The Human Rights Omissioner and the Freedom to Starve

Of all the decisions of the last 100+ days, under the Abbott government, the decision by George Brandis to appoint Tim Wilson as the Human Rights Commissioner has hit hardest home. I think this act, more than most, exemplifies the ideological undercurrents of the current government. I interpret this as an incredibly symbolic act of the government that will define their political motif for the next three years.

I like to think of human rights as something of an expertise of mine, and there is something profoundly jarring about this appointment. I will not go into detail about some of the more obvious issues around this, as this has already been reported: including his former role with the Institute for Public Affairs and its desire to abolish the commission; including the underlying antagonism  between Wilson and the President of the Commission Professor Gillian Triggs (having met and interacted with both Wilson and Triggs, my read of that dialogue hints at a deeper animosity). I’m not even particularly bothered by his politics in a broad sense, and I will visit that idea later on.

Such a model will only serve to entrench those behaviours, and push the state and its use of force more towards an oppressive model of governance. It is an act of omission rather than commission.

Serving the State or the People

What I am most dismayed about is this one statement: “I am looking forward to the challenge of reasserting the importance of human rights and advancing the government’s freedom agenda,” made by him in this interview. In that one statement he has revealed a significant disconnection between how he understands the role and one of the nominal functions of that office.

The reason that this should be worrying is because human rights are principally doctrines of international law. They emerged because they sought to curtail the gross abuse of state power over the lives of their citizens in response to the horrors of the genocides of World War II. They are designed to keep a state government to account and to draw a line around what they can and cannot do towards their subjects. Pursuing the government’s agenda, and keeping the government in check are mutually exclusive tasks because they constitute a conflict of interest. So in that one statement, Wilson is effectively saying that he thinks his obligations are more to the state than they are to the people.

When questioned by Naomi Woodley about his recent appointment and his position on asylum seekers being detained in Manus Island and Papua New Guinea, he effectively brushed off the question and instead asserted his intention to repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. In that one statement he effectively noted that his first interests were not towards the thousands of people enduring inhumane living conditions, but seeks to support the interests of public officials who have reasonable levels of power to begin with. It is a clear example of his particular predilections aligning more with the interests of the governing elite than challenging the regimes they create.

This is indicative of a government that is driven by its ideological assumptions. It has no interest in moderating its agenda because it seeks to profoundly change the political landscape to match the vision of its utopia. Time and time again, we are seeing the politics of minimalist government and retreat from the market, all in the name of waste cutting and freedom. It might be okay for an opposition to adhere strongly to its ideological guns, if only to challenge the government. However, it is a perilous position for a government to adopt because they must represent the entirety of the public, not just the ones that voted for them.

Minarchist Utopia

The reason this is very concerning is because states remain one of the most powerful institutions within modern society. They maintain a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and so its notion of justice will often see how that state structures its many organs to maintain and provide for justice. The use of force in the Australian context defaults typically to police powers, and the limitations of their powers

Brandis has effectively stated that the appointment was specifically to change the politics of the commission, concerned that it had narrowed its agenda significantly. He noted that there would need to be an emphasis on the freedom to speech and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). There was no mention of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). This is not surprising but it is troubling.

The ICCPR and the ICESCR are designed to be two halves of the same whole. The former is a doctrine designed to vaunt individual freedoms while the latter is a document designed to direct states towards providing the necessary welfare to achieve those rights. They are in fact the manifestation of the ideologies of the USA and the USSR brought together to create a more holistic doctrine of rights alongside the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (together, all three are considered to be the International Bill of Human Rights).

It is entirely ironic that Brandis is touting Wilson because he will expand the agenda of the commission only by focusing it on one half of the discussion of rights. A commission that vaunt the ICCPR would emphasise the rights to physical integrity (right to life, freedom from torture, and slavery); rights of justice (presumption of innocence, procedural fairness, habeus corpus); individual liberties (freedom of movement, religion, thought, speech, assembly, association); and political rights. However, a commission that then also ignores or omits the ICESCR would overlook labour rights, social security, rights to family life (children’s rights, parental rights, and reproductive rights), standards of living (clothing, food, shelter, and water), public health, public education, and the right to participate in public life (art, culture, and science).

This is the classical libertarian playbook, promising freedom from unwanted state intervention and the freedom to starve. It is a paradise fit for become a paradise fit for Ayn Rand or Gina Rineheart.

Police Powers and Human Rights

Any rights-based organisation that aligns itself with the state tend towards a view that the role of government has a role of keeping the peace and not interfering with the lives of its private citizens. Libertarian visions of justice usually default to Nozick’s vision of the night-watchman state. It is a view that suggests that the proper use of the state monopoly on force must withdraw from the private affairs of people, meaning that the state should only interfere to restore the peace, to prevent violence, and to enforce the private contractual arrangements between its citizens.

Putting aside the issues of disproportionate bargaining capacity of individuals and corporations (or even powerful people), there is a very worrying issue in relation how a libertarian view would frame police powers, being solely towards the maintenance of law and order. Such a view would emphasise the role of the police as a para-military force, designed to subdue public dissent in the name of public order; particularly where that disorder interferes with the market. In such a situation, police powers are emphasise in any type of public action deemed disruptive, such as curtailing rights to protest in Tasmania, police breaking union blockades in Victoria, and police brutality at Mardi Gras in NSW. Not to mention Wilson’s attitudes on the Occupy Movement and their right to speech.

I have already spoken before about the distinctions between acts that are corrupt and acts that are oppressive in the context of police culture. A human rights commission that is shifted towards a more ‘law and order’ model of police culture, rather than a ‘police service’ type of model will be more permissible of patterns of violent behaviour as being acceptable in the name of the public interest. Such a model will only serve to entrench those behaviours, and push the state and its use of force more towards an oppressive model of governance. It is an act of omission rather than commission.

Police Culture: Corruption or Oppression?

I propose to critique the institution of the police, particularly in their actions towards protecting vulnerable groups that as part of society. As part of this query, I will look towards specific examples of abuse of police powers with the intent to query whether those actions are indicative of a type of corruption, being examples of aberrant behaviour for the institution, or whether they are a type of oppression, being examples of behaviour normative of the institution itself.

In order to consider this question I will contrast a number of incidents in Australia and Russia. First, I will focus on a number of incidents during the 2013 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival, where police were accused of abusing police powers, including police brutality. Then, I will focus on Russia, where there exists a broad, loosely connected series of incidents that pertain to the treatment of LGBTI subjects in this jurisdiction following the legislation on a ban of ‘gay propaganda towards minors’.

I reference to the terms ‘corruption’ and ‘oppression’, with particularity. Though they are both contestable terms, as shown by Leys showing how the reality of corruption can be informed by context, and difficult to isolate with definitive rules or heuristics. For the purposes of this essay, it is sufficient to understand an idea of corruption as an abuse of police powers (this is elaborated on in the second section). On the other hand, I would contend that in the context of abuse directed towards a marginalised group in society, corruption and oppression may appear very similar in how they manifest. However, I consider a theory of oppression like that of Cudd, describing institutionally structured harm, perpetrated on social groups through a variety of direct and indirect forces (material, economic, and psychological). What I infer from models like Cudd’s is that oppression describes more of a systematic and pervasive expression of coercion and abuse, which has internalised and institutionalised the instrumentation of harm; contrasted to corruption which would signify and aberration of the norm.

By comparing these ideas, I propose a simple heuristic for assessing whether a type of abuse is more symptomatic of corruption (a perversion of a normative order) or of oppression (an expression of an institutionalised system of harm), with the former being characterised as acute and irregular, and the latter being chronic and pervasive. Using this heuristic, I will endeavour to demonstrate that the violence of Mardi Gras 2013 is acute and irregular while Russia is evidence of chronic and pervasive, thereby demonstrating a distinction between them.

Background of Incidents

It is not necessary to fully detail the incidents compared, only to provide an overview of police actions. However, I outline the violence experienced by LGBTI groups in both jurisdictions, and make inferences from their comparison.

During the Mardi Gras festival 2013, a number of incidents alleged police brutality and hostility several key events. The most visible was alleged police assault on Jamie Reed on the night of the parade, which was accompanied by a second alleged police assault against Bryn Hutchinson on the same night.

These incidents occurred within a broader range of alleged abuses of police power, particularly towards attendees of large dance parties. A sample of observed police conduct from the Inner City Legal Centre includes:

  • “police not giving warnings or following legal process before asking people about drugs in their possession”;
  • “police singling out stereotypical gay people and gender diverse people to search with dogs”;
  • “police placing hand on dog’s hind to encourage them to sit”; and
  • “dogs not giving any indication for a search but the police perusing the person regardless”.

