These guys live in the Congo Gorilla Forest Exhibit at the Bronx Zoo, Wildlife Conservation Society.
Anthem of the Seas is a Royal Caribbean cruise ship that was launched in February of this year. It’s initial voyages were to ports in Europe out of its home dock in Southhampton. It later crossed the Atlantic and docked in Bayonne, N.J. In November it set sail on its first cruise from Bayonne to the Caribbean, which is how it will be deployed in the coming year.
Tess was a one-and one-half year old Golden Retriever living outside at the home of a single mother who eventually decided she couldn’t take care of her. She was turned over to the Southern California Golden Retriever Rescue (SCGRR) where she was placed in a foster home until being adopted in 2014. She immediately charmed her new family with her energy and friendly, playful personality and quickly engaged her adopted sister, 11-year-old Zelda.
Tess and Bill
In August, just a few days shy of her third birthday and only 10 months after finding her new home, Tess was killed instantly while playing when she ran into the side of a moving car. Tess’ owners, Bill McIntyre and Patricia Low, were devastated.
Zelda and Cinda
Fast forward a couple weeks and Bill and Pat find themselves on a two-day drive in a rental car from Texas to their Southeastern California home. In the back seat was Cinda. A pure bred English Cream Golden Retriever, Cinda was sold to a breeder at a young age. But when the breeder found out that Cinda had an inverted eyelash condition she was targeted as damaged goods and sent back to the original seller with her $4,000 price tag refunded.
Cinda was literally put out to pasture. With no future in breeding she was never provided with the operation to fix her eyes that would save her from going blind. She was living in a backyard pen. Until Bill and Pat came to rescue her. She has now had her eyelash condition successfully corrected, has been spayed, and has taken her place alongside Zelda in her new home.
But that doesn’t mean Tess has been forgotten. She is the inspiration for the Tess McIntyre Foundation. Bill and Pat consider Cinda to be the first beneficiary of the foundation. Another will be the SCGRR, the agency that rescued Tess and placed her in a stable home.
The foundation is not a rescue organization in itself. Its goal is, instead, to provide funding for other qualified rescue services. Their first priority will be in helping organizations who are working with animals, like Cinda, who need medical attention in order to improve their chances of adoption and finding a home.
The foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit which was started in August, recently launched its Web site ( www.tessmcintyrefoundation.org) where you can contact the foundation or make a donation. All of the money donated will go toward helping rescued animals, the only administrative costs being the fee charged for processing credit card donations.
While they will never completely get over the shock of Tess’ accident, her owners are dedicating themselves to remembering her in a meaningful way by helping other needy dogs live a healthy life in a loving home.
(You can follow the Tess McIntyre Foundation on Twitter @TessMcIn)
I don’t attend that many football games but I don’t think there could be many better places to go to a game than Michie Stadium in West Point.
These photos were taken on Nov. 21, 2015 as Army was hosting Rutgers
If you spent your teen years in New Jersey and began your life as a driver in the state, you have probably had this experience. Driving out-of-state, usually in neighboring Pennsylvania or New York, you stop for gas. You pull up to the pump and wait…and wait…and wait. But you’re not in New Jersey anymore and no one is going to come and pump your gas.
Even though it might be cold and rainy. Even though you might have just had a manicure and your nails are still wet. Even though you might not want the icky smell of gas on your hands. You’ve got to get out of the car, figure out the instructions and pump your own gas.
Hello. Excuse me. HELLO! Is this the full service booth?
New Jersey is one of only two U.S. states, the other being Oregon, where gas station attendants pump your gas while you sit in your car, perhaps checking your email and maybe listening to music. Having only spent about four days in Oregon I can’t speak for them but in New Jersey there are a number of explanations as to why we don’t fill ‘er up ourselves.
Officially the ban on self-service gas dates back to the 1949 Retail Gasoline Safety Act. That piece of legislation went into quite a bit of detail about the risks of gas pumping. Here are some highlights of what is officially known as 34:3A-4.
This makes pumping your own gas sound like pretty risky behavior. Perhaps some of my readers who happen to live in the 48 states that seem so oblivious to these risks can let me know if there have been instances of self-immolation at gas pumps in your neighborhood or a rash of miscarriages traced to gas pumping.
But according to Paul Munshine of the Star Ledger, there is another typically Jersier reason (The real reason self-service gas was banned in NJ: Corruption). According to Munshine everyone in 1949 was selling gas for about the same price, 21.9 cents a gallon. And then along came an entrepreneur by the name of Irving Reingold who opened a 24-pump self-service station in Hackensack offering the discount price of 18.9 cents per gallon. Angered by this intruder who didn’t adopt to the pricing collusion that everyone else did, the Gasoline Retailers Association lobbied the state legislature, the result of which was the 1949 legislation. Munshine quotes WOR radio commentator Lyle Van reporting “Chalk up another victory for the organized pressure groups.” (This move sent Reingold off looking for a career change. He resurfaced as the owner of The New Bell, a club that featured male go-go dancers for female audiences.)
