EU Pundit : Issues of the European Union

Law Developments in the Year 2017

2017-01-16T20:11:00.000+01:00

We looked at some law developments and legal training courses upcoming in the year 2017 and selected the following links:

Computing.co.uk - The ABC of employment law developments in 2017 for CIOs -- Law in the United Kingdom

The Legal 500 - Legal Developments Worldwide -- United Kingdom, Russia, USA, EU Privacy Law, Turkey, Asia, South China, Philippines

Law360.com - Global Competition Law Developments To Watch In 2017 -- Key changes in the European Union, China, Japan, and South Korea

The World Bank - World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law -- This merely introduces the The World Development Report (WDR) 2017 which is to be launched in January, 2017

23rd Annual Stanford Directors' College -- Stanford University Law School -- June 25-27, 2017 -- executive education program for directors and senior executives of publicly traded firms

International Law Institute (ILI) - Georgetown University Law Center -- 2017 Antitrust and Competition Laws: Foundations and New Developments -- Training Course to be held June 12-16, 2017

also of interest at ILI - Orientation in the U.S. Legal System, and Business Law -- July 31-August 11, 2017

Legally Speaking - Bob Dunlevey of Dunlevey, Mahan + Furry -- Employment Law Developments 2017 in the USA- Law in the USA. This has a link to a downloadable .pdf which is interesting for its short (double-spaced 4 1/3 pages) but excellent discussion of e.g. what the incoming Trump Administration may roll back of the laws and regulations previously supported by the outgoing Obama Administration.

Mintz Levin - Health Care Case Law in the USA - Health Care Enforcement Defense Advisory -- Health Care Enforcement Review & 2017 Outlook: Important Case Law Developments

__________

2017 - Another 1/230,000,000th of Our Galactic Orbit -- Caleb A. Scharf Comments in Life, Unbounded at the Scientific American Blog Network

2017-01-06T23:17:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year 2017 !

To keep things on our planet in perspective for the New Year 2017, a terrestrial "Earth" year can be compared to a "Galactic" year -- as Caleb A. Scharf has done in his Life, Unbounded posting at the Scientific American Blog Network in

Another 1/230,000,000th of a Galactic Orbit.

Scharf suggests there:

"As the solar year ends, let's try to stop being so parochial".

Our comment is, "hear, hear !!"

As written at the Wikipedia for the entry "Galactic Year":

"The galactic year, also known as a cosmic year, is the duration of time required for the Solar System to orbit once around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Estimates of the length of one orbit range from 225 to 250 million terrestrial years. The Solar System is traveling at an average speed of 828,000 km/h (230 km/s) or 514,000 mph (143 mi/s) within its trajectory around the galactic center, a speed at which an object could circumnavigate the Earth's equator in 2 minutes and 54 seconds; that speed corresponds to approximately one 1300th of the speed of light."

We are, galactically seen, part of a much larger "picture", so to speak.

The word "scharf" in German means "sharp" and a sharp intelligence indeed is at work in writing perspicaciously about the present New Year as

Another 1/230,000,000th of a Galactic Orbit.

Take a look there for some outstanding insights about life on our planet.

In the meantime, Scharf might consider applying his own wisdom further, perhaps depart from the blindered parochial focus that marks the mainstream, and look at our "galactic" (if archaeological-anthropological-historical) decipherments of Stonehenge and Avebury in our previous postings -- from a broad historical-astronomical point of view, of course....

Brexit Likely Requires UK Parliament Approval as Judged by British Constitutional Law Principles

2016-12-19T22:03:00.000+01:00

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom began hearings on December 5, 2016 on an appeal from a High Court judgment that only Parliament could trigger Brexit.

We see "no legal exit" from the High Court's argumentation and judgment.

The BBC News earlier already reported on the judicial process to come at The 11 Supreme Court judges who could rule on UK's Brexit appeal [hat tip to CaryGEE] and more recently reported on the court's Brexit hearings under the misleading headline: Supreme Court Brexit case: 'No need' for MPs to get final say.

Well, the case is by no means decided yet and "need" has nothing to do with it. The correct headline should have been: Supreme Court Brexit case: Does UK constitutional law require Parliament to have the final say?

The Brexit case puts squarely to the test the system of checks and balances that define the separation of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.

What the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom is now considering is an appeal from a High Court judgment of 3 November 2016 [The High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, Divisional Court, Neutral Citation Number: [2016] EWHC 2768 (Admin), Case No: CO/3809/2016 and CO/3281/2016] which found that rights conferred by Parliament in 1972 were likely to be affected by Brexit and that only Parliament therefore had the authority to act on the matter of a UK withdrawal from the European Union.

The High Court judgment reads as follows (as excerpted by LawPundit):

"(7) Our decision on the legal question
[larger text as emphasis added by Law Pundit]

...

[Our] view is reinforced by reference to two constitutional principles.

(c) The principle that the Crown [LawPundit: "Crown" here means the executive branch of government] cannot use its prerogative powers to alter domestic law [block emphasis added by Law Pundit]

First, the powerful constitutional principle that the Crown has no power to alter the law of the land by use of its prerogative powers is the product of an especially strong constitutional tradition in the United Kingdom.... It evolved through the long struggle ... to assert parliamentary sovereignty and constrain the Crown’s prerogative powers.... As Lord Browne-Wilkinson put it in
R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex p. Fire Brigades Union [1995] 2 AC 513 at 552E:

"It is for Parliament, not the executive, to repeal legislation. The constitutional history of this country is the history of the prerogative powers of the Crown being made subject to the overriding powers of the democratically elected legislature as the sovereign body."
...

Parliament having taken the major step of switching on the direct effect of EU law in the national legal systems by passing the ECA 1972 as primary legislation, it is not plausible to suppose that it intended that the Crown should be able by its own unilateral action under its prerogative powers to switch it off again.