Compare this to Russia, which gained international attention in passing legislation that banned the “propaganda of nontraditional [sic] sexual relations to minors“, followed by the rise of vigilantism towards LGBTI groups. Russian vigilante groups used social media to lure gay men into fake sexual encounters where they are promptly kidnapped and filmed being beaten, tortured, and humiliated; some reports indicated fatal casualties from these incidents. In recent months, there has been an arrest of a Dutch activist for discussing LGBTI rights in Russia, and violent encounters with LGBTI activists and their counter-protesters at LGBTI protests. Moreover, in many of these incidents, the police have seemingly failed to intervene adequately to prevent that violence.

The biggest difference between these jurisdictions is the source of the violence. In Australia, the source was from the police force: in Russia, the violence was the product of vigilantism, which the police failed to prevent. This describes two distinct caricatures of violence, as comprehended by the broader public. In the Australian context, these describe examples of an excess of power that has directly caused harm. In the Russian context, such incidents describe complicity by the police to allow pervasive harm to be applied. On this consideration alone, it would seem that the Australian incident describes an acute example while the Russian incidents describe a chronic example.

In Australia, the public response to the allegations of violence included protests and two separate investigations. Admittedly, some of this protest attribute the incidents of police violence to broader systematic form of violence, signified by the notorious “All Cops are Bastards” banner, but their voice is not necessarily indicative of the community.

The Russian depiction is starkly different, with a number of descriptions that speak to a growing hostility in Russia towards LGBTI persons, including statements by Russian citizens stating that it has “becom[e] dangerous on the streets” and that “[o]rdinary people consider [homosexuals] criminals”, as well as other comments that create a picture by sound-bites of a traditional population compounding a persecution of LGBTI people with a fear of the West (see here for those quotes).

These comparisons conform my own earlier research (from my own Masters thesis), where I contended that legal regimes in the West have come to frame their LGBTI subjects as minorities entitled with civic rights, contrasted with jurisdictions that reject/oppose Western political hegemony. Under these regimes, LGBTI subjects are characterised as politically dissident and sick, such that:

“attempt[s] to create rights for queer subjects must reconcile itself with the structures of power and agency that produce identity… [and that] … systems of power can alienate and marginalise ‘dissonant’ identities”.

These relationships become immensely important when considering the state’s disposition to a vulnerable group. My earlier research compared the characterisation of LGBTI citizens in different types of statehood. I synthesised the position of a number of international commentators, which observed that a large number of nations were increasingly challenged to reformulate their models of statehood with the fall of the Soviet Union (and the end of bipolarity). Emerging nations needed to emulate Western paradigms for political legitimacy, whilst simultaneously attempting to distinguish a national identity that was distinctive enough from the West. This dichotomy produced a number of states that sought to impose strong statist models, and a consequence of those changes included regulations of sexual and gendered behaviour, emphasising family model that repressed any sexual dissidence. Citizenship emphasised allegiance nationalist symbolism, military-patriarchal power hierarchies that encouraged homosocial bonding but homosexual repression.

Police Culture

Having compared the set of incidents, I now enquire directly into police culture. To do so, I will outline some of the theories of the function of police forces and standard models of police culture, while recognising those critiques. In doing so, I hope to provide a framework of understanding the institutionalism of the police, and from this position consider whether the incidents can be considered irregular or pervasive.

I first ground my argument within a theoretical understanding of the role of the police. I refer to a Weberian model of the state, and its proposed monopoly on the legitimate use of force. In doing so, I argue that the police force serves as an ancillary body of the State, being both legitimised and authorised to use force for the purposes of enforcing the law and maintaining of civil order. In this manner, police corruption can be seen as irregular if it constitutes a breakdown of the normal preservation of law and order. They become oppressive when they are part of an institutionalised breakdown of the same.

Standard Model of Police Culture

In Australia public order is frequently mediated by discretionary police powers: police are vested with discretion on “whether (and how) to investigate a reported crime, which method of initiating proceeding to adopt, whether to detain after arrest, whether or not to grant bail (in most cases), whether or not to charge, what to charge with, and so on” (see pp. 746-747 of this book). I would contend that the use of discretionary powers become a means by which we can understand the norms of police culture. So if the alleged acts of violence by the police are extraordinary use of police power rather than normative misuse they would indicate corruption rather than oppression (and vice versa).

To that end, consider the standard model of police culture, which originated with the works of Wesley where:
“[h]e gave a detailed, vivid description of an organization that operated in a context that was often experienced as hostile. This contributed to isolation, self-protection, secrecy and internal solidarity – all seen as central values among the police officers. This is why they often closed ranks against the outside world” (p. 60 from here).

Academic inquiry has refined this departure point through subsequent studies and synthesised a new standard model of police culture. This updated model characterised police culture being possessed of a sense of mission leading to direct action, which is juxtaposed by a sense of cynicism and suspicion of outsiders, such as the citizenry. This characterisation elaborates on Wesley’s observations, depicting a siege mentality buffeted by strong internal solidarity, even over breaches of rules and regulations.

Russian Police Enforcement

In Russia, the base presumption of police culture seems to have shifted someone. Gerber and Mendelson consider Russian police culture and its intersection with corruption. Rather than a siege mentality as outlined above, they provide a concept of ‘predatory policing’, which “occurs where police officers mainly use their authority to advance their own material interests rather than to fight crime or protect the interests of elites”. They conclude that “[p]ublic encounters with police corruption are at least as common as experiences with police violence, and both are widespread”.

Semukhina and Reynolds provide a comprehensive book titled Understanding the Modern Russian Police. A significant part of their work reviews the pervasiveness of police corruption, and the way they frame the issue describes it in very ubiquitous manner to the point where it is necessary to produce theoretical positions to explain it. Of these positions, they outline four dominant explanations, which include:

  • a persistence of historical Soviet practices of bribery into the modern Russian police institution, where personal favours were exchanged for consumer goods during a period of commodity scarcity;
  • a consequent of deteriorating social and economic disruptions experienced caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, and maturing interconnections between former Soviet government officials and organised crime syndicates;
  • a ‘business of corruption’, where corrupt conduct is normalised, and rationalised with arguments that the costs of proper anti-corruption are higher and more riskier; all exacerbated by widespread poverty; and
  • a larger cultural phenomenon within Russia, of pervasive disrespect for the law and broad public tolerance for corruption.

Regardless of which view is taken, they all collectively describe a picture of police corruption that is widespread and affected by deeply problematic socio-economic issues. In fact, an emphasis of structural problems more strongly highlights the views expressed in the second point, which argues that there has been an increased hierarchical organisation, centralisation, and extreme militarisation of the police force; all having led to a lack of independent oversight of police powers and activity. Specifically, the main institution charged with supervising the legality of conduct, the Procuracy, is an adjunct of the criminal police: international reviews of the Procuracy have revealed low levels of confidence in their ability to fight corruption.

What these comparisons show is that despite the Russian and Australian police forces exhibiting a similar societal role, they can manifest significantly different institutional norms. It is to this that it is necessary to consider a number of criticisms of this standard model, citing the standard model’s claims of homogeneity or emphases on problematic police behaviours.

A particularly relevant critical position is Chan, who argues that police culture is the result of “the interaction between the socio-political context of police work and various dimensions of police organizational [sic] knowledge”. She contends that any model of police culture should:

  • account for multiple internal institutional perspectives;
  • recognise the active role that police officers have in being interpreting and producing that culture;
  • be able to consider the culture within broader socio-political contexts; and
  • include formulations for the acceptance and resistance to cultural changes.

This conforms to my earlier claim that the nature and stability of the state has a deep influence on the integrity of a police culture, and whether an act of corruption is institutional or aberrant. Moreover, Terpstra and Schaap earlier critques includes Chan’s critiques and eventually conclude that many of the descriptive characteristics of the police culture model, as well as the individualistic police behaviours, shift significantly in the broader socio-political context of the state norms that their force serves.

Given these positions and a comparison of Australian and Russian police cultures, it follows that there is a strong argument for the incidents of Mardi Gras 2013 to be acute incidents that are not part of a normative police culture in Australia; it follows that the conduct and actions of the Russian police are located within a comparison, it would follow a point of evidence that conforms to my original premise that particular incidents of police conduct can be understood as acute or chronic in reflection to systemic and pervasive views that inform police conduct.

I have compared a set of incidents in both Australia and in Russia. I have sought to determine whether, given the context of the police culture and statehood, if these incidents could be understood as either acute and irregular or chronic and pervasion.

In the instance of Mardi Gras 2013, the incidents, while not the first of their kind in Australia, do not seem to be rooted within a broader framework of police violence and hostility. While they could indicate the beginnings of a pervasive approach, they currently seem isolated, making them acute incidents. Moreover, the standard model of police culture, which is normative for Anglo-American institutes, would indicate that despite a siege mentality such conduct is irregular. In this sense, I would characterise the allegations of Mardi Gras as an example of corruption, in the sense they are a perversion of the norm.

