that India are comfortable with where they are placed as a batting unit and "won't feel that we are a batsman short if Shardul doesn't play".
"If Shardul is not available, we definitely will think first how to pick up 20 wickets and not to plug in another guy who can give us some runs with the bat," Kohli said in the pre-match conference, adding, "and we feel we are very comfortable after how the first Test went."
Mayank Agarwal is back in the nets but in all probability, they would look to continue to open with Rahul who was India's top-run getter with 110 runs in the first Test.
Memories of that 2018 Lord's Test are not just restricted to the batting failure. India got their selection horribly wrong as well as they dropped a pacer and played two spinners amid rain and overcast conditions. Kohli had admitted that they judged the conditions wrongly. They wouldn't want to commit the same mistake this time around.
Post the Nottingham Test, Root accepted that India were in the driver's seat on the final day but was also confident of the English bowlers creating chances on the final day to turn it around in favour of the hosts.
The confidence in batting is not similar to their bowling. The top-order troubles have been a constant worry and the troubles continued in Nottingham. The trio of Don Sibley, Rory Burns and Zack Crawley could manage just 97 runs combined in the match. Since the start of this year, the England top-order has had the worst average among all Test-playing nations — 20.29. Sibley has averaged 21.56, Burns 31.40 and Crawley a meagre 11.14 in this period. Root waged a lone battle in Nottingham and the relief was palpable after he registered his first century at home after 27 innings. England, though, need relief from their batting woes as there is too much dependency on Root.
Coach Chris Silverwood acknowledged that the rest need to step up. "I mean Joe's been phenomenal for the last six months really scoring runs for us. And what we need to do is make sure that the guys that are batting with him are coming to the party as well. So that's one thing which we're talking about in the dressing room constantly. And it's something that I've spoken to the batting coaches as well."
England might ring in a few changes for the Lord's Test. Moeen Ali, who has been out of favour for some time now in red-ball cricket, is back in the squad on the back of impressive form in The Hundred (189 runs from 6 innings at 31.50 and four wickets from 6 matches at 31.50). Moeen hasn't played a home Test since the 2019 Ashes Test at Edgbaston and England have gone with an all-pace attack in their last three home Tests. However, Moeen provides a degree of balance, seeing as he also has a good bowling record against India at home, averaging 22.22 with 31 wickets from seven matches and might get into the eleven straightaway.
There are concerns in the pace department as Stuart Broad has been ruled out of the series with a torn calf muscle and James Anderson is an injury doubt with tight quadriceps muscle. Saqib Mahmood, who shone in the white-ball series against Pakistan, has been added as an injury cover. Mark Wood might replace Broad and either Craig Overton or Mahmood might get into the eleven in case Anderson also misses out. If the senior pacers are ruled out, Ollie Robinson, who impressed in Nottingham with a five-for in the first innings, will become the go-to man in that pace attack.
On the batting front, Haseeb Hameed, who scored a century in the warm-up match against India in Durham and has averaged 45.85 in County Championship (with two 100s and four 50s) may replace Crawley while Moeen might come in place of Dan Lawrence.
England have had a good record against India at Lord's. They have won 12 of the 18 matches, losing two with four ending in draws. The last time India won at Lord's was in 2014 under MS Dhoni, where they beat the hosts by 95 runs. The only other win came way back in 1986 where Kapil Dev led from the front to achieve a five-wicket win.
Another crucial aspect will be maintaining over rates. The teams were docked two WTC points each for slow overrates in the first Test and they would want to make sure that they don't miss out on vital points going forward.
With India off to a positive start and looking to carry forward this confidence to Lord's and England still looking to find their (batting) feet, we might be in for another riveting Test match.
Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets. Get technology news, gadgets reviews & ratings. Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison.
Among bowlers, Indian pace duo of Mohammad Siraj and Shardul Thakur also made gains following their good show in the opening ODI against Bangladesh.
Virat Kohli finished the campaign as the top scorer with 296 runs in six matches.
Haris Rauf said no player other than Virat Kohli could have hit those famous sixes from the India vs Pakistan T20 World Cup 2022 match.


text:
We get a lot of questions regarding what you can do with duck eggs besides eating them in the standard egg fashion; scrambled, poached, over-easy, etc. The next biggest use is in baked goods. We previously posted a super rich brownie recipe and now we have one for making home made noodles.
We made these for the kids and didn't tell them they were made with duck eggs and they lost their minds over how amazing they were. You end up with a pasta that is higher in protein and nutrients over traditional pasta and the taste is over the top.
Make these the next time you're making a home made pasta and sauce and you won't regret it.
2 Wild Child Farms duck eggs (whole)
1 Wild Child Farms duck egg yolk
2 cups flour (00, Semolina, or All purpose)
1. Handmade Method: On a clean surface, measure out and pour the flour into a mound. Make a deep well in the center, using your hands. Put eggs, egg yolk, and salt into the well. Use a fork to slowly integrate the flour into the egg and then knead the dough for about 10 minutes. The dough ball should feel smooth.
2. Food Processor Method: Add flour and pulse a couple of times. Add remaining ingredients and pulse until the texture is course and crumbly. Remove the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead for 2 minutes until a smooth elastic ball forms.
3. Flatten and wrap in plastic wrap. Let rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 hours.
4. Roll the dough onto a floured surface with a rolling pin and either cut with a knife or use a pasta machine. Cook in boiling water for 3 to 4 minutes.
We found this recipe from Healthy Harvest Northern Iowa, healthyharvestni.com/duck-egg-pasta and they have many more amazing recipes.

domain: food


Doctors in Leeds have carried out the NHS's first adult-to-adult live donor liver transplant.
Stephen Lomas and his son David in hospital after the operation
The eight-hour operation - involving two pairs of surgeons working simultaneously in separate theatres - was carried out at St James' Hospital.
The hospital said Stephen Lomas, 51, of Ulverston in Cumbria, was making "excellent progress" after receiving part of his son David's liver.
David, 20, has been discharged since the operation on 21 June.
NHS liver transplants usually rely on organs becoming available after a donor has died.
Consultant hepatologist Dr Charlie Milson said one-in-five liver transplant patients currently died while on the waiting list.
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said the operation was the first of its kind in the NHS and could "hold the key" to saving hundreds of lives a year.
Dr Milson said: "The liver has two important features that make living-related donation possible - it is much larger than we need and it can regenerate within weeks if part of it is removed.
"In this procedure we remove part of the liver of a healthy donor and transplant it into a patient with liver failure.
The live donor liver transplant took eight hours
"The remaining liver in the donor will regrow within weeks to almost its normal size.
"One in five of our liver transplant patients currently die on the waiting list.
"This development means many of these lives will be saved. It really is a massive leap forward."
Live donor liver transplantation has been carried out in other countries for more than 15 years, but it is the first time the treatment has been made available to adult patients in the UK by the NHS.
Son David said: "I'm just relieved that I've been able to help my dad."
And his father Stephen's comment: "He's a top man, a top man."


text:
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference is almost upon us, and for this reason, it is expected that Apple should release updates for its iOS, macOS, tvOS, and also its watchOS operating systems. According to the report reaching us from our sources, the company seems to have leaked a soon to arrive feature that is on its way to the macOS 10.14. The update happens to be a dark mode.
We got a report from our sources saying that a developer whose name is Steve Troughton-Smith came upon a preview video that is 30 seconds long and displays the development software functioning in a dark mode. As a result, Steve Troughton-Smith made a tweet of a lot of screenshots of the approaching Xcode 10 in a bid to make an exhibition of the setting.
The thing is, we are not saying that the macOS that is available at the moment does not have a dark mode feature because it does, you can find it under System Preferences and General Settings, be that as it may, it only applies to the dock and menu bar. One of our sources made it clear that, adding to the colours of the software which are now darker as displayed in the video, the new feature could be spread out across the whole system. Troughton-Smith also pointed out that from the video, there’s an icon of an Apple News app that can be clearly seen in the dock. There’s also an App Store that has video previews.
There hasn’t been many rumours that say what we are to be expecting with the arrival of the macOS 10.14, but then again, we have seen speculations that there may be a sync between both Mac and iOS apps and also the name for the loop of the operating system which is to come next.