Moreover, the status of the ECA 1972 as a constitutional statute is such that Parliament is taken to have made it exempt from the operation of the usual doctrine of implied repeal by enactment of later inconsistent legislation: see Thoburn v Sunderland City Council, at [60]-[64], and section 2(4) of the ECA 1972. It can only be repealed in any respect if Parliament makes it especially clear in the later repealing legislation that this is what it wishes to do. Since in enacting the ECA 1972 as a statute of major constitutional importance Parliament has indicated that it should be exempt from casual implied repeal by Parliament itself, still less can it be thought to be likely that Parliament nonetheless intended that its legal effects could be removed by the Crown through the use of its prerogative powers.

(d) The Crown’s prerogative power operates only on the international plane [block emphasis added by Law Pundit]

The second principle is the well settled limitation on the constitutional understanding that the conduct of international relations is a matter for the Crown in the exercise of its prerogative powers.... It is precisely because the exercise of the Crown’s prerogative powers in the conduct of international relations has no effect in domestic law that the courts accept that this is a field of action left to the Crown and recognise the strength of the understanding that it is not readily to be inferred that Parliament intended to interfere with it. But the justification for a presumption of non-interference with the Crown’s prerogative in the conduct of international affairs is substantially undermined in a case such as this, where the Secretary of State is maintaining that he can through the exercise of the Crown’s prerogative bring about major changes in domestic law.

For this reason, it is our view that the decision in ex p. Rees-Mogg, on which the Secretary of State sought to place considerable weight, does not provide guidance in the present case....

In the very different context of the present case, the question is whether the Crown has power under its prerogative to withdraw from the relevant EU Treaties where such withdrawal will, on the Secretary of State’s argument, have a major effect on the content of domestic law. It is clear that the court in ex p Rees Mogg did not touch on that question.

(e) Our conclusion as to Parliament’s intention [block emphasis added by Law Pundit]

Interpreting the ECA 1972 in the light of the constitutional background referred to above, we consider that it is clear that Parliament intended to legislate by that Act so as to introduce EU law into domestic law (and to create the category (ii) rights) in such a way that this could not be undone by exercise of Crown prerogative power. With the enactment of the ECA 1972, the Crown has no prerogative power to effect a withdrawal from the Community Treaties on whose continued existence the EU law rights introduced into domestic law depend (rights in categories (i) and (iii)) and on whose continued existence the wider rights of British citizens in category (ii) also depend. The Crown therefore has no prerogative power to effect a withdrawal from the relevant Treaties by giving notice under Article 50 of the TEU."

Is there a "legal exit" for "Brexit" other than through Parliament?
We think not.

In any case, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom will decide.

For Brexit supporters -- who may rightly worry that the court will determine that only Parliament can "trigger" Brexit -- they should note that it will be a decision not made by the European Union or by any outsiders, but rather very much by one of its own three principal institutions of constitutional democratic government. Take a look again at "home-based" Eleven Supreme Court Justices.

That is what checks and balances and the separation of powers is all about.

Ultimately, of course, the PEOPLE decide, but the legal processes in place that are required to be followed, must be followed.

A referendum can be an important indicator of the wishes of the people, but it has no force of law, and, indeed, is a only a momentary indicator of what people are thinking at the time of that referendum.

Given the many negative things that have happened to UK fortunes in the interim, especially on the financial side, it is indeed even likely that yet another referendum on the same question would currently probably give a different end result -- even if the vote were close.

There is good reason why democracy is based on representative government, i.e. people who are elected to serve for extended periods of time, rather than on having a direct popular vote on every governmental question. Representative government provides continuity of policy. Direct popular voting on every governmental question would be ephemeral and lead to boundless chaos.

The Collision of Sports and Politics: Russian President Putin Views Meldonium as Not Being an "Athletic-Performance-Enhancing" Drug

2016-04-17T20:47:00.000+02:00

One of the most interesting stories currently is the collision of sports and politics on the question of Latvian-invented meldonium. US News carries an AP story reporting that Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone on record as stating that Meldonium is not an athletic-performance-enhancing drug.

See the following link to a video at the above US News article which contains an excellent interview of Dr. Michael White, UConn School of Pharmacy, regarding meldonium, trade-named as Mildronate:

See video

We posted about this topic previously at LawPundit at Sports Law Pharmaceuticals & the Maria Sharapova Tennis Case: The Latvian Inventor of Meldonium Defends the Safety of the Allegedly Performance-Enhancing Miracle Drug aka Mildronāts, Mildronate, Quaterine, MET-88, THP (not Available in the USA or Germany).

The simple fact is that a 20-capsule package of meldonium at 250 mg per capsule is an OTC (over-the-counter) medication that can be purchased without a prescription in pharmacies in Latvia (perhaps in Russia too, we do not know). Meldonium is in our view quite comparable to ubiquitous vitamin and nutritional supplements and has been available for purchase for many years.

There is no evidence that taking meldonium somehow magically "enhances" athletic performance. It may make your heart healthier, just as some vitamin or similar supplements, or even certain foods, also claim to do, but that is by no means "drug misuse" of the kind that should be prohibited in athletics.

In the interview cited above, Dr. Michael White, who otherwise gives a straightforward, very informative interview, asks why Sharapova, who spends much of her time in the USA, does not take a "comparable" USA-FDA (Food & Drug Administration) approved "heart medication" rather than meldonium. Why should she do that if she has been taking meldonium without side effects for years? Nationalistic provincialism should not mark the pharmaceutical field.

As someone who worked for years in the pharmaceutical industry, here is our very personal but we hope instructive take on a further answer to Dr. White's question about what substances we can take. It is all about money.

We ourselves will hit the age of 70 this year and occasionally see signs of the wear and tear that advanced maturity can bring, so that we have occasionally taken a modern non-generic prescription-only state-of-the-art angiotensin II receptor blocker for our high blood pressure. It costs about €30 a month when taken in normal dosage and has some potential very undesirable side effects, so we have taken it sparingly. Who needs drug-induced difficulties? Not us.

We are a high energy individual, so that when meldonium first came to our attention, it looked to us like an interesting alternative substance that appeared capable of strengthening the heart and had no known side effects, so we obtained meldonium as the product Mildronāts - Grindeks, perfectly legally, prescription-free, and OTC from Latvia, a European Union Member State. We have no qualms about using it in Germany, another EU Member State, which in our view can not prohibit us from using such a medication freely available in the EU, even if the substance itself may not be approved for sale in Germany itself. That would otherwise contradict the "single market" principle. We are here, after all, not dealing with some kind of illegal drug.