In the instance of Russian, the incidents of violence are partly attributable to the complicity of the police, which are continuing and repeated; the police only seeming to respond to prosecute vigilantism after international attention. Moreover, these incidents exist within a broader context of state-persecution of LGBTI subjects, and a broad culture of Russian police corruption that is itself regarded as widespread and pervasion. In this sense, I would characterise the issues reported in Russia as an example of oppression, in the sense that they are systematically entrenched and internalised into police culture.

Cutting the Umbilical Cord Between Church and State

This Thursday, I will be participating in a protest before the NSW State Parliament, where a bill is being proposed that would make amendments to the Crimes Act, called the Crimes Amendment (Zoe’s Law) Bill 2013 (No. 2). It is euphemistically called Zoe’s Law (2) because it refers to the tragedy of the posthumously named Zoe, and is the second time a variant of this bill has been introduced to NSW Parliament. The substantive feature of this law would be the recognition of legal personhood of a foetus. This shift in legal definitions has a number of effects, which would significantly impact women’s rights, particularly around issues of child-birthing and bodily autonomy.

Although this is an issue I am profoundly passionate about, I had until now refrained from commenting. Partly because I do not identify as a woman, but also because far better women commentators were already weighing in on the issue and I feel I have an obligation to hear their view points before I formulate/refine my own.

However, the protest is drawing nigh and I was roused to significant anger this morning when it seemed that NSW Parliament were going to debate the bill today (until it wasn’t). To that end, I wanted to comment on the matter, not from viewpoint of being a feminist (even though I count myself as one), but as a legal scholar. I therefore seek to address the fundamental question at the heart of this challenge, which depends on the point at which the law recognises a subject as a legal person.

Ultimately, my objections refer back to the significance of legal personhood, and the immense problems that arise in extending that status onto any entity that does not have a separate existence from its mother. While it is incredibly understandable that a mother would want to have some manner of public recognition for being deprived of a child, doing so through a criminal process is one with far too many social consequences.

Outline of Zoe’s Law (2)

To outline exactly what the law would do, I refer to statements made in the Bill’s first reading, as introduced by Mr Chris Spence MP, as well as a statement provided by the mother of the eponymous Zoe.

The object of the bill is to amend the Crimes Act 1900 to recognise the existence of the foetus of a pregnant woman that is of at least 20 weeks gestation so that proceedings for certain offences relating to grievous bodily harm may be brought against an offender who causes the unlawful destruction of or harm to any such foetus as proceedings for grievous bodily harm to the foetus rather than proceedings for grievous bodily harm to the pregnant woman.

The above is the opening paragraph of Mr Spence’s first reading of the bill. He goes on to note that the bill as introduced is a refinement of the original bill submitted by Fred Nile, in that it would exempt any offences that would occur in the “course of a medical procedure, including medical treatment or anything done by or with the consent of the pregnant woman that causes harm to or the destruction of a foetus” and does not intend to impact upon a woman’s right to choose.

However, the very specific aspect of the amendment is schedule 1 [2] of the bill, which states:

For the purposes of the proposed section, an unborn child that is taken to be a living person for the purposes of applicable offences, is defined as a foetus of at least 20 weeks gestation or, if that cannot be reliably established, a foetus that weighs at least 400 grams (proposed section 8A (1) and (2)).

It specifically states that the intention of the amendment is to enable the law to recognise an unborn child as a living person, for the purpose of a range of applicable offences. Mr Spence claims that it would not create new categories of crime, but rather focus on the crimes of grievous bodily harm that are currently relevant to injury toward a foetus.

There have been some preliminary responses from a variety of legal experts who have expressed concern and dissent to these intentions of the bill. Roughly speaking, a variety of legal organisations and experts (except for lawyers known for being anti-abortion) have been consulted and come to an opinion that it is something of a Trojan horse for women’s choices. There is a legal conceit in Zoe’s Law (2), in that while it allows for exemptions from medical procedures that women choose to undergo (such as the termination of a foetus), the passing of this bill would nonetheless establish the legal category of “foetal personhood”. It would instate that foetus with a series of protected rights that would potentially come up by virtue of the fact that this foetus is now viewed as a separate legal entity.

One of the comments regarding this conceit is that because this entity would not technically have a category until the passing of the bill, it has not been included in any of the pre-bill analysis of the bill’s proponents. It is this exact same pattern that equivalent bills in the USA used to be passed as legislation. It is why such bills are being advocated for by anti-choice veterans like Fred Nile and current Attorney-General and former ‘Right To Life’ president Greg Smith. Among those, I would direct you to the responses written up in this article by Jabour in the Guardian.

For a good grounding in the background of the current legislative provisions as they apply around the legal recognition of the personhood of children being born, and how they intersect with crimes like manslaughter, I refer you to the review by the Judicial Commission of New South Wales.

Donegan’s Appeal and Legal Reasoning

One of the things that is seen as particularly compelling in this case is the public appeal by Brodie Donegan, which is regarded as convincing because Donegan is a self-professed pro-choice mother. In her view (and as articulated in the amendment), the provisions of the amendment would still protect women’s choices.

Rather than refer to specific passages of Donegan’s appeal, I will simply outline that it describes the way that Donegan experienced a highly traumatic event, and that Donegan ‘s experience of the still birth was one akin to having lost a fully realised child. A lot of her language speaks to visceral memories that are undoubtedly painful and extremely difficult to reconcile. That this loss has taken place in the context of an accident would likely exacerbate those memories and experiences. To these I can only sympathise with, even while I have no significant frame of reference to empathise with.

However, as a legal scholar, I am required to step back from these subjective experiences and ask whether these experiences should formulate a dimension of criminality. The important question being asked is not whether there is validity to Donegan’s claim or experiences, but whether these experiences speak to a significant truth or aspect of our society as a generalisation. While this bill would not directly seek to create new crimes, per se, it does expand the way existing criminal legislation interacts with unborn children.

The reason I treat this issue with some measure of skepticism is because to consider an issue before law it is necessary to identify what the relevant questions of fact are, as well as those questions of law. In the account detailed above by Donegan we see references being made to the fact these events occurred on Christmas Day, the interactions between the unborn child and he potential sister. All of these are appeals to emotion, designed to qualify the experience beyond a tragic accident where an unborn child was stillborn. If they are relevant facts, than any law that is made in response to them would need to include ‘happening on Christmas Day’ or ‘the unborn child had siblings’ as conditional aspects before the law became relevant. They are understandably personally relevant to the family in question, but legal reasoning must remain agnostic to them.

My argument against this amendment does not depend on this fact, because it would be disingenuous to do so. Clearly the arguments for this bill do not entirely turn on these issues, but they add an undercurrent personalisation that I think only serve to muddy the discussion. These are incredibly significant issues and cannot be resolved through emotional appeals.

The Autonomy of Being

The substantive basis for these types of claims, and in fact the point to which Donegan points to as the point at which this law should kick into effect, relates to the fact that currently levels of medical technologies can enable a foetus at 23 weeks to become a viable baby outside the womb. Proponents of the law will point to the status of a foetus at 20+ weeks, to indicate that they should be reasonably recognised as a separate body (see this video as an example).

In a first glance, it might make common sense to regard these entities as living persons. They share all of the apparent characteristics of babies, and can be made as a viable separate entity. It is around this particular test that the idea of the ‘born alive rule’ emerges, which is the legal test applied to births to determine whether the birth should be recognised as having personhood. It currently holds that a birthed human being becomes a legal person when they are able to breath independently from the mother, even if that breathing is machine assisted.

It is to this idea that the challenge of Zoe’s Law is levelled, reasoning that since technology can enable a foetus to survive at increasingly earlier stages, we should recognise earlier stages as being potentially viable. This is a false equivocation, because the born alive rule is a test applied after birth, irrespective of the period of gestation. Its premise is to identify viability after the fact, not seek to pre-empty viability in potential. For an extremely excellent academic response to this kind of challenge, I would refer you to Kristen Savell’s article in the Sydney Law Review.

She concludes that:

“the law should resist pressures to enlarge its understanding of personhood on the basis of some straightforward analogy between late-term foetuses and newborn infants. The comparable intrinsic properties of late-foetuses and newborns is not alone sufficient to warrant the ascription of legal personhood to foetuses. The conditions that make late-term foetuses resemble persons certainly include intrinsic properties but, until the foetus achieves separation, they also include the investments and attachments of the mother. Foetuses cannot become actively embedded in a social matrix and, to the extent that the foetus becomes situated in a web of relationships, this is only achieved through its mother. However, after birth the baby can become actively embedded in a social matrix irrespective of its mother. It is in this sense that the experience of individuated embodiment has substantive significance.”

What this means, and what I wholeheartedly agree with is the rebuttal that just because a foetus has the outward appearance of a natal child does not mean it should be entitled with the full suite of human rights. What I find inherently troubling by this particular line of reasoning is that it attributes personhood towards a body, but this says nothing about the really thorny question of whether that foetus has consciousness, or bears many other signifiers of socialisation that are also intrinsic qualities of being human. To ascribe those social qualities onto a foetus before it has become actualised as an independent person is premature (please excuse the pun, but I cannot find a better synonym).