domain: news


text:
These bracelets were designed and created for a gentleman and his sister, based on a comment their late mother often said to them: "Be a good bunny". This comment informed who they bacame as adults.
The lettering is a font I created. The brother lives in the Southwest. His sister lives in the Southeast. His sister is a fluffy white bunny surrounded by grass and flowers. He is brown desert bunny surrounded by rocks and cactus. In their personal landscapes river rocks and desert rocks are found. I created each letter from a rock form, or two, to define the text and give it personality specific to these bracelets.
Cloisonne enamel, sterling and fine silver.
No commissioned piece is ever duplicated. However, I am able to envision other works based on my clients own personal story.
Allow 8 weeks for commissioned work, after your design is approved.
top of page
bottom of page

domain: artistic


Audi Adaptive Cruise Control is a nice feature that really pays off if you spend any amount of time on the highway or on long distance drives. You would probably never know that you wanted ACC (Adaptive Cruise Control) unless you had the opportunity to experience it, much like the Audi side Assist. However after using Audi’s ACC (Adaptive Cruise Control) you would almost make it a must have when ordering your next new Audi. Now the ACC is not available on every car in the Audi line up such as the A3 and the TT and is harder to find on some models such as the A4 and A6 sedan but they do exist. Our good friend John Woo happens to be one of the lucky few to have it on his 2009 3.2L, Prestige, S-Line, A4 and he did a great in depth review of this system.
Black Dome component pictured is actually the business end of A.C.C.
A.C.C. is Audi’s designation for their Active Cruise Control option. What exactly is Active Cruise Control and what capabilities does it offer beyond the standard equipment electronic cruise control systems installed on the vast majority of every Audi model offered in this country? I invite you to read on.
Recently, over about a six week period, I’ve had the opportunity to accumulate an excess of 3,500 miles in a 2009 A4 mostly driving on I-5 in Oregon and Washington. Beginning with a trip down to the small communities of North Bend-Coos Bay on the southern Oregon Coast… and then above to the greater Seattle area.
Of course our friendly neighbors to the North, beautiful British Columbia
That’s a lot of highway driving in a short period of time roughly exceeding the distance traveled from Portland (that’s Oregon and not Maine) to Key West, Florida plus a little beyond. All the many hours behind the wheel of an A4 on the Interstate has provided me the opportunity to gain some very real world experience using Active Cruise Control.
For some of you like myself, when we first began to drive during the time B.C.C. (Before Cruise Control), we made those long drives while attempting to apply some level of constant pressure against or on the gas pedal in our cars. If you have forgotten the level of pain and suffering possible in one’s right leg from performing this exercise hour after hour, I invite you to bring back those fond memories from yesteryear on your closest Interstate.
The arrival of the first cruise control units in cars around the 1960-70’s greatly alleviated this impediment to comfortable long distance travel in an automobile. Unfortunately, like the concept of “available” unlimited top speeds on the Autobahns of Germany, ever increasing traffic congestion on our roads and highways have greatly reduced our opportunity to engage the cruise control devices in present day vehicles for any extended periods of time.
Typically, once we are far enough out of a metropolitan area, cruise controls are activated and work to perfection “if” traffic is thin or everyone is traveling at exactly the same rate of speed. Of course having all trucks traveling only in the farthest right lane as is SOP in Germany, with everyone else never in the left lane except when passing would help immensely. Unfortunately, as we are all well aware, not the real world we drive in which is where Active Cruise Control comes in and restores most if not all of the benefits of this feature.
You activate A.C.C. in exactly the same manner you would with most other Audi cruise controls. In the case of this A4, once you have reached the speed you wish to maintain, press the small button at the end of the cruise control stalk mounted on the lower left hand side of the steering column. The speed is set and held pretty much constant even when transversing hills or valleys unlike many early units from some manufactures where +/- 10 mph was an acceptable level of operation.
The first difference you will note is the reduced number of possible speed intervals that A.C.C. will accept verses a conventional cruise control unit. The latter can be adjusted in an Audi between ½ to 1 whole M.P.H. faster (lift cruise control lever up briefly) or slower (hold cruise control lever down briefly) while accepted speeds differentials with A.C.C. is in +/- 2.5 M.P.H. increments only though it will hold whatever speed (i.e. 61.0 M.P.H.) when the system is first engaged. Increments though will only be at the +/-0.0/2.5/5.0/7.5 M.P.H. levels. Example: if the A.C.C. was engaged at 61.0 M.P.H., the range of change possible at the touch of the stalk would be down 1 M.P.H. (to 60.0 M.P.H.) or up 1.5 M.P.H. (to 62.5 M.P.H.). Ultimately, this isn’t a limitation one would expect after much use in the real world.
The key advantage of A.C.C. is that the system is “Active” rather than passive meaning instead of just holding your vehicle at a single speed (whatever speed the cruise control was engaged at), it will automatically vary your Audi’s speed to match that of traffic “in your lane” up to the top speed that the system has been set to. Traffic slows down…you slow down. Traffic speeds up…you speed up. You need to do “nothing” except to enjoy the drive without the constant strain of when to disengage or resume the use of the cruise control system traffic permitting.
For most of us, that’s possibly quite a leap of faith in technology. My first experience with this capability was in a new 2005 A8L on a drive up to Seattle (where else?). I first engaged the system where I-5 and I-205 merge together just north of Vancouver, WA. The A.C.C. operation was so smooth, seamless and natural; it wasn’t until I was approaching Olympia, WA that I remembered the system had been functioning for the past 1.5-2 hours!
Active Cruise Control works by emitting a narrow radio frequency beam forward from the emitter mounted next to the right fog light in the lower grille area of the front fascia (bumper) as seen in the picture above. Impress your friends with this little known nugget of information when you next spot an Audi with this telltale feature. There’s more than a few we’ve delivered at Sunset with this feature and from our current inventory when this article is being written, our e-Newsletter’s highlighted feature is immediately available to you on a couple of very special A4 models in stock. Contact one of our Audi Brand Specialist for assistance or further questions should you find this advanced technology as beneficial and useful as I have.
When A.C.C. is engaged, one of the possible displays in the trip computer area of the instrument cluster is shown here by cycling through the different ones via touching the reset button underneath the windshield wiper stalk mounted on the steering column.
The default spacing interval between your Audi with A.C.C. and the vehicle directly in front of you traveling in the same lane is “Distance 3” (see trip computer display above) which varies with the speed you are traveling. The slower the speed, the narrower the gap while conversely the faster the speed, the greater the spacing. Since almost all accidents involving tailgating are caused by following too close to the vehicle in front of you, this default setting can be increased to “Distance 4” which I have found very beneficial (greater margin in reaction times) on most portions of I-5 I’ve driven but counter to conventional wisdom, in heavier traffic congestion (say between Olympia and Everett on I-5), I have found reducing the spacing to “Distance 3” results in a smoother operation of A.C.C. which I will explain later on in this article. The trip computer display above also provides a visual graphic of the gap interval you have selected. Changing to Distance 4 will move the right vehicle indicator to the right where the last horizontal underline is presently shown.
Anytime A.C.C. is engaged, the emitted beam (radar) is seeking the next vehicle in front of you. If there is none within range, your Audi will travel at whatever rate of speed selected. In all three of the pictures of the instrument cluster/trip computer above, note the two small white “triangles” on either side of what appears to be the road in front of your car extending to the vehicle directly in front of you. If no vehicle is in range, “NO” triangles will display. Once you begin approaching a slower vehicle in front of you, the two white triangles appear next to the “grey” portions of the road display while your vehicle maintains it’s set speed. As you approach the vehicle directly in front of you, notice the two different positions of the white triangles in the photographs above. The display on the left indicates the vehicle we are traveling in is at the “maximum” safe (Green bars) distance to the car in front of us. The display on the right indicates we have now reached the “minimum” safe (Green bars) distance and this is when the cruise control begins to go “Active.”
Very gently, the Audi’s throttle is decreased and you begin slowing down to exactly match the speed of the vehicle in front of you. You need to do “Nothing” which is the entire reason for Active Cruise Control. It will maintain this gap/spacing and speed as long as you change nothing and remain in the same lane following the vehicle in front of you traveling slower than what you’re A.C.C. system is set for. If the vehicle in front of you speeds up…you will too, automatically up to the top speed you have set in the A.C.C.
Should the vehicle traveling ahead of you suddenly apply their brakes and rapidly decrease speed or should another vehicle merges into your lane between you and the previous vehicle in front of you allowing the gap/spacing/interval to drops into the “Red” portion of the trip computer graphic, the brakes will automatically be applied with an application level matching the deceleration rate of the vehicle in front of you attempting to restore the gap/interval/spacing to the distance you have selected.
In fact, the system has the ability to brake from whatever speed the A.C.C. was set to (up to a maximum of 95 M.P.H.) all the way down to under 20 M.P.H. before disengaging and yes, I have let it do its thing on I-5 around Tacoma where traffic always comes to a crawl. Needless to say, look in your rear view mirror to determine if or how close someone is following you when the brakes are automatically applied. Surprisingly, I have yet to experience a single situation where this has been an issue since I have begun using this feature very extensively even driving through downtown Seattle on I-5 with their usual level of traffic congestion from the Safeco/Q-West Field/I-90 interchange and north while on A.C.C!
This was the situation I was referring to earlier about in heavier traffic, reduce the gap to Distance 3 from 4 if so selected. I have noticed that if the gap is too wide when driving in metro area traffic, other vehicles will repeatedly merge into the lane directly in front of you causing the A.C.C. to constantly slow down by rapidly reducing throttle application and/or applying the brakes.
My other driving tip concerns passing when A.C.C. is active and you’re following a slower vehicle while another car is also in the left passing lane. Do not pull into the left lane to pass until that vehicle has already completed passing the slower vehicle in front of you. If not, because the interval between the vehicle passing in the left lane is less than the gap/spacing to the slower vehicle directly in front of you, the moment the A.C.C.’s radio frequency beam is redirected as you begin sliding over into the left hand lane, your throttle will be reduced and actually slow down instead of speeding up as desired.
One visual difference between Audis equipped with their standard electronic cruise control systems and one with A.C.C. can be seen in the speedometer shown above. Please note the series of “Red Triangles” that mark the left side of the speedometer from the range between 20 to 95 M.P.H. where A.C.C. will function. Audis with conventional cruise control will not have this series of lights.
Also notice in the photograph above, two of the “Red Triangles” at both the 55 & 60 M.P.H. positions are brighter than the others. This is a quick visual reference to determine if A.C.C. is actually managing the vehicle’s current speed or the system is simply on but not operational at that particular moment (all lights same intensity). Because the A.C.C. system is dynamic and your vehicle’s actual speed is dependent on outside traffic factors, your speed can vary from what was set, this indicator has proven very helpful presenting the vehicle’s current operating status.
It also performs a secondary function of visually indicating what speed you have set the A.C.C. to maintain. If only one “Red Triangle” is lit, the speed set is at the 5 M.P.H. increments (i.e. 55; 60; 65; 70 M.P.H. etc.) while two “Red Triangles” lit will indicate a speed setting at the X2.5 or X7.5 M.P.H. intervals (i.e. 57.5; 62.5; 67.5; 72.5 M.P.H. etc.).
Is there yet another benefit of A.C.C. that I’ve personally experienced? Absolutely! The system will also operate the throttle much smoother with far greater consistency than I ever could without the disadvantage of human fatigue or lack of concentration when driving. All these factors have resulted in operating fuel economy that has exceeded my personal expectations as well as the E.P.A. Fuel Economy ratings. Needless to say, I won’t retype the government’s disclaimer about the potential for accuracy of their numbers in this article but for reference, the A4 in this article has an E.P.A. rating of 17 M.P.G. City and 26 M.P.G. Highway.
Around town driving, I have been pretty consistent never dropping once under 20 M.P.G. when A.C.C. is typically not used. Get this A4 out on the Interstates and A.C.C. is fully utilized, my entire round trips back and forth to the Seattle area have never been under 30 M.P.G. (during the 4-5 hours crawls) with most drives averaging 32-32.5 M.P.G. What had me really excited was achieving 33.4 M.P.G. when there was only 3200 miles on the engine during my first trip to North Bend, OR.
Thought that was pretty impressive until one of my drives from Everett, WA back to Beaverton last month. Below are four shots of the trip computer display upon my arrival home. I provided all 4 screen shots as validation (odometer, temperature, date & time displayed) the results were really achieved.
One August 9th, drove a distance of 199.2 miles which took 3 hours 17 minutes to accomplish at an average speed of 60 M.P.H. for the entire trip which achieved a 34.0 M.P.G. average!
It can be done and A.C.C. is a real contributor to this type of superior vehicle performance and economy. Did I neglect to mention the engine in this A4 article is the 3.2 Liter V-6! Wonder what I could achieve with a 2.0T and A.C.C?