In our short experience we can report that meldonium seems to have a very positive effective on lowering our high blood pressure and thus far shows no negative side effects whatsoever. There may even be a positive side effect.

We point here to a study which indicates that long-term high-dosage of meldonium intake may increase sexual performance in boars. See at PubFacts (which leaves out the diacritical markings), Zigmunds Bruveris, Vita Antane, Ilga Misane, Jazeps Rimeicans, Ivars Lusis, Alberts Auzans, Mara Mangale, Aleksandrs Mednis, Ilmars Stonans, Effects of meldonium on sexual performance, sperm motility, testes morphology and blood biochemical markers in boars. Anim Reprod Sci 2013 Jan 22;136(4):303-9. Epub 2012 Nov 22. [Author's Affiliation: Clinical Institute, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Latvia University of Agriculture, 8 K. Helmana Street, Jelgava, LV 3004, Latvia.]

To our knowledge, no comparable study has been published on humans, and there may be no comparable effect. Who knows.

And here is the rub, perhaps answering Dr. Michael White's question above.

A package of 20 such 250mg capsules of meldonium costs about €6, so let us say ca. €10 per month if taken as we take them, at one capsule a day, even though 2 are recommended as the normal dosage. That is a cost of ca. two-thirds less than what we would have to pay out of pocket for our non-generic angiotensin II receptor blocker, since insurance covers only cheap generics -- in our experience not always comparably effective. The annual cost is thus $120 instead of $360. Quite a bit of money for an average person.

As a sample of the prices in force for a high blood pressure medication such as e.g. Micardis -- that is the brand version while the generic is called Telmisartan -- see PharmacyChecker.com, which also appends the following footnotes significant for money questions and borderline legal issues:

""*The total price includes shipping fees which typically cover an entire order....
**U.S. Law and Drug Safety: U.S. government officials have stated that individuals who order non-controlled prescription drugs from Canada or other foreign sources (up to a three-month supply) for their own use are not being pursued or prosecuted. However, it is technically not legal for individuals to import most prescription drugs. The U.S. FDA regulates the safety and efficacy of medications sold in U.S. pharmacies. Medications dispensed from outside the U.S. are regulated for safety and efficacy by pharmaceutical/pharmacy regulatory authorities in other countries. Read how regulations may differ by country.
Coverage by Insurance: For a drug to be reimbursable from a health reimbursement account or flexible spending account it must be approved for sale in the U.S. and prescribed by a licensed U.S. physician, although drugs which you personally import are typically not reimbursable. If you have pharmacy insurance coverage, you may want to check with your benefits administrator to determine whether drugs ordered from outside the U.S. will be covered or reimbursed."

Why is meldonium not available for sale in Western nations? There appears to be a simple explanation. It is not a home-grown product and is priced reasonably. Hence, profits via meldonium would be much lower for indigenous pharmaceutical companies who would have to pay patent royalties on a licensed product sold much more cheaply than their own overly priced, patented, but perhaps nevertheless inferior remedies. We are reminded here of the many actions taken by Apple, Inc. to keep competing, in part, better, smartphones and tablets out of the country. The monopoly principle is the same. Keep competition out.

The meldonium controversy is thus conceivably not a medical issue at all, but rather an issue of institutional power, money and monopoly pharmaceutical markets.

The USA's FDA and similar institutions elsewhere function as "economic barriers to entry". Even if a drug has been clinically tested and approved elsewhere, every nation persists on making their own studies in determining the licensing of substances, a costly ever-duplicating process paid for by the taxpayers, who have no say in the matter, and who may even be paying top dollar for inferior pharmaceutical substances at their own local pharmacies.

When institutions such as the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) start blacklisting substances just because they are being used -- blacklisting without any evidence that they do in fact increase athletic performance unfairly, then things are askew in the systems of control that govern competitive sports, as we already know from negative examples at the NCAA, the FIFA and the Olympic movement. Competitive sports are dominated by self-serving monopolies, often abetted by clueless lawmakers and courts who accord such sports organizations special advantages, to which they should not be entitled at all. EVERYONE is "in business". EVERYONE.

We note that in what looks to us like a retaliatory measure against the Russians, by the way, that WADA just revoked accreditation of the Moscow Laboratory. It all appears to be part of "the game" of monopoly in sports.

The competitive sports world has become -- or perhaps it always has been -- a golden goose for too many organizations and their officers at the cost of the competing athletes. The private WADA is surely no exception in this regard, as its monopolistic practises have come under increasing scrutiny (see the Wikipedia for examples).

Moreover, all of these organizations try to expand their powers as much as possible so that they can tell other people what they are supposed to do. Why people have that need for power is something we have never understood.

Indeed, it is the athletes who are usually being punished by these "ruling bodies" and not those who run athletics. It is a bizarre system of top-down injustice in which the ruling organizations and institutions control the lives of athletes for their own selfish self-serving and self-sustaining ends.

And now perhaps someone in Brussels or Berlin can explain to us why in the alleged "single market" of the European Union, it is virtually impossible to order prescription-free meldonium online, as it is not delivered by Latvian pharmacies outside of the territory of Latvia, as far as we have been able to determine. Mildronate used to be available through Amazon.de. No longer. Its sale is conceivably being blocked on the orders of someone.

Moreover, we have found a few links here and there online that seem to point to meldonium "teasers" -- you are warned -- i.e. websites not actually selling meldonium but purporting to do so, and perhaps acting on behalf of other parties to discover who is taking meldonium and who is not.

What goes on here as a matter of law, sports and politics?