Legal Construction of Personhood

From a much more broader theoretical perspective, I am deeply troubled by some of the implications of recognising personhood for any foetus that has not yet achieved independent existence from its mother. This is largely due to the way that the legal system interacts with medical bodies of knowledge, particularly around matters that have criminality attached, but are often insulated from sociological considerations, which specifically investigate questions of identity and personhood in terms of its meaning to society.

The very notion of legal personhood is a rather difficult one, because the legal system has taken what we consider to be rather essential elements of being and framed them into highly discreet categories. The problem is that our lived experiences and the realities of being a full actualised human are not able to be reduced so easily. Personhood is actually a complex of various socio-legal boundaries, each of which circumscribes a certain kind of social space with legal provisions. Each boundary represents some ideal of personhood or individuality, which is then framed as some kind of real thing. While I describe four spheres of personhood in this model, I will mention only the inner-most two as I consider they are the ones truly relevant when discussing this matter.

The innermost sphere describes those qualities of personhood we might regard as the ego, and here the Anglo-American tradition of law protects our rights to hold beliefs and ideas, and otherwise protect against psychological injury. The second boundary is effectively equated our body, and while the body encompasses the ego, the laws relevant to this boundary protect individuals against unlawful medical intervention, battery, and other violations of our bodily autonomy. There are other dimensions beyond this, which relate to matters like privacy, property, and other areas of our civil and legal personhood, but since most of those are not relevant for this discussion I won’t detail them. Suffice it to say, the notion of personhood is already mutable, and recognising the existence of a legal person that still exists within and is dependent upon another person for their existence causes a direct conflict of rights that is incredibly difficult to reconsile.

Beyond Binaries

Today’s article is actually a policy brief on some recent changes in the Sex Discrimination Act (Cth) in Australia. This brief has been prepared for business and other organisations, with a view to give them some grounding on the legislative changes so that they might be able to affect best practice and avoid causing both direct and indirect discrimination.

You can download the brief here:

Beyond Binaries

You are welcome to share this document, but I would prefer if you would link back to this site as the source.

The politics of neutrality in the Olympics

The Position of the IOC

Displays of Dissent

Defining a Public Act

A Potentially Volatile Olympics

From Russia With L̶o̶v̶e̶

Coming In From the Cold

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

The Grecian Question

The Standard You Walk Past


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A new IRS Chief Counsel memo says that an aircraft leasing partnership that trades in an aircraft that is leased to a related entity is eligible for §1031 tax free exchange treatment, even though the related entity lease rate was so low that it produced tax losses during the term of the lease. This is good news for a combined state sales tax planning structure frequently used for aircraft acquisitions, to be followed by a trade-in of the aircraft when a new plane is desired.

Under this sales tax planning transaction, a company wanting to acquire an aircraft sets up a separate entity to purchase the aircraft (aircraft leasing company or ALC). The aircraft is solely used by the ALC for purposes of leasing the same to its parent company or other related entities on a “dry lease” basis – which is a lease of the aircraft only, without a pilot or crew. Most states (with some exceptions) allow the ALC to purchase the aircraft exempt from sales tax, as a sale for resale, because the aircraft is being purchased for the purpose of leasing it – analogous to a rental car company which does not pay sales tax when it purchases automobiles to lease to its customers. Instead of paying sales tax on the purchase of the aircraft, the ALC charges sales tax on the lease payments paid by its lessee. Then, when the company wants a new aircraft, it can trade in the leased aircraft under Section 1031 and avoid recognizing recapture gain (and if the new aircraft is leased under a dry lease to a related party, no sales tax on the new purchase).

The benefits of the above sales tax structure will be enhanced if the lease rate can be set at a low amount, since this will reduce the sales tax on the rental income. But that can cause a technical problem for a trade-in under §1031 when it is time for a new aircraft. That’s because a typical aircraft trade-in can only be tax-free if it qualifies under §1031, and it can only qualify under §1031 if the aircraft that is being traded in has been “held for productive use in a trade or business or for investment.”  The concern is that if there is no taxable income produced due to the low lease rate, the IRS could argue that the “trade or business” or “investment” standards were not met, and deny the taxpayer the right to defer the taxable gain on the trade-in.

In the specific situation addressed by the new IRS Chief Counsel Advice memo, the lease rate was so low that it produced losses during the lease term. The field agent asked the Chief Counsel’s Office whether the trade-in qualified for §1031 exchange treatment on the grounds that the losses indicated that the aircraft was not held for productive use in a trade or business or for investment. The field agent argued that the ALC had no profit motive, and therefore could not qualify for §1031 exchange treatment with respect to the aircraft, which would mean that the trade-in for a replacement aircraft would trigger taxable income to the ALC.

Remember, the lower the dry lease payment on the aircraft, the less sales tax paid on the lease, so it is common to charge as low a lease payment as will pass muster with the state tax authority – but low lease payments will result in losses to the ALC, and the potential sales tax savings by reducing the lease payment would be dwarfed by the income tax hit on a trade-in if §1031 treatment is not allowed.

Fortunately, CCA 201601011 concluded, based on the facts in that case, that the low lease rate did not disqualify the trade-in from  §1031 tax free exchange of the aircraft.  A win-win for companies purchasing aircraft, as they are able to save sales tax on the purchase, and income tax on the trade-in.

A Few Caveats:

  • First, this Chief Counsel Advice is not binding on the IRS, and it could change its position on this in the future.Furthermore, the specific facts involved in the lease under consideration might be different from your particular situation.
  • Second, the amount of the lease payment cannot be nominal. Such lease payments need to bear some relationship to fair rental value in order for the sales tax planning technique to work – otherwise a state taxing authority might say that the lease is a sham, so that the ALC cannot acquire the aircraft exemption from sales tax on the purchase price. The hourly lease rate should be supported by an aircraft broker’s opinion on the lowest possible reasonable lease rate.
  • Third, a well-crafted dry-lease agreement is necessary. Note, that since the aircraft will be leased on a dry lease basis to its parent or other related companies, the ALC will need to either enter into an aircraft management services agreement with an operator licensed by the FAA to provide the pilot, crew, and proper oversight of maintenance and repair services, or contract directly for the necessary pilot, crew, and maintenance.
  • Fourth, it is imperative to keep in mind that under an ALC structure, the only permitted use of the aircraft by the ALC is to lease it on a dry lease basis to a third party (as such additional activities would indicate that the property is not held for the purposes of leasing). Any other use by the ALC will trigger sales and use tax on the fair market value of the aircraft.
  • Fifth, the foregoing is a summary.It is necessary to check the rules of the specific state where the aircraft will be based to make sure that the state allows a resale exemption for the contemplated ALC structure.
  • Finally, the Chief Counsel Advice memo only deals with the issue of whether the aircraft leasing company can qualify for a §1031 exchange even though there is a loss on the related party dry lease transaction – it does not address any other income tax issues – such as the disallowance of losses that might otherwise be used to offset other sources of income.

The full text of Chief Counsel Advice 201601011 can be found here.


Why it matters

In a new Administrator's Interpretation, the Department of Labor (DOL) has adopted an incredibly broad test for joint employment under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA). The guidance—accompanied by a Question and Answer document and a new fact sheet—"ensures that the scope of employment relationships and joint employment under the FLSA and the MSPA is as broad as possible," the agency emphasized. In the current workplace, "there is increasingly the possibility that more than one employer is benefiting" from an employee's work, the DOL explained, highlighting industries such as construction, staffing, hospitality, healthcare, agriculture, and janitorial. The new standard uses the FLSA's expansive definition of "employ" as "to suffer or permit to work" and rejects the common-law right of control standard. Joint employment relationships can be either horizontal—when two or more employers each separately employ a worker and are sufficiently associated with or related to each other with respect to the employee—or vertical, where the employee of the intermediary employer is also employed by another employer. Employers would be well-served to familiarize themselves with the guidance to avoid an enforcement action from the DOL, which noted that it "will continue to consider the possibility of joint employment to ensure that all responsible employers are aware of their obligations and to ensure compliance with the FLSA and MSPA," to further the remedial purpose of the statutes.

Detailed discussion

Recently, the Department of Labor's (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) has encountered an increase of joint employment scenarios, prompting the agency to issue Administrator's Interpretation No. 2016-1 (AI). Situations where more than one business is involved in the work being performed and where workers have two or more employers are increasingly common, the agency noted, with the sharing of employees, third-party management companies, independent contractors, staffing agencies, or labor providers.

With joint employment more common, the DOL felt the need to provide additional guidance on employees' rights and employers' obligations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (MSPA). "When two or more employers jointly employ an employee, the employee's hours worked for all of the joint employers during the workweek are aggregated and considered as one employment, including for purposes of calculating whether overtime pay is due," according to the guidance. "Additionally, when joint employment exists, all of the joint employers are jointly and severally liable for compliance with the FLSA and MSPA."