text:
‘Trying to get on with our lives’
Decades ago, Puerto Ricans brought change to one Rust Belt city on the shores of Lake Erie. Today, the city of Lorain is providing a lifeline to a new wave of Puerto Ricans, who could influence the politics of a presidential battleground state — *if* they vote.
LORAIN, Ohio – Nearly four years ago, Suzette Sanchez traded the sun, sand, sea and high cost of living in her native Puerto Rico for the gray skies and grit of this Rust Belt city.
It may have been the best decision of her life.
We Count: Untold Voters Stories
As America prepares to make its choice in the 2020 elections, CNN ventured into the lives of voters around the country who are often overlooked in the traditional narratives about politics. As Hispanics are poised to become the largest minority voting bloc in American elections, we explore the Puerto Rican vote in an unlikely spot: the Rust Belt town of Lorain, Ohio.
Sanchez, 45, quickly landed a job and became a homeowner. And after Hurricane Maria pummeled Puerto Rico in September 2017, Sanchez’s adopted community became a refuge for her extended family as they fled the devastation, a place for her younger brother and his wife to start over.
Similar tales have played out all across this old steel town on the shores of Lake Erie. The hurricane evacuees who have settled here represent just the latest wave of Puerto Ricans to call Lorain and this strip of northeast Ohio home, arriving decades after the first “Boricuas” moved to the region for jobs in the steel industry.
They’re making their new homes in a swing state that has a reputation for making or breaking elections. After backing President Barack Obama’s reelection in 2012, Ohio went for Donald Trump in 2016. And Trump lost Lorain County to Democrat Hillary Clinton by just 131 votes.
President Trump’s relationship with Puerto Rico – a place he has labeled “one of the most corrupt places on earth” – has been tenuous from the start. Eight months after the President was sworn in, Maria barreled into the US territory, leaving thousands dead and ravaging the island’s infrastructure and economy. And, in the years since, Trump has feuded bitterly and publicly with government officials critical of his administration’s disaster response.
It’s hard to track exactly how many Puerto Ricans have arrived and remained in northeast Ohio in the more than two years since the hurricane. As many as 5,000 may have relocated to the Cleveland area – 30 miles east of Lorain – in the immediate aftermath of the storm, says Magda Gomez, who helped start the Bienvenidos a Cleveland project to support the newly arrived islanders. She also oversees diversity and inclusion efforts at a local community college.
But, should they turn out, this new group of transplants could make its mark on the 2020 election. Puerto Ricans, like those who hail from other US territories, are American citizens at birth, free to live wherever they like in the United States. They cannot cast ballots in the general election for the president while living on the island but can do so as soon as they establish residency in any US state.
In the months after the storm, Lorain’s El Centro de Servicios Sociales, the community-service nonprofit organization where Sanchez works as a case manager and interpreter, served more than 320 families from Puerto Rico, says its director, Victor Leandry.
El Centro is a hub for Lorain’s Latino community – providing a place for English-language classes, parenting courses and information about medical care, housing and voting.
“We keep telling them, it’s your right to vote,” Sanchez says of the center’s outreach. “We are teaching them that they have a voice.”
Nationally, Latinos are poised to a play big role in the election.
This year, some 32 million Hispanics will be eligible to vote – accounting for a little more than 13% of eligible voters and overtaking African Americans to become the largest minority voting bloc in the country for the first time, according to the Pew Research Center.
“Everyone within the diaspora in our communities – whether we are in Chicago or in Lorain or in Allentown or in Orlando – we know that 2020 is a moment we have to seize,” says Erica Gonzalez, executive director of Power 4 Puerto Rico, a coalition of groups representing Puerto Ricans across the country. “The potential is there.”
But Gonzalez and Mayra Macías, executive director of Latino Victory – an organization aimed at creating greater Latino participation in politics – say there’s no guarantee that Latinos will vote in the numbers they represent without early and persistent outreach by candidates, political parties and outside groups.
“Demography is not destiny,” Macías said. “Just because those numbers are there doesn’t mean they will actualize into political power, unless we are creating an infrastructure to engage the Latino community.”
Turnout among Latinos surged to a record high for midterm elections in 2018, when 40% of eligible Latino voters cast ballots. But that still lagged behind turnout among non-Hispanic whites (57.5%) and African Americans (51.4%).
Trump’s allies say the Latino vote is not monolithic, and his reelection campaign is determined to find pockets of support among Puerto Ricans who now live on the mainland, despite the President’s fraught history with some of the island’s elected leaders.
Rick Gorka, a spokesman for the joint Trump-Republican National Committee reelection operation, said Republicans will emphasize “shared values” on issues such as school choice with Latino voters.
“If we win 1 or 2 points more than we did in 2016 that puts” states like Ohio “out of reach” for Democrats, he said.
Nearly 30% of Lorain’s residents are Hispanic – driven largely by a Puerto Rican population that first arrived in large numbers in 1947 as part of a concerted recruiting campaign by the National Tube Co.
The company, part of US Steel, faced intense competition for workers during the city’s steelmaking heyday, so it hired a Philadelphia firm to relocate Puerto Ricans to the then-bustling industrial town.
After the recruitment drive ended, waves of islanders kept coming and more families established roots here.
In the decades since, production at steel plants has slowed or stopped entirely. A Ford assembly plant shut down in 2005. But Puerto Rican culture endures in this city.
In heavily Latino South Lorain, for instance, Roman’s Groceries advertises “Spanish-American Foods” and a large mural near the entrance pays homage to the island’s history. A 10-minute drive away, Mi Casa restaurant serves up pollo guisado and fried yucca to a busy lunch crowd.
And last fall, El Centro’s annual block party – held across the street from an idled steel plant – was alive with Daddy Yankee’s reggaeton music and the squeals of children attempting to scale a mobile climbing wall.
There’s grim poverty on these streets, too.
On a blustery fall afternoon, nearly 200 people – Latino, black, white – snake through El Centro’s brick building and parking lot, collecting eggplants, fresh eggs, sacks of sweet potatoes and cans of Manwich sloppy joe mix at the once-a-month food pantry the organization hosts with the Second Harvest Food Bank.
Roughly 1 in 4 Lorain residents lived in poverty in 2018 – more than double the national rate, according to the most recent estimates from the US Census Bureau. Bus service isn’t widespread, making it hard for those without transportation to navigate the city and find jobs, Sanchez says.
But for all the poverty here, Lorain has offered a critical lifeline to Puerto Ricans who have left the island.
Sanchez, for instance, left in the summer of 2016 – worn down by the soaring cost of living in the San Juan metropolitan area and declining public services. Even working 60 hours a week in advertising sales, Sanchez says, she couldn’t afford to buy a house and still pay all her other bills. Physician shortages meant waiting as long as six months for a medical appointment.
In Lorain, where her husband has relatives, she bought a home on the east side of the city for $18,000 that she’s rehabilitating. Her mother and adult daughter relocated to Lorain before the storm. Sanchez’s husband, Gabriel, who needs a liver transplant, is getting medical care. Her son, Diego, is in middle school and adjusting to the new environment.
“My quality of life is 100% better,” Sanchez says.
An economic disaster
Back in Puerto Rico in 2017, Sanchez’s younger brother Victor Sanchez and his wife, Enid Colon, rode out Hurricane Maria at home in Bayamon, a community southwest of San Juan.
Their sturdy, one-story concrete home survived the storm, but the family could not withstand the economic blow that followed. They lived for months without electricity or running water.
Victor Sanchez, 43, is disabled after three back surgeries and cannot work. Colon, 56, was a salesperson at Sears, and her hours dwindled to three a week after the storm. Their home was appraised at $80,000, Sanchez says, but they owed the bank $120,000.
After months of anxiety, they decided to leave the island. They declared bankruptcy and started over in Lorain at his sister’s urging.
Today, they rent an immaculately maintained apartment a block from the lake for $500 a month. Colon is working on an assembly line at a Tysons Food plant in nearby Amherst. Sanchez’s new doctors, meanwhile, plan to experiment with neural stimulation to ease his crippling back pain.
“We are trying to get on with our lives,” he says.
Across town, a similar story has unfolded for the family of Carmen Santiago Vargas. Santiago Vargas, who moved to Lorain in 2016, sheltered her mother, sister and niece after Maria blew apart their homes and lives in Adjuntas, a mountainside town in central Puerto Rico.
Her niece, Grace Santiago Rivera, 23, says she lost her job as a waitress and cook after the storm. The supermarket where her now-husband worked went out of business.
So they began anew in Lorain in late 2018 and last year welcomed a baby daughter, Kelsy.
But Santiago Rivera has not yet registered to vote and has mixed feelings about Trump. She says doesn’t care for his hard-line approach to Mexican immigrants, but she and her aunt both say they want to reserve judgment on the President.
“I don’t know him; I don’t know his ideals,” Santiago Vargas says of Trump. “Every night, I ask God to guide everyone who wants to guide the country.”
Suzette Sanchez says many of the newly arrived Puerto Ricans just “don’t have the time” to engage in politics. “They have to invest all the time in knowing how they are going to survive, how are they going to eat.”
Sanchez, who also helps the county elections board with translations, avoids any discussion of partisan politics.
Her brother has no such reservations. Within months of arriving last year, Victor Sanchez cast his ballot in municipal elections in Lorain. He voted early in the Democratic presidential primary and supported former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has since ended his campaign.
Bloomberg “ran New York like a champ,” Sanchez says. He believes Bloomberg was well-positioned to help his home island navigate its continuing recovery from the storm and the series of earthquakes that this year damaged thousands of homes in southwest Puerto Rico and disrupted life yet again for a swath of the population.
The eventual Democratic nominee is likely to get his support in November, when he votes for president in a general election for the first time. He’s already decided that Trump won’t get his vote.
The President “is not a good person,” he says.
“He treats the Puerto Rican people like trash. The people in Puerto Rico, el pueblo … need the help,” Sanchez adds. “Forget about the government and just help the people.”