Digital Rights: New European Union (EU) Data Protection Rules Passed by the European Parliament as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

2016-04-16T02:10:00.001+02:00

We reproduce here a press release from the European Union Parliament on new rules regarding digital rights, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) ["REGULATION (EU) 2016/… OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL ... of ... on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation)"]

European Parliament PLENARY SESSION Press Release of April 14, 2016
Police cooperation / Citizens' rights / Justice and home afairs

"Data protection reform - Parliament approves new rules fit for the digital era

New EU data protection rules which aim to give citizens back control of their personal data and create a high, uniform level of data protection across the EU fit for the digital era was ["were", sic] given their final approval by MEPs on Thursday. The reform also sets minimum standards on use of data for policing and judicial purposes.

Parliament’s vote ends more than four years of work on a complete overhaul of EU data protection rules. The reform will replace the current data protection directive, dating back to 1995 when the internet was still in its infancy, with a general regulation designed to give citizens more control over their own private information in a digitised world of smartphones, social media, internet banking and global transfers.

"The general data protection regulation makes a high, uniform level of data protection throughout the EU a reality. This is a great success for the European Parliament and a fierce European 'yes' to strong consumer rights and competition in the digital age. Citizens will be able to decide for themselves which personal information they want to share", said Jan Philipp Albrecht (Greens, DE), who steered the legislation through Parliament.

"The regulation will also create clarity for businesses by establishing a single law across the EU. The new law creates confidence, legal certainty and fairer competition", he added.

The new rules include provisions on:

a right to be forgotten,
"clear and affirmative consent" to the processing of private data by the person concerned,
a right to transfer your data to another service provider,
the right to know when your data has been hacked,
ensuring that privacy policies are explained in clear and understandable language, and
stronger enforcement and fines up to 4% of firms' total worldwide annual turnover, as a deterrent to breaking the rules.

New rules on data transfers to ensure smoother police cooperation

The data protection package also includes a directive on data transfers for policing and judicial purposes. It will apply to data transfers across borders within the EU as well as, for the first time, setting minimum standards for data processing for policing purposes within each member state.

The new rules aim to protect individuals, whether victims, criminals or witnesses, by setting out clear rights and limitations on data transfers for the purpose of prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, including safeguarding against and preventing threats to public security, while at the same time facilitating smoother and more effective cooperation among law enforcement authorities.

"The main problem concerning terrorist attacks and other transnational crimes is that member states’ law enforcement authorities are reluctant to exchange valuable information", said Parliament's lead MEP on the directive Marju Lauristin (S&D, ET)."By setting European standards for information exchange between law enforcement authorities, the data protection directive will become a powerful and useful tool which will help authorities transfer personal data easily and efficiently, at the same time respecting the fundamental right to privacy", she concluded.

More details on the general data protection regulation and the directive in our Q&A here.

Next steps

The regulation will enter into force 20 days after its publication in the EU Official Journal. Its provisions will be directly applicable in all member states two years after this date.

Member states will have two years to transpose the provisions of the directive into national law.

Due to UK and Ireland's special status regarding justice and home affairs legislation, the directive's provisions will only apply in these countries to a limited extent.

Denmark will be able to decide within six months after the final adoption of the directive whether it wants to implement it in its national law.

REF.: 20160407IPR21776
Updated: 14-04-2016 - 16:23"
[this is the snipped end of the press release and what follows is EU Pundit text]

Contact for the press release: Rikke Uldall at the European Parliament Press Service ... please go to this link: the EU original page of the press release.

The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has a posting about this new Directive at One giant leap for digital rights.

Postmodernism Counterculture & the Planned New Google and Apple Headquarters "Campuses" in Silicon Valley as Modern Digital Eden Projects

2016-03-28T23:23:00.001+02:00

What do we make of the events in Europe? or in the USA? Are Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders inevitable products of an era dominated by a cultural evolution that is labeled post-modernism?

Nikil Saval at the New York Times titles his article on the new headquarters "campuses" being planned by Google and Apple as Google and Apple: the High-Tech Hippies of Silicon Valley. Back to the future?

Make sure to view the slide show at that link for architectural design prior art.

The Google plan reminded this writer of the Eden Project in Cornwall, United Kingdom, with its biomes, its object of sustainability and its emphasis on the importance of transformation. Google is a digital Eden Project in our eyes.

Apple's 4-story building structure reflects circular designs that are historically ubiquitous - see "circular design in architecture" in Google image search. Indeed, we are reminded of the shen ring of the Pharaohs, symbol of eternity.

Both Google and Apple designs most certainly try to "escape" the limits placed on architecture by square-sided building geometry. Indeed, Frank Gehry's twisted buildings can be viewed as an attempt to do just the same. Squares are out. It is no wonder that Jeb Bush had no chance in the primaries.

Saval writes in his New York Times article about the future that:

"Like the rest of Silicon Valley, however, this future is in fact rooted in the past. It comes, transfigured, from the wrecked dreams of communal living, of back-to-the-land utopias, of expanding plastic spheres and geodesic domes that populated the landscape of Northern California around the time (and around the same place) that the first semiconductors were being perfected. This is the world of what a recent exhibit at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis has termed “Hippie Modernism.”"

As those of us know who grew up in the "flower power" age, especially in California in the late 1960's, the heroic status attached to alternative forms of living and lifestyles in the 60's seemed to disappear as quickly as the "flower power" movement came and went. But did the basic foundations of the "alternative culture" expressed at that time really disappear? Perhaps not.

One could argue that the late 1960's were a landmark in cultural evolution, an era marked by the breaking down of viz. questioning of many human customs and taboos that had existed for many generations, but that perhaps were no longer necessary or appropriate to the post-modern age. The weakest and most sensitive elements of society would have "felt" that particular change quite early.

That cultural evolution, referred to modernly now as "hippie modernism" at the Walker Art Center, is a term which we find to be too narrow, and we would suggest the perhaps more accurate term "future counterculture".

Indeed, one could argue that the counterculture evolution has actually been with us in a process of varied transformation the last nearly 50 years, visible, for example, in alter egos such as digital technology or in post-modernity in art and architecture, or in innumerable other aspects of human society, whether we talk about race, diversity, gender equality, abortion or even LGBT.

One need not agree with such developments -- to acknowledge they exist.