Further, where one joint employer is larger and more established, with a greater ability to implement policy or systemic changes to ensure compliance, "WHD may consider joint employment to achieve statutory coverage, financial recovery, and future compliance, and to hold all responsible parties accountable for their legal obligations."

The DOL emphasized that the concept of joint employment—like employment generally under the FLSA's "to suffer or permit to work" standard—should be interpreted as broadly as possible. However, not every subcontractor or labor provider relationship will result in joint employment. To give employers a better grasp on what the DOL considers to be a joint employment relationship, the AI set forth two concepts: horizontal joint employment and vertical joint employment.

"Horizontal joint employment exists where the employee has employment relationships with two or more employers and the employers are sufficiently associated or related with respect to the employee such that they jointly employ the employee," the DOL said, with the analysis focused on the relationship between the employers.

Examples of horizontal joint employment may include separate restaurants that share economic ties and have the same managers controlling both restaurants, or home healthcare providers that share staff and have common management. Relevant factors when analyzing the degree of association between, and sharing of control by, potential joint employers include whether the employers have any overlapping officers, directors, executives, or managers; if the operations are intermingled; whether the employers share control over operations (such as hiring, firing, or advertising); and who owns the employers.

"In sum, the focus of the horizontal joint employment analysis is the degree of association between the two potential joint employers even if they are formally separate legal entities and the degree to which they share control of the employee," the DOL said.

So where an employee works at two locations of the same restaurant brand, where the managers share the employee and jointly coordinate her scheduling, use the same payroll processor, and share supervisory authority (and where the same individual is the majority owner of both locations, even though they are operated by separate legal entities), the facts are indicative of joint employment.

Alternatively, vertical joint employment examines the economic realities of the working relationship between the employee and the potential joint employer and exists "where the employee has an employment relationship with one employer (typically a staffing agency, subcontractor, labor provider, or other intermediary employer) and the economic realities show that he or she is economically dependent on, and thus employed by, another entity involved in the work."

A common vertical joint employment relationship can be found where a construction worker who works for a subcontractor is also employed by the general contractor, or a farmworker who works for a farm labor contractor is also employed by the grower. Typically, a contract or other arrangement will be present between the intermediary employer and the potential joint employer, the DOL added.

Seven economic reality factors (found in the MSPA regulations) can help guide the determination of whether a vertical joint employment relationship exists, with consideration of the directing, controlling, or supervising of the work performed; which party controls the employment conditions; the permanency and duration of relationship; the repetitive and rote nature of work; whether the work is integral to business; if the work is performed on the premises; and the performance of administrative functions commonly performed by employers.

The DOL provided examples of vertical joint employment, including a worker hired by a farm labor contractor to pick produce on a farm. Although the contractor hired and pays the worker, the grower dictates the timing of the harvest, which fields are to be harvested, and the schedule for each day. Any training for the work (which is generally unskilled) is provided by the grower, who keeps track of the amount of produce picked and provides the buckets and transportation. The grower pays the contractor but withholds money to cover workers' compensation. These facts are indicative of joint employment of the worker, the agency said.

"As a result of continual changes in the structure of workplaces, the possibility that a worker is jointly employed by two or more employers has become more common in recent years," the AI concluded. "In an effort to ensure that workers receive the protections to which they are entitled and that employers understand their legal obligations, the possibility of joint employment should be regularly considered in FLSA and MSPA cases, particularly where (1) the employee works for two employers who are associated or related in some way with respect to the employee; and (2) the employee's employer is an intermediary or otherwise provides labor to another employer."

To read the DOL's Administrator's Interpretation 2016-1, click here.


Effective Consultation in School Psychology

Effective Consultation in School Psychology Authors:
Price:5681 rub.

Book Summary:
Book DescriptionSince the first edition of this book appeared over a decade ago, school psychology research, knowledge and skills have expanded and yet the field continues to face challenges. The book?s model continues to be taught and to impact on professional development in school systems in many countries. The aim of this substantially revised and expanded edition is to strengthen service delivery models by incorporating primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention, for the benefit of students, parents, educators, and present and future school psychologists. Major questions addressed include: ? What can school psychologists do to enhance students? learning and psychosocial adaptation? ? Why is it advisable to adopt a consultative model of service in education? ? How can school psychologists assist educators in planning effective school-based programs and services? ? How can school psychologists support the adaptation of multicultural...

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Separate Acrobat Performer Artist

Acrobat, Performer and Artist all in one way or another deal with different kind of pleasures. To have each feel unique separate them as follows
Acrobat - acrobatic arts, physical performaces, exclusively with bodily arts
Artist - Art, sculptures etc. Things that don't need to be performed to be enjoyed
Performer - Pleasures that have to be enjoyed when they are performed such as singing and dancing.


But one undeniable perk of having an animal to love and cherish is the impact it can have on your mental health.

Obviously, if you’re dealing with a mental illness, your pet is only a small part of the equation and not a replacement for professional treatment. BUT that’s not to say that a pet can’t help a shit ton.


Axl Rose Confirms 'Chinese Democracy' Sequel

Guns N' Roses singer also says a remix album is on the way

Guns N' Roses Credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Let the countdown commence: Axl Rose has confirmed the existence of two finished Guns N' Roses albums to follow up their 2008 LP Chinese Democracy that could come out in the near future.

"We recorded a lot of things before Chinese was out," Rose said in an interview with Revolver. "We've worked more on some of those things and we've written a few new things. But basically, we have what I call the second half of Chinese. That's already recorded. And then we have a remix album made of the songs from Chinese. That's been done for a while, too."

Aerosmith's Joe Perry Explains Why Guns N' Roses Are One of Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Artists

Rose said that he did not have a timeline for when the albums would come out, but he did intend to address it after Guns N' Roses conclude its residency at Las Vegas' Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. (The group's final show is scheduled for June 7th.) "We're going to start looking very seriously at what we're doing," Rose said in regard to a release plan. Before that happens, however, Guns N' Roses will release a 3-D concert film of their Vegas residency to theaters on June 18th and 19th.

Previously, Guns N' Roses guitarist Richard Fortus had reported that the group was "working on stuff." When pressed for a release schedule, he said, "Hopefully very soon we're going to have new stuff out," adding, "well, in the next year."

Elsewhere in his interview with Revolver, which coincided with Rose's acceptance of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the magazine's Golden Gods Awards in April, the singer named the one artist he thinks should also receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. "Mick Jagger is one of the greatest athletes who ever lived, just for how much he puts into it onstage," he said. "I saw the Stones in Vegas on their last tour and it's evident how hard they work at it." When Revolver asked if Rose could see himself performing at age 70, the singer said, "I'm starting to get there! Bastard makes you work for it, doesn't he?"


What is a Custom Ceremony?

A custom ceremony includes the traditional order of service, but you get to choose what you want for each element.  There are choices for the Welcome, Opening, Readings, Hand/Sand and/or Wine Ceremonies, Vows, Rings, Blessings, + your own ideas.

What kinds of Ceremonies do you do?

First, I only do secular or Humanistic ceremonies. I do not pray, but I don’t object if a reader wants to offer a prayer or if I’m co-officiating. I also ask that the other officiant uses what is called ‘universal god talk’, which means using language like God, the Lord, Our Father, etc.  Since the goal of a wedding ceremony is to bring people together, this ensures that all feel included.  In most cases, since I have the most experience co-officiating, I write the order of service so both sides are represented equally.  Everyone is Happy!

I have performed virtually every style ceremony you can imagine, from the dog carrying the rings to the bride arriving on horseback.  I also will do nudist ceremonies – dressed!

I specialize in inter-cultural/inter-faith ceremonies and will co-officiate.

Inter-cultural ceremonies are especially fun because we weave the traditions of 2 cultures together, honoring both.

Marriage equality means to me that any person can marry another within legal guidelines.

Are there Ceremonies you won’t perform?

I refuse:

If there is suspicion of abuse or coercion

Prison weddings

To avoid deportation

To avoid testifying

Do you offer a military discount?

I am happy to offer a 10% discount to active military or disabled vets.

Do you offer counseling?

I am a licensed social worker, in addition to being a licensed and certified Humanistic Minister.

If a problem or concern cannot be addressed during our meetings, I offer pre-marital or inter-faith counseling at $45.00/hr.  I try to keep counseling affordable whether you need one hour or many.

What is the difference between tradition and ritual? Inter-cultural and Inter-faith?

Traditions within a ceremony, such as a unity candle or breaking the glass, have become associated with certain religions, but have no religious significance. Rituals are important religious elements. Using traditions creates warm feelings of recognition among couples and guests, while honoring the culture that helped create the very couple joining their lives and families together.