domain: sociology


Make: Sig Sauer Model: SIG551-A1 Caliber: 5.56 X 45mm NATO
The SIG551-A1 features a distinctive swiss folding stock, and an M1913 rail for accessory attachment. The 16” barrel features four-groove rifling and a twist rate of 1:7”. The ...(more)
Posted by Jason Brumett
The Model 700™ VTR™ Desert Recon by Remington in 223 Remington and 308 Winchester in Digital Desert camo is a nice mod on the standard Remington 700 that is so popular and reliable.
It has a triangular barrel contour that reduces weight while maintaining stability, and heat dissipation.
This gun has a 22" barrel, concave barrel crown, and tactical dual front swivel stud for bi=pod or sling.
Be the first to add user contributed pictures.
Make: Remington Model: 700 SPS Camo Caliber: 243 win, 7mm-08, 7mm, 270 Win, 30-06 Springfield,
The Remington Model 700™ SPS CAMO can be found in the following calibers; 243 win, 7mm-08, 7mm, 270 Win, 30-06 Springfield, 300 Win Mag, .223 Remington. What does the SPS stand f...(more)


text:
Beginning on September 27, 2014, the Town of Provincetown began a program to identify coastal risk and explore resilient response alternatives. Provincetown is the newest land (sand) on the planet, with a completely unique coastal process.Over the past few thousand years, as rising sea level eroded post-glacial Cape Cod, Provincetown was created. We have put together some review materials and some new ideas. We welcome feedback and comments. firstname.lastname@example.org
click on the links below to download your own copy of these two booklets, intended to promote dialogue..
We are in the process of developing a more sustainable, pre construction, coastal strategy we refer to as “Conservation of Geomass”, based on Cape Cod’s unique geology. The beaches and coastal banks are composed of the same materials. Most types of construction activity includes excavation. The excavated materials are usually trucked away and stockpiled. Our strategy, working with Planning Boards and Conservation Commissions allows clean excavated materials to be placed on pre-determined locations on local beaches. The link below will download our draft booklet, which includes multiple strategies for “Conservation of Biomass” as well. When topsoil is removed it should be lept on site. It is rich with the native organisms and nutrients. We also advocate for careful removal and reuse of native vegetation on a site before excavation. Safe Harbor considers native sand, soil and vegetation as reusable natural resources. This is being actively revised and edited fall 2014.
When we develop resiliency plans, we need to remember that our coastal resources are linked by energy

domain: geography


(LAKE TEXOMA--) Labor Day weekend is one of the busiest times out at Lake Texoma, officials say they want everyone to stay safe this holiday and they are especially concerned about the heat.
With temperatures set to be in the 100's all weekend, lake officials say they'll be in full force to make sure everyone can enjoy this holiday weekend as safely as possible.
Joe Custer Lake Texoma Manager says " drink lots of fluids..you know..stay in the shade if you can..and stay hydrated."
Paul Kisel, Eisenhower State Park Superintendent says "make sure you're with a group..being with a group is always safe and whether you're out here at the state park or at Lake Texoma in general..come out and have fun in the sun..just be responsible.
Susan Romero is preparing for a big weekend at the Lake..and says staying cool is a priority.
Susan Romero, " drink plenty of water..stand under a canopy..and right now we're in the casita to get cooled down a little bit cause it's got air..and we've got two dogs but stay cool...hydrated and don't over exert yourself."
Officials will be out in full force and remind those driving boats to stay sober and everyone to be safe.
Joe Custer " anytime you're on a boat and you're in water there are obviously hazards..there's natural hazards there's floating logs..the boat traffic is going to be very busy out there this weekend."
Paul Kisel, " if you're on a boat then wear a life jacket and if you're swimming on shore then make sure you're in sight of others and if you're out on the lake regardless of what you do we ask that you be safe.
Cliff Garinn takes safety seriously when he's on the lake..
Cliff Garinn " we give our closest relatives our information and the route that we're taking in case anything happens..we make sure we have plenty of fuel and things like that."
Officials say Lake Texoma has had the busiest summer in years thanks to rainfall, cooler temperatures and almost no toxicity being reported in blue green algae.


Navigate today’s most pressing health industry challenges with a leading global expert by your side.
Meet growing needs for innovative insurance solutions while increasing operational health and improving compliance.
Deliver on the promises of the past and create smart solutions for the future.
Manage complex risks using data-driven insights, advanced approaches, and deep industry experience.
This is a place where your ideas and insights make an impact. Where an independent, entrepreneurial spirit is an advantage. And where diversity of thought and experience makes us who we are.
Data-driven insight. Deep expertise. Transformative innovation. Since 1947, Milliman has delivered intelligent solutions to improve health and financial security.
Jim has over 15 years of experience in the healthcare industry building and leading analytics and data science teams in healthcare organizations large and small. He helps clients efficiently leverage data and analytics through:
Previously, he was Managing Director at a value-based care startup where he built and managed analytics from the ground up, establishing monthly financial reporting processes, an enterprise data warehouse, team protocols and a standard reporting suite. He set the vision for the analytics team and led development of adaptable solutions that scaled with the company’s growth, leading to IPO.
Prior to that, he started and led a data science team at a Fortune 100 national payor, pioneering the use of predictive modeling and machine learning for various business operations. He helped transform consumer analytics and predictive modeling from incubated ideas to a fully-fledged data science consulting team that led to millions in claims cost savings.
Jim’s expertise is in making analytics and data science impactful. He is experienced in working with a wide variety of technology systems, data, analytical tools and business lines, from ACOs, Medicare Advantage, Commercial, to pharmacy.


text:
President-elect Ethan Smith and Vice President-elect Hajer Abuzir spoke on issues they hope to focus on when taking office. Some include the privatization of housing, food security, student homelessness and diversity.
Several propane tanks exploded at Ann Arbor Welding Supply at around 12:40 p.m. on Thursday, April 11. The incident was handled by Pittsfield Township Department of Public Safety.
Ethan Smith and Hajer Abuzir won the student body election for president and vice president. The unofficial results posted Thursday night declared them the winners.
The student body elections are quickly approaching. Ethan Smith was the first to announce his candidacy for student body president and hopes his voice will speak volumes to the administration.
Supporters for Ken Hobbs gathered at the Ypsilanti City Council meeting on Tuesday, March 5. 15 people spoke against the department's decision to hire a white candidate from outside Ypsilanti rather than of Hobbs, who is Black.
The use of a racial slur by an Eastern Michigan University professor sparked concern in an EMU student at the Board of Regents meeting on Thursday. That student is also the president of the student body.
The EMU Student Government hosted a forum to discuss the future renovations to the Rec/IM on Monday.
The student senate appointed a new senator and discussed the upcoming weather during their bi-weekly meeting at the Student Center on Tuesday, Jan. 29.
President Trump signed a spending bill that reopened the government on Friday. The deal came 35 days into the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

domain: politics


HARRISBURG – Driving in snow and ice are not exactly pleasant thoughts, but PennDOT is preparing for predictions of lots of small, annoying ice storms this winter.
PennDOT representatives say they’re already well stocked with salt because last winter was not too severe.
“I think we probably have around 60 to 80,000 tons. We have about 78 stockpiles that are spread out through our eight-county area. We replenish salt through the season as we go, but we started off in a pretty good position,” PennDOT spokesman Greg Penny said.
Last year’s winter snow budget was $23.1 million for PennDOT District 8, but only $22 million was spent. District 8 includes Perry, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lebanon, Lancaster, York, Adams and Franklin counties.
Plow drivers will be conditioning equipment and doing dry runs of their routes. All drivers will go through a snow academy.
Two major road construction projects are expected to shut down for the winter in early December. Those include Interstate 81 in Cumberland County between Exit 59/Route 581 and Exit 57/Route 114. The other is along I-81 in Dauphin County between Exit 70/the split with Interstate 83 and Exit 72/Mountain Road.
PennDOT encourages you to make sure your vehicle is in good shape for the winter weather and keep an emergency supply ready.