Indeed, even the emergence of disruptive political candidates such as Donald Trump in the Republican Party and Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party in the currently ongoing Presidential primary elections may -- perhaps to everyone's astonishment -- well be inevitable expressions of that same "counterculture", as serious challenges to the existing but disappearing mainstream infrastructure, a modernistic edifice succumbing to post-modernity.

We read at the Wikipedia under Postmodernism [paragraphs added]:

"Postmodernism is a late-20th-century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism.

Postmodernism articulates that the world is in a state of perpetual incompleteness and permanent unresolve.

Postmodernism promotes the notion of pluralism; that there are many ways of knowing, and many truths to a fact.

From a postmodern perspective knowledge is articulated from local perspectives, with all its uncertainties, complexity and paradox.

Thus knowledge is relational and all realities are woven on local linguistic looms.

Postmodernism includes skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism.

It is often associated with deconstruction and post-structuralism because its usage as a term gained significant popularity at the same time as twentieth-century post-structural thought.

The term postmodernism has been applied to a host of movements, mainly in art, music, and literature, that reacted against tendencies in modernism, and are typically marked by revival of historical elements and techniques."

When one views the current world as a post-modern development in process, it becomes more understandable and we better comprehend the architectural style of the buildings being planned by Google and Apple.

Centers of the Modern World Such as New York, London and Paris and the Symbols of their Power: The Tallest Residential Building in the Western Hemisphere Is Ready for Occupancy

2016-03-22T20:35:00.001+01:00

It is no wonder that London has recently entered the age of skyscrapers -- with more to come -- or that the Eiffel Tower is the major landmark of Paris.

Art and architecture reflect the power and prestige that accompany the creation of artistic and architectural works. For example, the Pharaohs built the pyramids -- on a massive scale. We moderns build skyscrapers -- on a massive scale. These activities are related in their reflection of prevailing societal norms, beliefs and systems. Is "big" better?

Tall constructions are symbols of the "center" of the world, culturally seen, and regardless of claims laid to that title elsewhere in recent years, New York City, "the Big Apple", continues to amaze via its sustained architectural flair. It is still the unrivaled "center" of the modern world.

The tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere is ready for residency in its 104 luxury apartments
at 432 Park Avenue in Manhattan, New York City,
as designed by the architect Rafael Viñoly.

Apartment prices start somewhere near $20 million and a penthouse was presold at a reported ca. $100 million.

The 432 Park Avenue website starts out with an elevated full screen photo of the building as it towers far above Central Park and the surrounding skyscrapers.

Thereafter, take a look at the 432 Park Avenue website panoramic 360° views, where the viewer can set the height from which the City is viewed. Amazing!

See BusinessInsider to get an idea of how tall the building is relative to its surroundings. More such tall slender buildings are planned for the New York City area but right now 432 Park Avenue has its own iconic character.

ABC News reported already in 2014 at Inside the Tallest Residential Building in the Western Hemisphere in a story by Alyssa Newcomb.

A photo in that ABC News story attracted our personal interest. See the specific image at http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/Technology/HT_tallest_residential_building_4_sk_141014_4x3_992.jpg.

That image was taken -- we assume by ABC News -- from 432 Park Avenue looking southward toward the MetLife Building (formerly the PanAm Building, middle), the Empire State Building (somewhat back and to its right), as well as the One World Trade Center building, the tallest skyscraper (with spire) in the Western Hemisphere, seen far in the distance down in the financial district (e.g. near Wall Street) (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue#/media/File:NYCbyPinHt_update.jpg).

That ABC News image from 432 Park Avenue also includes 345 Park Avenue, a 44-story building which was completed in 1969 and that occupies a whole city block of Midtown Manhattan in what is called the "Plaza District". Compare its base to the "only" 93-foot width on each side at 432 Park Avenue, an architectural difference of generations in the strength of materials and the demands of more limited space in New York City.

By the way, as written at the Wikipedia, the Plaza District is "a term used by Manhattan real estate professionals to denote the most expensive area of midtown from a commercial real estate perspective, lies between 42nd Street and 59th Street, from Third Avenue to Seventh Avenue, about a square kilometer or half a square mile."

At the start of the 1970's, 345 Park Avenue, designed by Emery Roth & Sons, (see Richard Roth Sr.), who also designed the World Trade Center, was just about the tallest and largest building in the neighborhood. It is found in the immediate left foreground in that already cited photo taken from 432 Park Avenue as the widest "bright" rectangular building, standing as if in "T-form" just behind the smaller earlier-built black Seagram Building, whose structure was designed by Mies van der Rohe and with some internal aspects designed by Philip Johnson. The bright color of 345 Park Avenue was intended by design to contrast the neighboring Seagram Building.

345 Park Avenue was the former headquarters of the international law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison ("Paul, Weiss et al." viz. "Paul|Weiss"), where the LawPundit was an associate in the early 1970's. This was once also "my residential neighborhood", so it is always a thrill to follow its development.

In the illustration below, we have marked the approximate location of our former office in that building with reference to that ABC News photo.

Now compare that illustration to the photo at the link ... ABC News photo. To be able to see one's former offices that clearly from high above via the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere gives one a special feeling.

A marvelous photo looking southward is also found at 432ParkAvenue.com (click on the photo for a larger image), compressing the distance and thus showing some of the distant buildings better and seemingly closer.

Google Street View takes you to
51st and Park Avenue in New York City,
the location of 345 Park Avenue,
from which there is a view of 432 Park Avenue in 2015.

345 Park Avenue is also known as the Bristol-Myers Squibb Building. It is currently 100% leased and includes the following tenants, according to its website as of our last visit of that website on March 20, 2016:

National Football League (headquarters)
Piper Jaffray & Co.
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (headquarters)
Blackstone Group (headquarters)
KPMG (headquarters)
Deutsche Bank
Rudin Management Company
Bank of America
Le Relais de Venise L'Entrecote
(see TripAdvisor, and also Sam Sifton at the New York Times in Hop Off the Wheel and Taste Paris)

Hat tip to CaryGEE.