Inter-cultural represents two people who come from different backgrounds or religion, but are no longer practicing the rituals demanded of each religion. This allows us to use traditions from each culture or faith and allows the couple to celebrate every holiday (or anyone else’s holiday!) within a secular or Humanistic setting.  Inter-faith is when one or both people are practicing their faiths and wish to intertwine them for the ceremony or have two officiants, each one representing their beliefs.  Or, the couple may wish to simply have a secular ceremony, thereby avoiding any faith representation.

Browse the links below for some common frequently asked questions


RNLI rescue two teens cut off by rising tide on Hilbre Island

RNLI West Kirby Lifeboat was launched after 2 people were cut off by the tide on Hilbre Island.

They recovered the casualties, cold and wet, but otherwise unharmed, to shore, where they were met by the team who gave suitable advice.

HM Coastguard requested the launch of Seahorse the West Kirby RNLI inshore Lifeboat today shortly after 5pm.

The teenagers, an 18 year old male and a fifteen year old female contacted the HM Coastguard to request assistance after being cut off by the incoming tide whilst visiting Hilbre Island.

The charities’ RNLI volunteers launched the lifeboat twenty minutes before high water and reached the two casualties within ten minutes from leaving the Lifeboat Station.

On arrival at the scene an RNLI crew member collected the two from the Island and transferred them onto the waiting Lifeboat that delivered them to HM Coastguards who were waiting at Sandy Lane slipway.

Although cold and wet the two casualties did not require any medical attention and were grateful to the volunteers for their assistance.

Lifeboat Operations Manager Dave Henshaw stated that it is most important when visiting the Island to check the tidal information beforehand and to take warm clothing and refreshment particularly this early in the year.


How Do Birds Get their Color? We'd Bet Anything You Didn't Know

How birds get their color
Birds are the most fascinating creations of nature. Their sheer beauty of colors makes these flying species an attractive sight! So, how do birds get their color? Buzzle unleashes the mystery behind birds and their beautiful display of colors. Read on ...
In birds, males tend to be more glamorous with respect to feather shape and colors. Female birds choose their mate based on the attractiveness of the male!
Among all living species, it is birds that have left one and all mesmerized. Be it their flying skills, accurate navigation strategies, or the beauty of their light bodies painted in spectacular colors, birds simply keep the curiosity and research alive for many bird lovers and researchers.

Some birds are not so colorful, but some definitely look like an artist's creation with beautiful combinations and contrasts. What gives different birds their distinctive color? Curious as we all are, science and nature together can help us know the secret of their color generation. The following piece of article is an interesting compilation of facts about how birds got their color. Let us take a look.
How Birds Get their Color
It can be said that the concept of colors in different birds is a relatively complex calculation. There are two important factors that are responsible for giving birds their distinctive shades. They are keratin and pigments. These two factors are processed in multiple ways in different birds, which give them the final coat of color.
Pigments can be termed as color makers, found in both plants and animals. They absorb certain shades of colors and reflect the others. It is the reflected colors that the human eye captures.
We can categorize pigments in four:
Melanin is formed as tiny granules in a bird's feather or the skin. It produces colors, like dark brown, reddish brown, rust, pale yellow, or black. The shade of color depends on the location and concentration of melanin in a bird. Not only does melanin color the bird, but it also serves the bird with strength in the feathers. Most feathers in white color are weak. Black color on the feather or at its tip protects the feather from general wear and tear and strengthens it.
Carotenoids are present in plants. Researchers have observed that birds which eat plants and fruits that contain carotenoids have red, orange, or yellow shades. Birds with a combination of melanin and carotenoids are more likely to produce shades of green, like olive green. So, a diet of the bird which includes carotenoids, plays an important part in deciding the color.
Flamingos, which are pink in color, get the pink shade from their diet which includes shrimp and blue-green algae. Carotenoids are broken down in the liver, after which the molecular form of these is sent to the skin, legs, beaks, and feathers of flamingos, which gives them a beautiful pink shade.
Porphyrins can be termed as essentially modified amino acids. They are very rare and found in a few species of birds. They produce shades of red, green, pink, and brown. These compounds give African turacos their green and red shades.
Turaco Bird
These are found only in birds, like parrots which give them the orange, yellow, and red colors.
Many shades of colors in birds are a result of mixtures of pigments. So, the unusual colors in many bird species is a work of two or more pigments.
Keratin is also another important factor contributing to the beautiful shades of colors in birds. It is a kind of protein, which is tough and strengthens the feathers of birds. This protein also covers the birds' bills, legs, and feet. A complex procedure takes place when producing colors with keratin in birds. This protein is what makes possible the changing of colors on a bird's body, with the change in angle.
Keratin works in two ways to give birds their color. They are called layering and scattering.
In the first process which is of layering, short wavelengths of colors, like purple, green, and blue are reflected by a translucent layer of keratin. Other colors are absorbed by an underlying layer of melanin, which is black. So, the way a bird's feathers are layered, determines the shades of colors on the bird.
The second process in which keratin produces color is called scattering. The specified nanostructure of a bird's feather gives it a color. For example, there is no pigment for blue color in birds. Yet, some birds, like Indigo buntings and Eastern bluebirds have spectacular shades of blue.
Indigo Bunting
This is made possible by the submicroscopic structure of the feathers of a bird. A central layer of cells in the feathers is surrounded by a 'cloudy' layer. This leads to light waves getting scattered in a way. The light waves, upon scattering, interact in a way which can be termed as 'constructive interference.' So, when this light reaches the eyes, we can see a shade of blue color.
Another example of scattering is of the hummingbird, which has a changing throat patch. The nanostructure of the feathers refracts light. The barbs of these birds are not woven in a tight manner. Hence, they split light, which gives us the different shades of color.
It is evident that the colors that different birds have are, in reality, a complex calculation of nature, not only to beautify them, but to give them strength, protect them from light, and in some cases, also choose their mates! This is evident from a research which found that North Cardinals choose their mates based on the darkness of color. Females usually choose males with darker shades, as these shades are produced by carotenoids. So, the better the color, the better is the male at finding food sources rich in carotenoid. This also means that the male has the best of genes and skills.
So, this was yet another revelation of the mystery of birds. The next time you see a bird with color, you know what lies beneath the beautiful shades of feather!


Code Name Verity

Code Name Verity  - Elizabeth Wein

I wasn't as blown away or wowed by this book as some people were. Yes this was a really good book but when I finished it I didn't feel overwhelming emotion and connection that I usually feel from a great book. This was advertised as a "mind game of a novel" and I just kept waiting for something that would blow my mind and while there were some great twists I wouldn't really call it a mind game of a novel.

Geez that first paragraph makes me seem like I hated it, but I didn't, I just feel like it couldn't live up to all the hype I had seen. This was a really good book that was beautifully written with characters that you can't help but fall in love with and hope that they somehow make it through this situation that they are in.

I loved that one of the two main girls of this book was code named Verity. You don't really understand how that really connects into everything until part two of the book. The first part of the book was all about Verity and telling her truth to her interrogators. She tells them her truth but is it really the truth that they want?

I loved Verity's (I will call her by her code name even though she goes by many names in this book) friendship with Maddie (she also goes by a few names throughout this book but I will be using her real name). These girls develop an extremely strong friendship while doing their efforts for the war and once they become separated you see just how far they will go to protect each other. I enjoyed getting to read both of their sides to this story.

The events towards the end were heartbreaking. Honestly I had been hoping for this big ending that would magically become a happy ending but that is not what happened. It was actually a bittersweet ending and I thought I would have been sobbing but I wasn't. I am surprised that this was a young adult book because there are some pretty horrific events in this. I would recommend this book to people who like WWII historical fiction.