text:
|Titre :||Prevalence of vaping and smoking among adolescents in Canada, England, and the United States: repeat national cross sectional surveys (2019)|
|Auteurs :||D. HAMMOND ; J. L. REID ; V. L. RYNARD ; G. T. FONG ; K. M. CUMMINGS ; A. McNEILL ; S. HITCHMAN ; J. F. THRASHER ; M. L. GONIEWICZ ; M. BANSAL-TRAVERS ; R. O’CONNOR ; D. LEVY ; R. BORLAND ; C. M. WHITE|
|Type de document :||Article : Périodique|
|Dans :||British Medical Journal (Vol.365, n°8204, 22 June 2019)|
|Article en page(s) :||l2219|
|Discipline :||EPI (Epidémiologie / Epidemiology)|
Thésaurus géographiqueANGLETERRE ; ROYAUME-UNI ; CANADA ; ETATS-UNIS
Thésaurus mots-clésADOLESCENT ; PREVALENCE ; E-CIGARETTE ; TABAC ; ETUDE TRANSVERSALE ; EVOLUTION
Objective: To examine differences in vaping and smoking prevalence among adolescents in Canada, England, and the United States.
Design: Repeat cross sectional surveys.
Setting: Online surveys in Canada, England, and the US.
Participants: National samples of 16 to 19 year olds in 2017 and 2018, recruited from commercial panels in Canada (n=7891), England (n=7897), and the US (n=8140).
Main outcome measures: Prevalence of vaping and smoking was assessed for use ever, in the past 30 days, in the past week, and on 15 days or more in the past month. Use of JUUL (a nicotine salt based electronic cigarette with high nicotine concentration) and usual vaping brands were also assessed. Logistic regression models examined differences in vaping and smoking between countries and over time.
Results: The prevalence of vaping in the past 30 days, in the past week, and on 15 days or more in the past month increased in Canada and the US between 2017 and 2018 (P Conclusions: Between 2017 and 2018, among 16 to 19 year olds the prevalence of vaping increased in Canada and the US, as did smoking in Canada, with little change in England. The rapidly evolving vaping market and emergence of nicotine salt based products warrant close monitoring.
|Domaine :||Tabac / Tobacco|
|Refs biblio. :||31|
|Affiliation :||School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada|

domain: medical


text:
While I’ll always remember Teri Hatcher as the ditsy girl who always got MacGyver into trouble, more know the actress as Lois Lane in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman that ran from 1993 to 1997. As the final season of Smallville ramps up on The CW, new plots and big name actors are starting to show up on the cast list. Hatcher is the latest to appear on the show, and she’ll play Lois Lane’s mother. Hatcher is scheduled to appear in episode eight of the series, and I’m guessing she’ll only be in for an episode or two at most.
If The CW and Warner Bros. really wanted a moment that would go down in history, they would get Hatcher (Lois’ mom), Erica Durrance (current Lois), and Margot Kidder (as Bridgette Crosby) to appear on screen at the same time. Of course if they really wanted to make the Lois Lane circle complete, they’d figure out a way to get Noel Neill and Kate Bosworth in the show, too.

domain: entertainment


text:
Evaluation of views and perceptions of junior doctors on urology training and exposure during internship in South Africa: are we losing future urologists?
Background: In South Africa, urological and other subspecialty training and exposure vary across each university at undergraduate and internship level. Many students and junior doctors complete their degrees and medical internship with little or no exposure and training to enable them to manage common urological conditions at primary healthcare level with the adequate competency, proficiency and confidence. We aimed to evaluate the exposure and urological training of junior doctors during internship and to determine whether it had any impact on their attitudes toward urology as a speciality in which to pursue a career.
Methods: We used a descriptive cross-sectional survey design. We emailed a questionnaire to 200 community service doctors who completed internship during 2016–2018, working across Western Cape hospitals. The questionnaire aimed to assess their clinical exposure to urology, confidence in basic urological knowledge and clinical skills, and their attitudes toward urology as a postgraduate career choice.
Results: The response rate was 104/200 (52%), 75% (n = 78) of the respondents had completed their internship without rotating through the urology department, 53.8% (n = 56) felt that their knowledge of essential urology topics was ‘average’ and still required further teaching and guidance, and 43.3% (n = 45) were not confident of performing a circumcision. 11.5% (n = 12) respondents were interested in pursuing a career in urology. The duration of the rotation through urology during internship and pursuing a career in urology were significantly associated (p = 0.005).
Conclusion: The study showed that urological exposure and training at internship level is below the standard it needs to be in order to produce proficient and competent doctors able to practise efficiently during community service. The study also highlighted that limited exposure has a negative impact on potential future urologists wanting to pursue a career in the field. Incorporation of necessary urology skills short courses into the internship programme might help mitigate some of these challenges.
The South African Journal of Surgery (SAJS) reserves copyright of the material published. The work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial Works 4.0 South Africa License. Material submitted for publication in the SAJS is accepted provided it has not been published elsewhere. The SAJS does not hold itself responsible for statements made by the authors.

domain: health


text:
Pushing boundaries has been an active part of my life, mostly in corporate settings where the rewards were tangible and the risks calculated and relatively predictable.
However, after the unexpected demise of my company chairmanship and other personal failures, I encountered my “first wind” of limitless adventure. One solo motorcycle ride across America’s great plains to a remote valley in Colorado led me to living in a secluded village in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, building a certified organic coffee business with 2,350 tribal farmers … incredulously, leading to an assassination attempt on my life.
The “second wind” gives me renewed strength to continue this quest – an effort that requires letting go of both self-rejection and self-grandiosity and winnowing out myself to obtain wisdom. It is akin to mining ore … my own ore. But is this mother lode – the ceaseless mining of my interior – worth sharing, and if so, why, and how?
The writer Joseph Campbell reminds me: “Bringing the boon back can be even more difficult than going down into your own depths in the first place.”
When my first TEDx talk application was rejected along with the earlier 100 query letters to publishers for my book, despondency came a-knockin’ in my soul. Why care enough to persist and to share!
But between dejection and faith, I found that my vulnerability, humility, and integrity continued to develop. Now the book is published and has received great reviews from America and Europe.
And I find myself on another edge adventure – this TEDx stage, which provides a sacred space where, as mutual occupants of this shared planet, we connect through stories and ideas, where we’re pushed out of comfort zones and invited to be truly engaged with each other. I feel fearful, elated, unbounded, limitless and alive. Let’s talk.

domain: literature


- Your Union
- News Centre
- GEEDUP supply
- Join CFMEU
Published: 2 Dec 2015
The CFMEU has called on employers in the construction industry to take care in the rush up to Christmas.
National CFMEU Construction Secretary Dave Noonan said that many workers were under pressure by their employers to get jobs finished before Christmas, putting themselves at higher risk of injury.
“There have been eight fatalities in the industry around the country in just three weeks. This is an extraordinarily high number in such a short space of time even for a high risk industry such as ours,” he said.
“Our members report to us that there is usually a big rush to get certain things done before the holiday period and they’re often compelled to do a lot of overtime in hotter temperatures.”
Mr Noonan urged any workers who were being put under pressure to contact the union.
“If you’re being directed to cut corners or overlook safety procedures in order to speed things up, it’s not worth it. Put your safety first.
“In just three weeks the families and friends of eight people have mourned the loss of someone they loved.
“No job is worth the life of a worker, anywhere.”
Mr Noonan has also advised workers to ensure their entitlements are up to date.
“Invariably what happens is that companies try and get out of their obligations of paying their holiday entitlements and public holidays by putting workers off before Christmas.
“It’s important to make sure your entitlements – including super – are up to date. If you are in any doubt about this contact the union.
“There’s nothing worse than being out of pocket at Christmas time.”