Please note: This posting was made mostly for the interest of our friends and for those interested in New York City architecture especially. Nothing in this posting constitutes paid or unpaid advertising of any kind and it is not a solicitation for anyone to buy or lease apartments or office space, to attend sports gatherings, to invest money or to avail of financial services, to conduct banking transactions, or to wine and dine. We waive any and all liability for anyone relying in any way upon our text or graphic materials or links.

The Best Universities in Europe the USA and the World in 2016

2016-03-22T20:08:00.002+01:00

We were alerted to this topic via an article by Ellie Bothwell regarding the Best universities in Europe 2016 based on the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings.

Times Higher Education is published in the United Kingdom and thus has its own particular, we presume British, view of what is important in education and what is not, and how it is to be measured. Opinions will differ worldwide.

Whether one takes such rankings seriously or not, the fact is that any such rankings become a part of the image of any university. That same image has a lot to do with student study choices as well as the financing of university research by government and private sources.

As Imre Lakatos so cogently posited, a primary unit of appraisal in science is the "research programme", a basic philosophical observation that could also be expressed more banaly as, "whoever gets the money, calls the shots".

As Bothwell writes:

"Overall 22 countries are represented in the top 200 [of Europe] list, which draws upon data from the 800 universities from 70 countries in the overall THE World University Rankings."

We obtained our law degree from Stanford University and are glad to see Stanford ranked 3rd in the Times Higher Education world rankings behind Cal Tech in the USA, the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and just ahead of the University of Cambridge in the UK. Much in the realm of university rankings depends on the selection and weighting of criteria.

If one were to define the best education and hence the best university as one which educates "the whole man" or "the whole woman", then Stanford would modernly always emerge on top of any ranking because it is not only at the top academically together with a mere handfull of other institutions but because it is heads and shoulders above the rest of the competition in being the best student athletic program in the United States (and surely the world), having won the USA Directors' Cup for the last 21 years -- based on actual university sports competitions -- as the best in the nation. See NACDA Directors' Cup at Wikipedia where it is written:

"The NACDA Learfield Sports Directors' Cup is an award given annually by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics to the colleges and universities in the United States with the most success in collegiate athletics.... Stanford University has won the Division I award for twenty-one straight years."

There is to our knowledge no comparable record in sports -- and this record is being achieved at a University that not only ranks at the top academically but whose direct environs of Silicon Valley rule the modern world of high tech.

Which university ranking method includes these amazing things? None.

What is even more amazing is that Stanford has only 7000 undergraduate students, as compared to undergraduate student enrollments of e.g. ca. 55000 at Central Florida (UCF), ca. 45000 at Ohio State and Texas A&M, ca. 40000 at Texas (Austin), Arizona State, Penn State, Michigan State and Florida International (FIU), ca. 35000 at Florida, Florida State, Minnesota, Illinois, Rutgers, Houston and Indiana, ca. 30000 at UCLA, Alabama, Washington, Texas Tech, Iowa State, North Texas, Missouri, Temple, San Diego State, Purdue, South Florida (USF) and Arizona, ca. 25000 at LSU, South Carolina, Texas State, Colorado, Utah State, Maryland, San Jose State, North Carolina State, Georgia, Utah, UTSA, Virginia Tech, UNLV, Washington State, Colorado State, Georgia State, Kent State, Cincinnati, Ohio, Florida Atlantic (FAU), NYU, BYU, California (Berkeley) and Oregon State, ca. 20000 at North Carolina (Chapel Hill), Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Charlotte, Arkansas, East Carolina, Fresno State, Iowa, Akron, Western Michigan, Oregon, Buffalo, Kansas, New Mexico, Old Dominion, Central Michigan, Boise State, Pittsburgh, Middle Tennessee, Eastern Michigan, UTEP, Oklahoma State, Auburn, Kentucky, Kansas State, West Virginia, Georgia Southern, Connecticut, Tennessee, Clemson, Western Kentucky and Nebraska, ca. 15000 at Syracuse, Nevada, Louisville, Louisiana Lafayette, Baylor, Memphis, Hawaii, Toledo, Bowling Green, Miami (Ohio), Ball State, Northern Illinois, Troy, Appalachian State and New Mexico State, ca. 10000 at Notre Dame, Miami (Florida), Marshall, UAB, South Alabama, Northwestern, TCU, Idaho, Louisiana Tech, Wyoming, Arkansas State, Southern Miss and Boston College, ca. 7000 at Duke, Tulane, Vanderbilt, Louisiana-Monroe, and SMU, ca. 5000 at Wake Forest, Tulsa, Rice, Air Force, Navy and Army, etc. (all numbers approximate and rounded, please look the exact stats up at https://www.collegeraptor.com/)

It is not without reason that Admissions at Stanford University writes about Athletics and Recreation at Stanford:

"Unparalleled in its success and considered the dominant athletic program nationally, Stanford promotes excellence in both academics and athletics. Consider the following:

Stanford has captured 21 consecutive Directors' Cup titles (1995–2015), an award that honors the nation's top overall Division I athletic program.
300 athletic scholarships are awarded each year.
There were 42 Stanford-affiliated athletes competing in the London Olympics, winning 16 medals, 12 of which were gold.
The Stanford campus is home to 127 national championships—more than any other college in the U.S.
At least one Stanford team has won a national championship during each of the last 39 years. This is the longest continuing streak in the nation....

Palo Alto is a glorious college sports town, and Stanford maintains 1 million gross feet of indoor facilities and 94 acres of outdoor fields, including the:

6,800-yard Stanford Golf Course
7,200-seat Maples Pavilion
4,000-seat Sunken Diamond
17-court Taube Family Tennis Stadium
2,500-seat, four-pool Avery Aquatic Complex
50,000-seat Stanford Stadium"

As far as the development of Silicon Valley is concerned, the Wikipedia writes:

"Stanford University, its affiliates, and graduates have played a major role in the development of [Silicon Valley]....

Thousands of high technology companies are headquartered in Silicon Valley.