The importance of collaboration on a project

Tuesday, February 28, 2017
U.S, Feb. 3 -- Collaboration and communication is of paramount importance when it comes to working on a project. Whether you are an engineering firm collaborating with another to complete a larger overall project, or a niche manufacturer working alongside your client, it is important for both to consider the other's input, and potential for advancing the development of the project, while remaining understanding of each other's individual opinions. It can be a hugely rewarding experience, and invaluable for the growth of a project, however there are of course aspects that need considering to ensure that you are getting the most from your collaborative experience. It's Important to Work with Your Customer In any collaborative project, it is vital to make sure that you work alongside your customer. The adage, the customer is always right, may hold weight when it comes to their perception of your service, but sometimes a client's dreams can be bigger than "the possible". While working closely with the customer is of paramount importance to guarantee that the project is bespoke to their requests, it is also your responsibility to manage their expectations. If there are limitations to the design and the implementation, it's essential to remember that you're the expert; how you explain this is the key to maintaining the positive relationship with your client. Being versatile to their needs is of course essential, but being true to the project, your reputation and your specialist knowledge is the way to ensure your project is a success. Essential for Personal and Business Growth When it comes to collaborating with other industry professionals, one of the greatest aspects is the potential for learning new skills, techniques, and the sharing of ideas. Not only that, there may be one element of the project that sits just outside your skillset; through working alongside another company, you are able to benefit from their experience and utilise the specialist skills. One such example came when Durham Cathedral necessitated the installation of an elevator. The original firm who were involved with the overall structural maintenance of the cathedral, contacted a specialist elevator installer, Axess2, in order to utilise their expertise. In doing so they displayed some key elements of collaboration; understanding their own limitations whilst realising the potential of others. They were able to utilise the skills of both experts, collaborating on the installation, while simultaneously ensuring the protection of the stunning Grade I listed building. Through contacting the specialist elevator installers, they were able to guarantee the preservation of the cathedral, while sharing each of their avenues of expertise to ensure a streamlined process, utilising each team's skills to the utmost ability. The Final Results Exceed Expectations The project mentioned previously came with incredibly tight restrictions, such as the lift that had to be installed needed to be specifically tailored to the original architecture. The lift also needed to interact with the building in the correct ways; one of the solutions was that the lift that was install was made entirely out of glass, so the people that will be using the lift will be able to see the beautiful architecture of the cathedral from all angles. This knowledge is something that wouldn't necessarily be shared if they original architects were to undertake the assignment on their own. As such, collaboration is incredibly important to any party that is involved, and it won't be changing anytime soon. In fact, some clients prefer to have their projects completed by collaborating parties since, as they say, two minds are always better than one. So, while it's important to consider your potential for benefitting from such expertise, it's also paramount to understand if they present an opposing view. Trusting that you've selected the perfect team for the job helps to provide confidence in any views expressed, and such respect leads to a nurturing of trust and opens the door for future collaborations.
Next Article Moto Z2 may be unveiled on June 27Thursday, June 15, 2017


Hammond Fever (Deacon Stereo) (1971)

The run up to Christmas with a five-year-old and a wife is never easy!  That's what I'm blaming my lack of posts on.  So, to make amends I'll be posting some stuff that I've posted....elsewhere...he says in a mysterious way.

In memory of my Mom who would have been 75 today.

This is a corker.


Revolts Against the Ruling Class and Bureaucratic Tyranny

This morning I found an article entitled Opinion: A revolt is taking place against the “ruling class” in The Christian Science Monitor.  Yesterday I read Rule of Law in the Regulatory State on John Cochrane’s blog, The Grumpy Economist.

At first glance, they seem to have little in common, yet the theme is striking: we are living in a world of diktat rather than consent.  America’s system of government was designed to protect against tyranny of the majority or diktat by bureaucracy, and yet the most recent administratively delivered federal rule, the new EPA guidelines for power plants (link to the Wall Street Journal for reference), is nothing but diktat.  While I hail from the slight right of the American political spectrum, and believe that government fills important roles where markets fail or social needs (not wants) go unmet, I also believe deeply that the larger government becomes the more it is captured by special interests, big business, the wealthy, and lifetime politicians.  If America is to continue as a bastion of classical liberalism, we need to reign in the executive branch and return to moderate, reform oriented government; government for the sake of government is what people are revolting against.


Guidelines for Certifying

Before you are allowed to enter an AKC Tracking Dog Test, you must be ‘certified’ by an AKC Tracking Dog Judge. Here are some helpful strategies to make the process successful.

The Judge

The Tracking Judge you contact probably has a regular job just like you do. He/She likely works a job and then needs to take care of family matters, just like you do. He/She probably also has a dog (or dogs) to train, a house to maintain, and other activities just like you do. He/She is not ‘required’ to certify your dog. SO! When you decide the time has come to contact the judge, please call or email at a reasonable time of day, and leave a clear message. The judge will contact you when he/she has time. You will need to arrange YOUR schedule to accommodate the judge, not vice versa.

Do not call the day before entries close and expect an enthusiastic response; plan your certification at least 2 weeks before entries close. If you do not receive a response within a few days, call another judge. The first may be out of town, busy, or tired!

You will receive 4 certification slips. You must include one with each TD test that you enter. These certification slips are good for one year.

It is generally considered a courtesy to gift the judge; in 1980 the gift was $10… with inflation you can figure out what is appropriate.

The Dog

Proof your dog before your certification by preparing him to succeed. Practice your tracks before certification; if you know your dog has trouble on some aspect of the track, work that out before calling the judge.

You, the Handler

Mentally and physically prepare yourself for certification; wear the same kind of clothes, use the same equipment that you have been using while you have been training. Now is not the time to try out that new harness or line. Keep the routine the same for your dog.


Nestled between historic highway 70 and the Harpeth River in Kingston Springs, TN, Harpeth Moon Farm strives for environmental and community sustainability. From the early Native Americans who settled here centuries ago, to us today, this land has a rich history of putting food on people’s tables. Father and daughter Bruce and Hayley Roberts believe in promoting a balanced ecosystem and giving back to the land that continues to give so much in return.

 As we establish our new flower and produce farm, the Roberts family believes that being rooted in community means putting down literal roots. And in a community where music runs deep, we strive for true harmony with the land. This means tuning in to the waxing and waning of the moon, the whisper of the Harpeth River, and the laughter of our neighbors. We are stewards.

In an effort to bring truly sustainable produce to the tables of greater Nashville, we hope to give back to the earth by promoting pollinator habitat, rebuilding the soil, rotating crops, and planting non-gmo products. We provide stunning flowers, delicious produce, and a wonderful event space.


There are myriad reasons why pharmaceutical treatments are ineffective in certain people, but the first suspect is typically not the patient him- or herself.

An article published in the November 1 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine suggests that difficult-to-treat asthma often may have more to do with patients who do not take their medication as instructed than ineffective medication.

"[A] significant proportion of patients with difficult asthma are poorly adherent to inhaled and oral corticosteroid therapy," said PI Dr. Liam Heaney.

Why is this important? I mean, beyond the fact that patients aren't taking medication as prescribed and could be putting themselves at risk for future health problems, as well as driving up health care costs from ancillary consequences of not adhering to prescribed regimens. Heaney says defining "the scale and identifying non-adherence in this population is important given currently available and other imminent expensive biological therapies."

That makes sense - if patients aren't adhering to a regimen that is well-understood and relatively affordable, why would you take a chance prescribing a new and expensive medication?

The researchers studied 182 patients who were referred to a tertiary referral clinic that specializes in treating difficult asthma. Initially, patients denied poor medication adherence. So, to find out whether they really were compliant with inhaled corticosteroid therapy (ICT), the researchers compared patient prescriptions to the patient's actual refill usage and used blood plasma prednisolone and cortisol levels to evaluate oral medication adherence.

Of the 182 consecutive patients, 35 percent filled fewer than half of their prescribed ICT, 21 percent filled more than they were prescribed and 45 percent filled between half and all ofthe medication they were prescribed. In patients who were on a maintenance course of oral prednisolone, blood levels of cortisol and prednisolone showed that nearly half (45 percent) were not taking the medication as prescribed. In follow-up conversations with the researchers, most admitted that they were inconsistent in the use of their medications.

Oops, that's embarrassing for the patient - caught red-handed. Now, a few patients still insisted they were taking their meds as prescribed, and that's possible - perhaps these were the few for whom the medication really didn't work. Interestingly, women were more likely to be  non-compliant than men, but there wasn't a trend by age.

"Non-adherence is a common problem, which is often hard to detect," Heaney said. "In general, asking the patient or relying on clinical impression is useless, and objective or good surrogate measures should be utilized." That's my favorite quote of the story - asking the patient is useless. Why should we rely on patient reported data, since they're just going to lie? Awesome.

My first question was, why are they non-adherent? The only article that addressed this even tangentially was OnMedica, which hypothesized that "patients may be reluctant to take steroid therapy, especially systemic steroids, 'with their greater and more readily attributable side-effects.'"

think this is one of the biggies - and something physicians really need to think about when making prescription decisions. Are the patients willing to take a steroid? If not, it's probably not a good idea to prescribe it. Some other thoughts on why patients aren't compliant:

- insurance: whether they're covered, whether their insurance covers the medication, whether they can afford it even with coverage

- cost: can they afford the medication?

- willingness to take the medication: is it a drug they are uncomfortable taking, like a steroid? Are they tired of inhalers? What if a medication is injectable - that's a pain, both literally and figuratively. Do they just not want to take any medication at all?

- symptoms: do they have any? If not, they may not feel they need to take medication (which is why so many people erroneously stop taking antibiotics before the course is up).

- side effects: does the medication cause side effects? Are they of a nature that patients would rather deal with the disease than the side effects from the medication taken to treat the disease?

- ability to remember to take meds: do they have a system for keeping track of when they need to take meds? Or are they in a situation where they easily forget to take drugs?

So yes, the patient has some responsibility here. If you don't take your drugs, there are consequences. But physicians need to consider these points if they want the prescribed regimen to be as successful as possible.

Eureka press release here.

Science Codex article here.