text:
Joe Hermosa, Valley Morning Star: The pungent smell of incense wafts through a room shaded by thin reed blinds. In that room people sit in a circle on chairs and pillows strewn on the floor.
They discuss their thoughts following meditation.
The people are members of the Sangha of the Rio Grande Valley, a band of diverse people who meet, not always regularly, to meditate and discuss Eastern thought.
Their common thread is Zen meditation and the pursuit of mindfulness. Mindfulness, the shift of focus to the present, is the path to a more peaceful living, members of the group say.
Small pockets of people in the Valley are discovering alternative ways of healing, shunning a caffeinated life for a calmer existence.
Whether they practice Zen meditation, yoga and other forms of physical, spiritual or mental healing, they are finding there are outlets in the Valley to help them do so.
The Zen community is not large, said Mark Matthews, who founded the group 11 years ago. He said he did it in the hope of finding others with an interest in meditation as a way to improve life.
In the Rio Grande Valley, Zen meditation may seem as vague and unattainable as the gently curling smoke from a stick of incense. But its appeal has spread to some Valley residents.
Those who participate appreciate the dedicated few that keep the group alive.
Most members said they were surprised when they found others interested in Eastern thought in the Valley.
“Believe me, I thought I was the only one in Texas,” said Noe Reyes, the owner of a tree nursery in Edinburg. The most recent meeting was held at his home.
Reyes built a Japanese garden and a teahouse in part of his yard to give him a serene place to meditate, and has been meditating for about six years. He said it’s helped him control anger and stay calm in tough times.
“I believe that because of my meditation, I am more calm about things and I am better able to keep my cool a lot more than I used to under stressful situations,” he said.
Jennifer Klement, a member of the group for six years, said it was important to have meetings with others who practice.
“It is like a church: you need a Sangha, you need the support of others,” she said, and a place to discuss the teachings and the practice of meditation.
Sangha is a Sanskrit word that means a community, either lay or ordained, that practices Buddhism.
The group creates a small community of people with similar beliefs.
Some find the group by word of mouth, while others find it on the Internet.
The Sangha was founded by Matthews, a former Catholic priest, and Sister Mary Catherine Griffin, who were both inspired by a book called “Being Peace” by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk who has published books on peace, Buddhism and meditation.
“I devoured the book,” Matthews said. “It was so wonderful to be exposed to the practice of mindfulness.”
The group was started with a few core members, most of whom have left, though others have filled the spots.
The group has taken many different turns down its path, sometimes meeting every two weeks and at other times, meeting every two months.
“We kind of naturally meet,” Matthews said. “We go through cycles.”
Regardless of the numbers attending, Matthews said the group connection is important.
“It’s important to have a group of people who are practicing here. It’s a support. When we get together, we have questions and we can share those experiences,” he said.
Suzie Lovegren, who recently attended her first meeting with the group, said she was happy to find others who shared her commitment to meditation.
“I felt myself sitting less, and I wanted the support of others who were doing this,” she said.
“Support deepens your own practice,” she said.
Lovegren attended with her husband James, and three of her children.
The group focuses on the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and the primary principles of Buddhism, which is the elimination of suffering.
They believe that by focusing on the present, happiness can be achieved.
Members focus their energy by deep breathing and clearing their mind of “all of the things that our minds do that prevent us from being in the present,” such as thinking about events in the past or future.
Matthews said some people may be hesitant to try meditation because they are not familiar with it or don’t know how to do it.
“Meditation is so simple,” he said.
“It’s really training the mind to calm down, to become peaceful.”
He said it was “very practical. It’s not very strange or mystical.”
He said it is not mandatory to sit in a certain position. The important thing is to focus on breathing in and out, he said.
Focusing on one thing helps one to relax and “find peace within oneself.”
Many group members said they were familiar with meditation or eastern thought before joining the group.
They continue to meditate daily, while meeting occasionally to discuss their practices and study a facet of Buddhist teachings.[Original article no longer available.]