Among those, the following are in the Fortune 1000: Adobe Systems, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Agilent Technologies, Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc., Applied Materials, Brocade Communications Systems, Cisco Systems, eBay, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Google, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, HP Inc., Intel, Intuit, Juniper Networks, KLA Tencor, Lockheed Martin, LSI Logic, Marvell Semiconductors, Maxim Integrated Products, National Semiconductor, NetApp, Netflix, Nvidia, Oracle Corporation, Riverbed Technology, Salesforce.com, SanDisk, Sanmina-SCI, Symantec, Tesla Motors, Western Digital Corporation, Xilinx, Yahoo!

Additional notable companies headquartered (or with a significant presence) in Silicon Valley include (some defunct or subsumed):

3Com (acquired by Hewlett-Packard), 8x8, Actel, Actuate Corporation, Adaptec, Actiance, Aeria Games and Entertainment, Akamai Technologies (HQ in Cambridge, Massachusetts), Altera, Amazon.com's A9.com, Amazon.com's Lab126.com, Amdahl, Aricent, Anritsu, AstraQom, Asus (headquartered in Taipei, Taiwan), Atari, Atmel, Broadcom (headquartered in Irvine, California), BEA Systems (acquired by Oracle Corporation), Cadence Design Systems, Cypress Semiconductor, Dell (headquartered in Round Rock, Texas), EMC Corporation (headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts), Extreme Networks, E*TRADE (headquartered in New York, NY), Fairchild Semiconductor, Foundry Networks, Fujitsu (headquartered in Tokyo, Japan), Groupon (headquartered in Chicago, IL), Harmonic, Inc., HCL Technologies (headquartered in Noida, India), Hitachi Data Systems, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, IBM Almaden Research Center (headquartered in Armonk, New York), iCracked, Infosys (headquartered in Bangalore, India), IDEO, Informatica, Intuitive Surgical, Kerio Technologies, LinkedIn, Logitech, Maxtor (acquired by Seagate), McAfee (acquired by Intel), Memorex (acquired by Imation and moved to Cerritos, California), MetricStream, Micron Technology (headquartered in Boise, Idaho), Microsoft (headquartered in Redmond, Washington), Mozilla Foundation, Move, Inc., Nokia (headquartered in Espoo, Finland), Nokia Solutions and Networks (headquartered in Espoo, Finland), NXP Semiconductors, Nook (subsidiary of Barnes & Noble), Olivetti (headquartered in Ivrea, Italy), Opera Software (headquartered in Oslo, Norway), OPPO, Palm, Inc. (acquired by Hewlett-Packard), Panasonic (headquartered in Osaka, Japan), PARC, PayPal (it has been demerged from Ebay), Pixar, Playdom, PlayPhone, Qualcomm, Inc. (HQ in San Diego, CA), Quanta Computer, Quantcast, Quora, Rambus, RSA (acquired by EMC), Samsung Electronics (headquartered in Suwon, Korea), SAP AG (headquartered in Walldorf, Germany), Siemens (headquartered in Berlin and Munich, Germany), Sony (headquartered in Tokyo, Japan), Sony Ericsson, SRI International, Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle Corporation), SunPower, SurveyMonkey, Synopsys Inc., Tata Consultancy Services (headquartered in Mumbai, India), Tibco Software, Tesla Motors, TiVo, TSMC, Twitter, VA Software (Slashdot), VeriSign, Veritas Software (acquired by Symantec), VMware, WebEx (acquired by Cisco Systems), @WalmartLabs (acquired by Walmart Global eCommerce), YouTube (acquired by Google), Yelp, Inc., Zynga"

The impact of Stanford University alumni on the economy is massive, as noted at Best Value Schools (by ROI), is that:

"The combined annual revenue of all the companies that have been founded by Stanford alumni is over $2.7 trillion, equivalent to the tenth largest single economy in the world."

One can also rank the universities in terms of their actual "money clout", i.e. their total college endowments, which of course may not fully reflect their actual sustained current strength, but rather the accumulation of money over time. Money breeds money. According to U.S. News, here is the Top 10:

1. Harvard University - $36,429,256,000
2. Yale University - $23,858,561,000
3. Stanford University - $21,466,006,000
4. Princeton University - $20,576,361,000
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - $12,425,131,000
6. Texas A&M University - $10,521,034,492
7. University of Michigan - $9,603,919,000
8. University of Pennsylvania - $9,582,335,000
9. Columbia University - $9,223,047,000
10. University of Notre Dame - $8,189,096,000

A somewhat older, but also useful list for a general overview is The World’s 50 Wealthiest Universities, which lists the universities in the following order: Harvard, Yale, KAUST (Thuwal, Saudi Arabia), Texas (System), Stanford, Princeton, California (System), MIT, Michigan, Texas A&M (System), Notre Dame, Columbia, Cambridge UK, Northwestern (Illinois), Pennsylvania (Penn), Chicago, Oxford UK, Duke, Emory, Washington U in St. Louis, Cornell, Virginia, Rice, USC (Southern California), Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Ohio State, NYU, Johns Hopkins, Pittsburgh, Penn State (System), Minnesota, KSU (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), Brown, Singapore, North Carolina, Washington (Seattle), Osaka, Kyoto, Purdue, Richmond, Wisconsin (Madison), Pomona, Williams, Illinois, Caltech, Amherst, Boston College, Nanyang Tech (Singapore), Rockefeller U.

So how about the number of billionaire alumni?
CNBC Inside Wealth has the following list:

1. Harvard University - 52 billionaire alumni - $205 billion
2. University of Pennsylvania including Penn's Wharton School of Economics - 28 billionaire alumni - $112 billion
3. Stanford University - 27 billionaire alumni - $76 billion
4. New York University (NYU) - 17 billionaire alumni - $68 billion
5. Columbia University - 15 billionaire alumni - $96 billion (Warren Buffett)
6. Massachusetts Institute of Technology - 15 billionaire alumni - $114 billion
7. Cornell University - 14 billionaire alumni - $35 billion
8. University of Southern California (USC) - 14 billionaire alumni - $32 billion
9. Yale University - 13 billionaire alumni - $77 billion
10. University of Cambridge, UK - 11 billionaire alumni - $48 billion

Another measure are the number of CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) of Fortune 500 companies, compiled by BestColleges.org, CEOs who are accounted for by 38 universities and colleges in the following ranking order:

Harvard, Stanford, Penn, MIT, Cornell, Chicago, Northwestern, Columbia, Yale, SMU, USC, NYU, Texas A&M, Princeton, Notre Dame, San Diego State, Penn State, Purdue, Michigan, Kansas, Georgetown, Cincinnati, Babson, Duke, Minnesota, Brown, Pittsburgh, Clark, Oklahoma, Tufts, San Diego, Virginia, Charlotte, Berkeley, Colorado, Wayne State (Detroit), Boston College, Houston.