That legislation is 65 years old.. Presumably the technology of pumping gas has improved enough to be less hazardous than is was in 1949. So why do we still not have self-service pumps? Some say it would take away jobs. Others point to the difficulty it would pose for some of the physically disabled. And apparently no elected official in the state (including the big man who is now running for President) wants to touch the issue after a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll in 2012 found that 62 percent of New Jerseyans (73 percent of female drivers) want to keep things the way they are.
And then there’s one other theory proffered by some cynical out-of-staters who believe that New Jerseyans are perhaps too dumb to pump gas. I can assure you that despite having lived most of my life in New Jersey, I have pumped gas in states all over the country even in such high pressure situations as the last gas station before the rental car return at LAX.
But then there’s this video evidence:
The Walkway Over the Hudson, a 1-1/4 mile span that crosses the Hudson River between Poughkeepsie and Highland, N.Y., is the world’s largest footbridge. It was originally built as a railroad bridge in 1889 and was in service until 1974. Backed by a combination of government and private funding the non-profit Walkway Over the Hudson worked with state and local agencies to convert it into a pedestrian walkway. It reopened on Oct. 3, 2009, with Pete Seeger providing the music. The bridge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The view downstream
The wst bank in full fall color.
Entrance to the walkway on the Highland side.
Heading toward Poughkeepsie
The Poughkeepsie riverfront
Under the bridge
Heading south under the adjacent Mid-Hudson Bridge
“Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses….”
Between 1892 and 1954, more than 12 million people immigrated to the United States through the portal of Ellis Island. It had in 1890 been designated by President Benjamin Harrison as the first federal immigration station. When it opened on Jan 1, 1992, Annie Moore, an Irish teenager travelling with her two brothers, became the first immigrant to be processed at Ellis Island.
Arrivals at Ellis Island could expect to spend three to five hours there during the inspection process. Only about two percent of the people who arrived were turned away. Those that were turned back were believed to have an infectious disease, were judged likely to become a public charge, or had been engaged as an illegal contract laborer.
The first stop for immigrants arriving at Ellis Island was the Registry Room. It has been restored to the way that it appeared in 1918.
Part of the inspection that immigrants were given at Ellis Island was a mental acuity test like the one above. Here they were asked to identify the identical images.
Immigrants who were being held for a legal hearing were sent here.
The next stop for most was the Central Railroad of New Jersey Terminal in Jersey City. More than 10 million immigrants entered the country through here.
The American Immigrant Wall of Honor currently lists the names of more than 700,000 perople who immigranted to the U.S.
Many of us live with a growing unease about how technology will change the humanness of humanity. What tasks and jobs will be replaced by automation? Does artificial intelligence eat away at the exercise of human judgement? How much of society will keep pace with advances of technology?
Technology and human values was the theme of this week’s Techonomy 15 conference. In his opening remarks Techonomy CEO David Kirkpatrick described it like this: “We have to make judgements about what is right and what is wrong as we enter this world of technology immersion.”
In a session titled Gods in Boxes, Orin Boiman, CEO of Magisto, noted how algorithms control two important things in our lives, search and notifications. The fact that he would identify these as key parts of our lives does in itself speak to the changes that have come with technology.
One example of the influence of algorithms is the Facebook feed. Adam Mosseri, who manages that feed, was on stage at the conference and described the priorities of Facebook’s algorithms:
The goal of the feed is to provide the content that each user is most likely to read, to like, to comment on. But how successful is this? Personally I don’t find the algorithm driven feed any better than the early stage chronological feed. And, like search results, it is probably self-reinforcing. Move an item to the top of the queue and it will in fact get more likes, more comments.
Algorithms without human values may have limited usefulness. One example is in human resources where the predictive powers of an algorithm might in fact lead an employer down a path that is illegal. “You might find out that a piece of software you bought is racist,” Boiman noted.
James Manyika of McKinsey & Company presented the findings of the consulting firm in a study of the future automation of work. He offered some moderation from the more common doomsday forecasts of what technology will do to the labor market. “Wholesale automation of jobs is unlikely, but middle-skill jobs could be replaced at twice the rate of recent decades.” He further noted, “45% of tasks could be automated but only 5% of jobs.”
A more disruptive vision of the future was offered by Cisco Executive Chairman John Chambers who predicted that 80% of American enterprise that exists today will not exist in 10 years. He suggested that we will see the day when a billion dollar enterprise has two employees, a CEO and CIO, while sales, production, legal and engineering are outsourced.
There are many areas where technology holds great promise for improving our lives. Among those raised at the conference were examples in healthcare where giving people the ability to monitor themselves and identify warning signs potentially creates a healthcare system focused on prevention rather than just treatment. It may also offer the solution to the need to increase food production without destroying the environment through such things as climate-stabilized indoor agriculture and city farms.
(geralt)
But it is pretty clear that society doesn’t change at the same pace that technology is advancing. And technology has increased the spread of inequality. For example, according to Eileen Guo of Impassion Afghanistan, there are 1.2 million Internet users in that country which has a population of 30 million. In the U.S., Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said 20% of households do not have access to high-speed Internet. The unconnected slide further and further from the connected. Think for example of the implications for education and what that means in an economy where education is vital to developing the skills that will be required to attain and hold a job in the future.