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Month: August 2016

Example blog post – approaches

One area of interest to psychologists is body language. Why and how do people communicate using their body rather than words? Examples of this include facial expressions, posture, and gestures such as clapping or sticking fingers up at people. [here I have briefly explained a topic – body language].

There are at least three approaches to psychology that can help to explain body language. The evolutionary approach explains that human behavior evolved over many thousands of years, and characteristics that we see today helped our ancestors to survive. The behaviourist approach is very different – it explains behavior in terms of conditioning and social learning, stating that anything can be learned. It doesn’t take genes into account. Finally the cognitive approach explains behavior in terms of beliefs and thinking. It treats people as all being similar, and states that we need to study thought processes in order to understand behavior. [here I have briefly explained/contrasted 3 approaches]

I think that the behaviourist approach might help to explain gestures. We learn/imitate gestures from others (social learning) and get rewarded or punished (e.g. by being told off) when we use them. On the other hand, facial expressions like smiling are the same in all cultures, and babies smile from a very early age. Therefore facial expression is probably best explained by the evolutionary approach – smiles may have helped our ancestors to survive, for example, helping them to build alliances in their tribe by showing when they were friendly  and when they were not. Finally, the cognitive approach explains body language in terms of thoughts and beliefs; one example would be choosing a certain posture because you think it makes you look attractive. This is probably true for some body language but not for all.[here I have tried to explain the behavior using the three approaches]


Support Vector Machines (Kernels)

The SVM algorithm is implemented in practice using a kernel.

The learning of the hyperplane in linear SVM is done by transforming the problem using some linear algebra, which is out of the scope of this introduction to SVM.

A powerful insight is that the linear SVM can be rephrased using the inner product of any two given observations, rather than the observations themselves. The inner product between two vectors is the sum of the multiplication of each pair of input values.

For example, the inner product of the vectors [2, 3] and [5, 6] is 2*5 + 3*6 or 28.

The equation for making a prediction for a new input using the dot product between the input (x) and each support vector (xi) is calculated as follows:

f(x) = B0 + sum(ai * (x,xi))

This is an equation that involves calculating the inner products of a new input vector (x) with all support vectors in training data. The coefficients B0 and ai (for each input) must be estimated from the training data by the learning algorithm.

Linear Kernel SVM

The dot-product is called the kernel and can be re-written as:

K(x, xi) = sum(x * xi)

The kernel defines the similarity or a distance measure between new data and the support vectors. The dot product is the similarity measure used for linear SVM or a linear kernel because the distance is a linear combination of the inputs.

Other kernels can be used that transform the input space into higher dimensions such as a Polynomial Kernel and a Radial Kernel. This is called the Kernel Trick.

It is desirable to use more complex kernels as it allows lines to separate the classes that are curved or even more complex. This in turn can lead to more accurate classifiers.

Polynomial Kernel SVM

Instead of the dot-product, we can use a polynomial kernel, for example:

K(x,xi) = 1 + sum(x * xi)^d

Where the degree of the polynomial must be specified by hand to the learning algorithm. When d=1 this is the same as the linear kernel. The polynomial kernel allows for curved lines in the input space.

Radial Kernel SVM

Finally, we can also have a more complex radial kernel. For example:

K(x,xi) = exp(-gamma * sum((x – xi^2))

Where gamma is a parameter that must be specified to the learning algorithm. A good default value for gamma is 0.1, where gamma is often 0 < gamma < 1. The radial kernel is very local and can create complex regions within the feature space, like closed polygons in two-dimensional space.

Soft Margin Classifier

In practice, real data is messy and cannot be separated perfectly with a hyperplane.

The constraint of maximizing the margin of the line that separates the classes must be relaxed. This is often called the soft margin classifier. This change allows some points in the training data to violate the separating line.

An additional set of coefficients are introduced that give the margin wiggle room in each dimension. These coefficients are sometimes called slack variables. This increases the complexity of the model as there are more parameters for the model to fit to the data to provide this complexity.

A tuning parameter is introduced called simply C that defines the magnitude of the wiggle allowed across all dimensions. The C parameters defines the amount of violation of the margin allowed. A C=0 is no violation and we are back to the inflexible Maximal-Margin Classifier described above. The larger the value of C the more violations of the hyperplane are permitted.

During the learning of the hyperplane from data, all training instances that lie within the distance of the margin will affect the placement of the hyperplane and are referred to as support vectors. And as C affects the number of instances that are allowed to fall within the margin, C influences the number of support vectors used by the model.

  • The smaller the value of C, the more sensitive the algorithm is to the training data (higher variance and lower bias).
  • The larger the value of C, the less sensitive the algorithm is to the training data (lower variance and higher bias).

Maximal-Margin Classifier

The Maximal-Margin Classifier is a hypothetical classifier that best explains how SVM works in practice.

The numeric input variables (x) in your data (the columns) form an n-dimensional space. For example, if you had two input variables, this would form a two-dimensional space.

A hyperplane is a line that splits the input variable space. In SVM, a hyperplane is selected to best separate the points in the input variable space by their class, either class 0 or class 1. In two-dimensions you can visualize this as a line and let’s assume that all of our input points can be completely separated by this line. For example:

B0 + (B1 * X1) + (B2 * X2) = 0

Where the coefficients (B1 and B2) that determine the slope of the line and the intercept (B0) are found by the learning algorithm, and X1 and X2 are the two input variables.

You can make classifications using this line. By plugging in input values into the line equation, you can calculate whether a new point is above or below the line.

  • Above the line, the equation returns a value greater than 0 and the point belongs to the first class (class 0).
  • Below the line, the equation returns a value less than 0 and the point belongs to the second class (class 1).
  • A value close to the line returns a value close to zero and the point may be difficult to classify.
  • If the magnitude of the value is large, the model may have more confidence in the prediction.

The distance between the line and the closest data points is referred to as the margin. The best or optimal line that can separate the two classes is the line that as the largest margin. This is called the Maximal-Margin hyperplane.

The margin is calculated as the perpendicular distance from the line to only the closest points. Only these points are relevant in defining the line and in the construction of the classifier. These points are called the support vectors. They support or define the hyperplane.

The hyperplane is learned from training data using an optimization procedure that maximizes the margin.

How is the optimal hyperplane computed?

Let’s introduce the notation used to define formally a hyperplane:

f(x) = \beta_{0} + \beta^{T} x,

where \beta is known as the weight vector and \beta_{0} as the bias.

The optimal hyperplane can be represented in an infinite number of different ways by scaling of \beta and \beta_{0}. As a matter of convention, among all the possible representations of the hyperplane, the one chosen is

|\beta_{0} + \beta^{T} x| = 1

where x symbolizes the training examples closest to the hyperplane. In general, the training examples that are closest to the hyperplane are called support vectors. This representation is known as the canonical hyperplane.

Now, we use the result of geometry that gives the distance between a point x and a hyperplane (\beta, \beta_{0}):

\mathrm{distance} = \frac{|\beta_{0} + \beta^{T} x|}{||\beta||}.

In particular, for the canonical hyperplane, the numerator is equal to one and the distance to the support vectors is

\mathrm{distance}_{\text{ support vectors}} = \frac{|\beta_{0} + \beta^{T} x|}{||\beta||} = \frac{1}{||\beta||}.

Recall that the margin introduced in the previous section, here denoted as M, is twice the distance to the closest examples:

M = \frac{2}{||\beta||}

Finally, the problem of maximizing M is equivalent to the problem of minimizing a function L(\beta) subject to some constraints. The constraints model the requirement for the hyperplane to classify correctly all the training examples x_{i}. Formally,

\min_{\beta, \beta_{0}} L(\beta) = \frac{1}{2}||\beta||^{2} \text{ subject to } y_{i}(\beta^{T} x_{i} + \beta_{0}) \geq 1 \text{ } \forall i,

where y_{i} represents each of the labels of the training examples.

This is a problem of Lagrangian optimization that can be solved using Lagrange multipliers to obtain the weight vector \beta and the bias \beta_{0} of the optimal hyperplane.

What is a SVM?

A Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a discriminative classifier formally defined by a separating hyperplane. In other words, given labeled training data (supervised learning), the algorithm outputs an optimal hyperplane which categorizes new examples.

In which sense is the hyperplane obtained optimal? Let’s consider the following simple problem:

For a linearly separable set of 2D-points which belong to one of two classes, find a separating straight line.

A seperation example

In the above picture you can see that there exists multiple lines that offer a solution to the problem. Is any of them better than the others? We can intuitively define a criterion to estimate the worth of the lines:

A line is bad if it passes too close to the points because it will be noise sensitive and it will not generalize correctly. Therefore, our goal should be to find the line passing as far as possible from all points.

Then, the operation of the SVM algorithm is based on finding the hyperplane that gives the largest minimum distance to the training examples. Twice, this distance receives the important name of margin within SVM’s theory. Therefore, the optimal separating hyperplane maximizes the margin of the training data.

The Optimal hyperplane