domain: psychology


text:
Speech The Platypus Moment: Rents, Risks and the Right Responses
Head of Financial Stability Department
Paul Woolley Centre for Capital Market Dysfunctionality Annual Conference
I would like to thank the Paul Woolley Centre for the invitation to speak to you today. Dysfunction in the financial system can have a profound effect on a country's citizens, as we have seen all too starkly around the world in recent years. This is something the Reserve Bank is charged with avoiding, so the work of the Centre could provide insights into policy questions of substantial interest to us.
As you might know, we released the September issue of the Financial Stability Review a few weeks ago. As always, this publication goes into great detail on our analysis of the current state of the financial system, the forces acting on it and the possible risks and issues it faces. I don't propose to repeat that material today. Instead I would like to discuss the broader issue of how we can go about our task of detecting the warning signs of possible future distress.
The World Isn't Simple
One important theme of the last couple of Reviews has been the idea that we have passed the end of a credit boom. For nearly 20 years, banks and borrowers were adjusting to the new reality of lower inflation and liberalised finance. Lower inflation means lower nominal interest rates. Households can then service larger mortgages with the same repayment. So of course the sustainable ratio of household debt to income has risen. Housing prices followed suit, having previously been constrained in the 1970s and 1980s by the same strictures – high nominal rates and regulation. Businesses can also service larger loans out of the same stream of gross profits.
It takes a while to adjust to all this, to reach the new higher ratios of prices and balance sheet quantities to income. Credit growth should be expected to have exceeded income growth for a period, to generate that adjustment. But we now think that this transition is complete. Credit growth, and asset price growth, can diverge from income growth for a period while the system is adjusting. And there might well be some remaining trend: as incomes rise, balance sheets become deeper. But they cannot do so without bound or forever. Indeed, credit booms are very often part of the story in the lead-up to a period of financial instability.
We published that assessment in the March and September Reviews. In the wake of that, we have sometimes been asked: how fast is too fast? Do we have a target for credit growth? Or for the ratio of credit to GDP? Or, perhaps, for housing and other asset prices?
I can tell you quite plainly that we do not have numerical targets for any of these things. A target for credit growth, or any of these other variables, is not analogous to the RBA's inflation target. It is more like the monetary targets that were tried – with mixed results – in Australia and elsewhere in the 1970s and 1980s, and that subsequently had to be abandoned.
The distinction is simply that price stability is about inflation. So it can be defined as keeping inflation at an acceptably low rate. Financial stability is harder to define, but in essence it is about avoiding episodes when the financial system significantly harms the real economy. Recent events in the United States and several other countries show just how damaging financial instability can be to employment and human welfare.
To judge whether a mandate for financial stability is being fulfilled, we must assess the costs being borne by the real economy. They could be costs borne now or those likely in future. So we need to assess the risk that financial stability might be degraded in future. Specific asset prices or balance sheet quantities might well be useful indicators for that assessment. But like the money supply, they are not the ultimate policy goal.
Some observers nonetheless try to force thinking about financial stability policy into that targeting mould. They want a numerical target. They want a policy rule – even though monetary policy isn't conducted as a rule either. The messiness of other ways of thinking about policy bothers them. Without a numerical target for policy, you can't graph it. You can't put it into a model. You can't turn it into a simple equation. And so you can't evaluate decisions using some welfare measure or score.
I would encourage those observers to let go of their desire for the simplicity of a target-and-rule framework when considering financial stability policy. No realm of public policy is really that simple, that free of ambiguity – not health policy, nor education, transport, policing or defence. Only monetary policy is depicted that way. And even that is an oversimplified abstraction.
So if we aren't targeting some single quantity or metric, how do we assess the risks to financial stability? How do we decide if something should be done?
At the risk of disappointing those who prefer those simpler answers, the truth is that the necessary data and analysis aren't simple. There is no single indicator or smoking gun that tells you that financial stability is at risk. Nor can you find an easy rule of thumb to know if there is a boom that might not be speculative now, but could become so later.
In the end, there is no substitute for careful analysis from a range of perspectives, focused on distributions and risks, not just macro-level data and simple ratios. There is also no substitute for policymakers who can use that analysis judiciously, neither dismissing every boom as based on fundamentals, nor seeing bubbles in every wobble of a price index.
At the Reserve Bank, and at most of our counterparts overseas, financial stability analysis includes looking at those macro ratios, but we don't stop there. We look at the structure of balance sheets, both of financial institutions and the non-financial sectors that are their customers. Distributions matter a great deal as well. It is rarely the median borrower that causes the trouble. So we also analyse detailed micro data.
Undesirable Behaviour and Unpredictable Fauna
Today I would like to emphasise sources of information that are too often neglected in financial stability analysis: the attitudes and behaviour of key actors in the financial system. The behaviours we watch for most carefully are the seeking of rents and the taking of risk. I will talk about them in some detail. And from there, I would like to emphasise the role of judgement in determining the right responses.
Some people think that looking for risks to financial stability is about hunting out the ‘black swans’ that could blindside you. This is, of course, the concept popularised by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book of the same name: that there are things that can't be forecast on the basis of past experience. It's an important point about the limits of models, and about the need to make systems robust to unexpected events. But I don't think that, taken literally, it's a constructive way to conduct financial stability policy. The whole point about black swans is that you can't look for them. You can't imagine scenarios that are by definition unimaginable.
Anyway, the careful historical comparisons by Charles Kindleberger, and more recently by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, show that there is actually not much new under the sun when it comes to financial crises (Kindleberger and Aliber 2000; Reinhart and Rogoff 2009). The precise assets involved might differ, as might the sectors harmed – maybe that's the black swan element. But it boils down to the same narrative. First, there is a genuine fundamental shift that leads to real, sustainable changes. But it also engenders a wave of optimism. The optimism motivates more borrowing and lending, higher prices for some assets and higher turnover in markets for those assets. Credit expands faster than normal. Ultimately the boom goes too far and collapses under the weight of debt and of unrealistic expectations. Crises might not be predictable, but they are all too imaginable.
So instead of looking for the unimaginable black swan, I would advocate observing those attitudes and behaviours, as well as the data. And the test I would apply is inspired by another member of Australia's weird and wonderful fauna – the platypus. You see, when Europeans first saw a black swan, it would have been a surprise, but I doubt it rocked their world. There are plenty of other cases where the same species of animal is a different colour in different regions. But the platypus is strange. It is a mammal, but it has a duck's bill; it is the only mammal with venomous spurs; it lays eggs; and it is a monotreme. When European scientists first saw the stuffed body of a platypus, they found it so bizarre that they thought it was a fake.
It's that sense of disbelief, of incredulity, that something is too ridiculous to be true, and yet it is true: that feeling is telling you something. When you have that feeling, you are having what I have come to describe as a Platypus Moment. And it is that moment, that feeling, we should be alert to. It is not just a reaction to a statement or claim you find unbelievable. The reaction is to a practice or behaviour you concede is truly occurring, but find bizarre or foolish. The motivations underlying the behaviour are not coherent. The behaviour spurred by the motivations is not internally consistent, at least not from the perspective of the system.
This is not just about making decisions on the basis of personal incredulity. After all, the idea that the Earth orbited the Sun was once thought incredible and against the natural order. You could say that to be effective in financial stability analysis, you need to have a sense of the ridiculous of just the right kind. It should be one built on an internally consistent analytical framework, one that starts from a vantage point of the whole system, not just the financial sector or some part of it.
To give a personal example, some years ago I experienced a Platypus Moment when I first read about vendor-financed down payment assistance charities in the United States. They became quite common during the housing boom there. Home-building companies would donate money to charities that in turn gave money to first-home buyers to fund their deposits. Usually these charities were quite local, so the builder that funded them often got the money back by inflating the sale price of the house. Unsurprisingly, US government housing agencies have found that borrowers who had received this kind of assistance were three times more likely to default on their mortgage as those who had not (Montgomery 2008).
‘How’, I asked myself, ‘is this even legal?’
Rent-seeking and Governance
As well as being a good example of something that induces Platypus Moments, the down payment assistance charity industry is a good example of rent-seeking. The textbooks define rent-seeking, roughly speaking, as manipulating the economic and social environment to benefit yourself without adding any real economic value to the world. In fact, because the act of rent-seeking absorbs time, energy and resources, it actually reduces human welfare. Often, but not always, rent-seekers try to persuade the government to bestow some favour on them. In other cases, the rent-seeker takes advantage of private information. The borrower knew that their down payment wasn't their own savings, and the builder knew the house price was over-inflated. But the lender didn't know either fact. Is it any wonder that outright fraud became such a problem on both sides of the US mortgage market?
Rent-seekers thrive in complex, opaque markets. A perfect example was the structured credit boom in the years before the crisis. In all the controversy about mark-to-model and the difficulties of pricing these securities, it is often forgotten that it matters whose model the security is being modelled with. Those kinds of informational advantages can be quite lucrative, for a while, at least.
Much rent-seeking is enabled by governance problems. We can see it in the rogue trader who games the risk-management system to get a bonus. We can see it in loan officers who approve a dubious loan to make their sales target. We can see it in decisions of CEOs to grow their firms even when it doesn't make sense, except to meet a bonus hurdle. Employee compensation systems set up plenty of inappropriate incentives during the boom. It is no surprise that this was one of the areas that the international regulatory community targeted first in the post-crisis reform process.
Inappropriate incentives for staff can take forms other than money. Some of the earliest events in the crisis, back in 2007, were losses and liquidity problems at hedge funds sponsored by some large global banks. Often these funds were set up specifically to reward or motivate a few star employees. That is, the financial group's business structure was changed, and hundreds of millions of dollars in client funds were reallocated, all to keep somebody happy.
The rent-seeking doesn't happen only in financial firms, though. The market for corporate control can also be fertile grounds for this behaviour. Recall that the pre-crisis credit boom wasn't just in US mortgages. Takeover activity was also booming. Much of it was driven by highly leveraged private equity firms and at least in some cases, the deal would never have happened without easy access to credit. Some of these takeovers involved subsequent rounds of borrowing, just to pay dividends to the owners. If the deal left the acquired firm worse off, but the acquirer managed to extract equity in this way, it is fair to call the transaction an exercise in rent-seeking. In these cases, the acquirers are taking advantage of their access to credit, beyond what the target firms themselves could have borrowed. It is a pity that the lenders did not experience their own Platypus Moments, and question why they should lend money for that purpose.
Risk-taking and the Price of Risk
The second key behaviour we watch for is risk-taking. In fact, the goal of financial stability policy is sometimes defined as reducing systemic risk: the risk of a disruptive financial crisis. I should emphasise that the objective here is not to eliminate all risk. Most social and economic progress comes from somebody being willing to take a risk – on a new idea, a new product, a new way of doing things. Since central bankers and prudential supervisors tend to be risk-averse in temperament, it is not for us to second-guess every aspect of the decisions by the people taking those risks. We should, however, pay attention, and perhaps take action, depending on the answers to two important questions.
- One, do those involved correctly perceive the risks?
- Two, who is taking risk on behalf of whom?
Thinking back to the credit boom before the crisis, it is clear that this first question on risk perception is very important. We knew that risk spreads were low, perhaps too low. We knew that market players were treating many products and exposures as safer than they had been historically, and that they were assuming that new, untested products were safe. They weren't taking those risks while saying to themselves, ‘Don't worry, if it blows up, the government will bail us out’. Rather, it simply didn't occur to them that the trades would blow up. Or they thought it too unlikely to worry about, let alone price it in.
The problem in structured credit markets was not so much ‘Too-Big-To-Fail’ as ‘Too-Smart-To-Fail’. Or at least, the people involved thought so.
Incorrect risk perceptions can lead to bad assets being created unwittingly, just as we saw in the US housing boom. Households did not factor in the possibility that housing prices might fall. RMBS investors did not understand how far mortgage lending standards had deteriorated. And some sub-prime lenders did not factor in that some of these mortgages would default so quickly that the lenders would have to buy them back.
Inappropriately relaxed perceptions about risk therefore led to inappropriately lax lending standards. Lenders didn't worry if the borrower could afford the loan, or if that undocumented income really existed. Housing prices were rising rapidly. So lenders assumed that a borrower in trouble could always sell, or refinance with another lender.
Why were US mortgage lenders so willing to ease their standards, far beyond those in other countries? That brings us to the second question – who is taking risk on behalf of whom? The regulatory system was part of the story. But the answer also lies partly with the fact that lenders were taking those risks with other people's money. They were not putting their own balance sheets at risk: often they didn't have balance sheets. Even if they experienced a Platypus Moment when extending an enormous loan to a retired person on a fixed income that didn't even cover the repayment, they had no incentive to do anything about it.
The other-people's-money issue goes far beyond the mortgage lenders, though. Think back to the internal hedge funds I mentioned earlier. Banks and fund managers invest on behalf of their customers. A raft of regulation and codes of conduct has been designed to ensure that these agents are acting in their customers' best interests. But as with any principal-agent problem, no set of rules will solve that completely.
The Right Response
We should bear in mind that no regulatory regime is perfect. Even so, in the face of rent-seeking, risk-taking and other challenges to financial stability, we need to be able to respond in the right way. The right response is certainly not ‘shovel the risk somewhere else and hope for the best’. That was the rationale behind the ‘originate-to-distribute’ model in securitisation markets in the United States. Having rid themselves of some risk, US mortgage lenders felt free to create more. So there was not a fixed amount of risk that could be spread ever thinner over a wider population of investors. The total amount of risk taken depended on the incentives to do so. That is why a system-wide view is essential. Likewise, we must be alert to incentives to take risk, especially when some parties think they have ‘managed’ that risk away entirely. A risk hedged is better than one not hedged, but it is not the same as a risk not taken at all. Hedges can and do break down. In the crisis, some broke down in spectacular fashion.
The right response, in fact, has several preconditions and from there can take several forms. The first precondition is the background of the macro policy framework. Avoidance of damaging credit cycles starts with management of the business cycle. Of course it will never be possible to eliminate the business cycle completely. But the quickest way to create a damaging credit boom is to run your economy too hot. I should therefore mention the positive role of a floating exchange rate here. If the exchange rate floats, the authorities can set macroeconomic policy according to domestic circumstances, rather than having to defend a particular exchange rate.
The second precondition is the regulatory and institutional framework. Regulators must have the powers, the mandate, the resources and – importantly – the culture to make them able and willing to respond appropriately to a threat to financial stability. Even more important, they must be able and willing to intervene early. Not every regulator in the world would do so. When they do, you might never hear about it. Regulatory culture is hard to capture in an assessment of compliance with international standards, so its importance has perhaps been underappreciated.
Given these preconditions, regulators have a variety of tools at their disposal already, which they can use to respond to problematic behaviours or emerging risks. Most of these tools are regulatory or prudential. A good Australian example comes from the 2004–2005 period. A system-wide stress test revealed that mortgage insurers needed more capital to be resilient to a major downturn in the housing market, should one occur. So APRA raised these firms' capital requirements. The stress test and the fallout from the early 2000s housing boom also revealed that some newer mortgage loan products were riskier than others. So APRA raised risk weights on those loans. It has retained that tougher treatment even after adopting the Basel II standard.
A more recent example relates to so-called ‘synthetic’ exchange-traded funds. Some of these funds overseas involve conflicts of interest that make rent-seeking perhaps too easy. The Financial Stability Board has expressed concerns about this publicly. Although this type of fund is not yet that important in Australia, ASIC has already moved to head off such problems here. Following consultations with the Bank, ASIC and the ASX are working on refinements to the exchange's listing rules that, once introduced, should deal with most of the FSB's concerns.
These examples show the value of having flexible, principles-based regulatory frameworks, not a legalistic set of rules that encourage a box-ticking frame of mind. If the regulators are focused only on compliance with existing rules, they will always be playing catch-up to a fast-moving industry. I am glad to say that narrow, box-ticking cultures are not what we see in the Australian regulators.
Another important response we can use is communication. This is where a central bank is most likely to be involved if, like the RBA, it is not a prudential supervisor. Sometimes that communication occurs in concert with actions from the other regulators. Given that many participants in the system might prefer not to be restrained by regulation, it is helpful to follow up those actions with support from other public agencies.
Perhaps more challenging to communicate are the earlier interventions, warning that something might become a problem one day, but it isn't now, and maybe won't ever be. Those exercises in communication are designed to mould risk perceptions. We are frequently trying to strike a balance between sounding too alarmist and sounding too complacent. For between everything being rosy and an existential threat, there are many shades of grey.
It is important to remember that we will mention, and sometimes explicitly warn about, things that do not pose a risk of sparking an imminent crash. Drawing attention to concerns early can influence expectations and beliefs and, we hope, the behaviours that could otherwise lead to future distress. Focusing on risks and behaviours is the key to that communication, not numerical targets or forecasts. For if we succeed in preventing crises, whether through communication or some other response, then any prediction of a crisis will not occur. It would be a self-negating prophecy, one that would make it harder to repeat the success later on.
Sometimes it will be better, and more effective, just to point out that the platypus is strange. Like black swans, they turn up more often than you expect.
Gerardi et al (2008) showed that analysts pricing RMBS during the US housing boom had a reasonable understanding of what would happen to mortgage arrears rates if housing prices fell, but attributed very low probabilities to such a scenario actually happening.
See Financial Stability Board (2011), ‘Potential Financial Stability Issues Arising from Recent Trends in Exchange-traded Funds (ETFs)’, April. Available at <http://www.financialstabilityboard.org/publications/r_110412b.pdf>.
Gerardi K, A Lehnert, S Sherlund and P Willen (2008), ‘Making Sense of the Subprime Crisis’, in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Vol 2 (Fall), Brookings Institution Press, Washington, pp 69–145.
Kindleberger CP and RZ Aliber (2000), Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, 5th Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Montgomery B (2008), ‘Prepared Remarks at the National Press Club’, 9 June.
Reinhart CM and K Rogoff (2009), This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