Jaron Lanier, author of Who Owns the Future, spoke of the importance of assuring that the benefits of technology advances are more widespread. He used the historical example of Henry Ford who insisted on paying good wages so that workers could buy his cars. “If we accept that not only the top of the zip curve needs to be funded, if we accept that lots of people are valuable, we might solve a big looming problem.” Lanier said.
He added that we think of AI algorithms as being able to do more than they can really do. As an example he pointed to automated language translators. Do they eliminate the need for human translators? No. In fact they couldn’t exist without them. The programs were based on the work of millions of human translators and will continue to need that input or fall out of date. “Let’s pay people who contribute,” he said.
Virtually no one sees where in the United States the leadership will come from to build a strategy for the changes that are likely coming to our economy. Kirkpatrick talked about a football field of Presidential candidates whose knowledge of the impact of digitalization on the future of the economy is about what you would expect from a football player. Of the four or five Presidential debates that have been held thus far, nary a word of this has been spoken.
(Archive video of Techonomy 15 is available on Livestream.)
The history of beer in New Jersey has at least six distinct stages:
Prohibition. 1920-1933, it becomes a crime to brew beer, so beer brewing gets turned over to the criminals.Despite its history as a hub for beer brewing, New Jersey was late to the party as the rest of the country began to take an interest in locally brewed craft beers. Laws that prohibited the sale of beer where it was made and restrictions on who microbreweries could sell to, what they could sell and how they could sell it slowed the growth of the craft beer movement. (See Beer in New Jersey: All the Laws We Never Followed)
The state didn’t have a brew pub until 1995 and it didn’t have a microbrewery until the following year. At the end of the 20th century, there were still only five: Climax, Flying Fish, High Point (Ramstein), Cricket Hill and River Horse.
Changes in the laws passed in 2012 finally opened up the state to an influx of new microbreweries. Today there are 38, and, according to New Jersey Craft Beer, there are an equal number of start-ups that are planned but not yet operational. According to the Brewers Association there were 0.5 microbreweries for every 100,000 adults 21 or over in the state in 2014. This compares to 1.3 and 1.5 in neighboring states New York and Pennsylvania, respectively. 67,000 barrels of craft beer were produced in 2014, ranking New Jersey as 34th among U.S. states.
Here are a few of New Jersey’s Renaissance breweries:
New Jersey’s first microbrewery was founded by the father and son team of Kurt and Dave Hoffmann. Dave got his start as a home brewer and is responsible for the design of the custom made equipment at the Roselle Park location. The first beer brewed by Climax in 1996 was an ESB (extra special bitter). They still brew the ESB along with a Nut Brown Ale, IPA and Cream Ale. They also produce seasonal and limited edition brews.
One of my favorites and probably now the largest and most successful of New Jersey microbreweries. Flying Fish started online as a virtual brewery in 1995 then opened its doors in its original location in Cherry Hill the following year. True to its New Jersey roots, some Flying Fish beers are named after exit numbers on the New Jersey Turnpike. Exit 4, which is the exit you would take to go to Somerdale, is brilliant, but it’s a triple so if you have a few of these you probably aren’t going to do much else. After Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey in 2012, Flying Fish issued a limited edition brew FU Sandy which was used as a fundraiser for hurricane relief efforts. The brewery donated about $75,000. Flying Fish also prides itself on its commitment to sustainability, describing its operation as a “showcase for recycling, reuse and conservation.”
Brewers of Ramstein beers, another of my favorites. In fact this is where I go when I want to fill my growlers with fresh beer. That is partly because it’s not too far away (although not the closest microbrewery). But it is also because they make wheats and lagers, which are my preferred brews. These are German style beers using ingredients imported from Bavaria. The name Ramstein comes from a town in Germany. They’ve been around since 1996. They recently renovated and expanded their tasting room in the old rubber factory where the brewery is housed.. The plant was closed by Amerace in 1974. That closing eliminated the biggest employer in Butler, N.J., and heralded hard times for this gritty, blue-collar town. The fact that Ramstein, and other tenants, have taken space in the old Amerace plant is a sign of revival for Butler, just as the existence of microbreweries like Ramstein are a sign of revival of the beer industry in New Jersey.
Magnify is an example of the recent explosion in microbreweries throughout the state. It opened earlier this year. Magnify was founded by Eric Ruta, a New Jerseyan who headed off to Bates College in Maine. There he was introduced to the craft brewing scene in Portland and upon graduation came home to start this brewery in Fairfield. Some of Magnify’s beers are a bit hoppy for my taste but I am a fan of their Black Wheat. They also have a great tasting room. Like many of new microbrewers, Magnify is an environmentally conscious operation. That includes donating used grain to farmers.
This monument stands atop the highest point in New Jersey, 1,803 feet above sea level. If you’re from someplace like Vermont or Colorado, I’m sure you’re having a chuckle of over that. But it is in fact 133 feet higher than the highest point in Iowa and a whopping 1,458 feet above the highest point in Florida.
The High Point Monument was built in honor of war veterans. Construction started in 1928 and it was completed in 1930. Images below are from High Point State Park.
off the leash 