domain: finance


I'm thrilled to dive into one of the classics of the revolver world: the Colt Detective Special. This little powerhouse has earned its stripes as a go-to choice for concealed carry aficionados and law enforcement professionals alike. And today, we're taking a closer look at its 2-inch barrel variant. Strap in as we explore why this compact legend remains a force to be reckoned with.
OVERVIEW OF THE COLT DETECTIVE SPECIAL
Let's delve deeper into the Colt Detective Special, an iconic revolver that has left an indelible mark on the firearms industry since its introduction in 1927. This timeless piece of weaponry has weathered the storms of time, retaining its allure and practicality through the decades. Boasting a compact frame coupled with outstanding performance, the Colt Detective Special has earned its stripes as a dependable companion for shooters of all levels.
UNVEILING THE COLT DETECTIVE SPECIAL'S TECHNICAL ARSENAL
The 32 Colt Detective Special's design represents a harmonious marriage of form and function. Its sleek and streamlined silhouette is a testament to the ingenuity of its creators, offering both aesthetic appeal and practical utility. This revolver epitomizes the adage "good things come in small packages," as its compact size belies its formidable capabilities.
The introduction of the 2-inch barrel variant elevated the Colt Detective Special to new heights of compactness and versatility. This iteration was tailor-made for concealed carry enthusiasts, offering unparalleled discretion without compromising on firepower. Whether tucked away in an ankle holster or nestled snugly against the hip, the 2-inch barrel Colt Detective Special is the epitome of concealed firepower.
Now, let's check the main specs of the Colt Detective Special below:
- Model Name: Colt Detective Special
- Caliber: .32 S&W Long
- Action: Revolving Chamber
- Weight (Unloaded): 21 oz.
- Capacity: 6 rounds
- Overall Length: 6.75inches
- Barrel Length: 2 inches
- Frame Material: Steel
- Sights: Fixed front sight, rear groove
- MSRP: $500 to $1500
COLT DETECTIVE SPECIAL REVIEW - TESTING AND PERFORMANCE
CONSISTENCY IN ACCURACY
When it comes to assessing the performance of a firearm, consistency is key – and the Colt Detective Special delivers in spades. With each pull of the trigger, this compact revolver proves its mettle, consistently hitting the mark with pinpoint precision. Whether you're engaging targets at close range or testing your skills at a distance, you can trust the Colt Detective Special to deliver reliable accuracy time and time again.
MANAGING RECOIL LIKE A PRO
Recoil management is another area where the Colt Detective Special shines. Despite its small stature, this revolver handles recoil with finesse, allowing shooters to maintain control and stay on target with ease. Whether you're a seasoned pro or a novice shooter, you'll appreciate the Colt Detective Special's ability to mitigate recoil and keep you on target shot after shot.
VERSATILITY IN ACTION
One of the hallmarks of the Colt Detective Special is its versatility in action. Whether you're plinking targets at the range, practicing defensive drills, or carrying it as a backup weapon on duty, this revolver proves its worth in a variety of scenarios. Its compact size and lightweight design make it a breeze to carry all day long, while its reliable performance ensures that it's ready to spring into action at a moment's notice.
SMOOTH ACTION, CRISP TRIGGER
At the heart of the Colt Detective Special's performance lies its smooth action and crisp trigger pull. From the moment you pick up this revolver, you'll notice the buttery-smooth operation of its action, allowing for rapid and seamless firing. And when it comes time to pull the trigger, you'll be greeted by a crisp and clean break that instills confidence with every shot. Whether you're engaging targets on the range or defending yourself in a high-pressure situation, the Colt Detective Special's action and trigger are sure to impress.
ADAPTING TO YOUR NEEDS
COLT DETECTIVE SPECIAL GRIPS
One aspect of the Colt Detective Special that often gets overlooked is its grips. And let me tell you, they can make all the difference in the world. The grips on this revolver are designed with ergonomics in mind, providing a comfortable and secure hold that inspires confidence with every shot. Plus, with a variety of aftermarket options available, you can easily customize your Colt Detective Special to suit your preferences.
A PLATFORM FOR INNOVATION
Beyond its customizable grips, the Colt Detective Special's versatility extends to its various caliber and barrel length options. From the compact 2-inch barrel variant designed for discreet concealed carry to the slightly longer 3-inch barrel version offering enhanced accuracy and sight radius, there's a Colt Detective Special configuration to suit every shooter's needs. And with both .32 and .38 caliber options available, shooters can choose the cartridge that best meets their performance requirements and ammunition availability.
COLT .32 DETECTIVE SPECIAL REVOLVER - PRICE AND VALUE
Now, let's talk turkey: the price of owning a Colt Detective Special. While it's true that these revolvers can command a premium in today's market, I firmly believe they're worth every penny. Not only are you getting a piece of firearms history, but you're also investing in a reliable and versatile tool that will serve you well for years to come. So don't let the price tag scare you off – trust me, it's money well spent. The MSRP of the Detective Special varies depending on condition and vintage and typically ranges from $500 to $1500.
COLT DETECTIVE SPECIAL REVIEW - HISTORY AND LEGACY
Ah, the history of the Colt Detective Special – where do I even begin? From its humble beginnings in the 1920s to its continued popularity among shooters today, this revolver has certainly left its mark on the firearms world.
The Colt Detective Special was born out of a specific need – to provide plainclothes police detectives with a reliable and discreet weapon for use in their daily duties. With its compact size and potent firepower, this revolver was the perfect tool for law enforcement officers tasked with navigating the dangerous streets of America's cities. Its concealable nature made it an invaluable asset for officers operating undercover or in plain view, allowing them to carry out their duties without drawing unwanted attention.
Over the years, the Colt Detective Special has been wielded by everyone from beat cops to private eyes, earning a reputation for rugged reliability and unwavering performance. And with each new generation of shooters, its legacy only continues to grow.
COLT DETECTIVE SPECIAL FAQ
Unfortunately, no. Production of the Colt Detective Special ceased in 1995. However, that hasn't stopped it from maintaining a strong presence in the firearms community.
Absolutely! The Colt Detective Special is renowned for its reliability, accuracy, and compact design. Whether you're a seasoned shooter or a novice enthusiast, you can't go wrong with this classic revolver.
While both revolvers share many similarities, such as their compact size, there are some key differences between the Colt Cobra and the Detective Special. For example, the Cobra features a slightly different grip design and lacks the iconic "shrouded" ejector rod found on the Detective Special.
CONCLUSION - WRAPPING UP THE COLT DETECTIVE SPECIAL JOURNEY
From its humble beginnings to its continued relevance in today's firearms landscape, it's clear that this compact legend has earned its place in the pantheon of great revolvers. So, whether you're a veteran shooter or a newcomer to the world of firearms, do yourself a favor and check out the Colt Detective Special. And don't forget to pick up a quality Colt Detective Special holster to complete the package!


Aidan O’Brien’s former Australian superstar So You Think looks set to run in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Churchill Downs next month.
Part-owner Dato Tan Chin Nam has confirmed that he wishes to see the six-year-old attempt to conquer America after winning top grade races in both Australia and Europe.
The dual Cox Plate winner has shown that he is just as good on this side of the world, winning the Irish Champion Stakes, Tattersalls Gold Cup and Coral Eclipse this season. He also finished runner-up in the English Champion Stakes and ran a fine fourth in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
The Breeders’ Cup Classic could be next on the agenda for the horse. If he has not had too much racing this season,he must have a serious chance of adding to his honours in the US.
“He could have won three Cox Plates but we wanted to take on the world,” Chin Nam told www.smh.com.au.
“He has showcased Australian racing to the world and showed that we can match them. It has taken two course records to beat him (in his last two starts). I hope he can go better in America”.