But what about the ability of universities to retain members of their incoming freshman class, something which CollegeChoice.net rates as 50 Colleges and Universities with the Happiest Freshmen. Here is their ranking primarily by freshman retention rate: Yale, Chicago, Soka University (Orange County, California), Princeton, Amherst, Stanford, Penn, Dartmouth, MIT, Virginia, Carleton (Minnesota), Harvey Mudd (Claremont), Hillsdale (Michigan), Harvard, Pomona, Notre Dame, Brown, Duke, Middlebury, Johns Hopkikns, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Haverford, Davidson, Tufts, North Carolina, USC (Southern California), Michigan, Naval Academy, Williams, Columbia, Vassar (Poughkeepsie, NY), Northwestern, Washington U St. Louis, Cornell, Caltech, Vanderbilt, Hamilton, Georgetown, Rice, Berkeley, UCLA, William & Mary, Florida, Rochester, Northeastern (Boston), Worcester (WPI, Massachusetts), Wesleyan (Middletown, CT), USMA (West Point), Wellesley (Massachusetts). Interesting is that many of the colleges and universities with superb freshman retention rates require on campus living or college or dormitory housing. That surely must help young students from becoming isolated from their peers and must instill a feeling of identification with the university or college they are attending.

Last but not least we have the year 2016 rankings of 380 colleges and universities in the USA by The Princeton Review, which "surveyed 136,000 students from across the country". They have many rankings lists. Take a look there for many more interesting ways of viewing the university scene.

"Legal Scholars" Inciting Disobedience of U.S. Supreme Court Decisions Appear Not to Understand the Fundamentals of "The Law"

2015-10-13T20:25:00.001+02:00

America currently has numerous serious problems, many of which directly impact Europe, not the least of which are people in the legal profession who appear not to understand "the law".

Our statement above reacts to an article at cnsnews.com headlined Legal Scholars Urge Officeholders: Refuse to Accept Same-Sex Marriage Opinion as Binding Precedent.

To our great astonishment so-called "legal scholars" urge government officials in the United States to ignore U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

The entire basis of "law and order" in the civilized world, especially for people conservatively minded, is that law court decisions must be obeyed, even if they involve minor transgressions such as illegal parking or minor traffic violations.

Imagine if U.S. citizens and residents could select which laws to follow and which to ignore. There would be anarchy and chaos everywhere. We already have enough examples worldwide of the consequences of the breakdown of judicially imposed "law and order".

How can people within the legal profession seriously incite government employees to disregard U.S. Supreme Court decisions and thus to feel free to "pick and choose" the laws and court decisions that they choose to obey in the exercise of their paid and sworn duties?

They have a legal option: if government officials disagree strongly with what the laws and court decisions tell them to do, then they should look for another job.

Who has the legal right here -- according to law?

It is the U.S. Supreme Court which possesses Constitutional jurisdiction as the nation's highest court to have the last say on what is constitutional and what is not constitutional as a matter of law.

Individual citizens, also as government employees, are free of course to have their own "opinions" about U.S. Supreme Court decisions and the legal, political, economic and societal issues to which those decisions may relate, but they have ZERO jurisdiction to decide what is constitutional as a matter of law and what is not constitutional in any particular government-related matter.

In the government offices which they hold, government officials are sworn to uphold the nation's laws, and what those laws require is decided by the nation's highest court, and not by individual government employees either in their private or employment capacities.

One can be sure that the present ultra-conservative U.S. Supreme Court has issued many more decisions which are repugnant to liberal views than the decisions they have made which are opposed by those who oppose the Supreme Court's decision in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.

Picking out one case that did not go their way as a case for disobedience is ludicrous. If what the "alleged" legal scholars write were true, then we could all just ignore any Supreme Court decision we chose. Just do as we please. LOL.

We say "so-called" and "alleged" legal scholars because the label "legal scholar" generally derives from some kind of authority of position granted to an individual by some organization or institution which is recognized as having the jurisdiction to grant that authority of position in contemporary American society.

But why give ANY credence to the decisions of those lesser institutions, including the titles they have granted, if the dictates of the much higher institution, the U.S. Supreme Court, are incited to be ignored?

What do we care what "title" some group has granted to ANYONE?

Thankfully, civilized society is governed by the sane consent of the governed to the main rules and orders of civilized life in a democratic nation such as the United States.

If that were not so, then people would feel free to challenge anyone and any institution, including the so-called "legal scholars" and the institutions who pay their salaries, to which the average U.S. citizen or resident has no "privity", i.e. they mean nothing to them, either in law or in fact.

Judge Learned Hand commented on "the spirit of liberty" as follows [formatted]:

"What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty?

I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts.

These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes.

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it."

If the dictates of the highest court of law of the nation are not to be observed, then government and academic positions are equally non-sacrosanct from challenge and can be alleged to mean "nothing". Who says you are who you are? What is the authority? And why should we recognize THAT?

Those who choose to attack the pillars of society must recognize that in doing so, they also destroy the foundation upon which they themselves are sitting.

It reminds us of James Clerk Maxwell's poem (Maxwell was the founder of electromagnetism and one of the greats of modern science) which he wrote as his "notes" regarding the President's Address at the British Association, 1874. His comments on "petty promotion[s] in nebulous kingdoms of mist" are instructive:

"In the very beginnings of science,
the parsons, who managed things then,
Being handy with hammer and chisel,
made gods in the likeness of men;

Till Commerce arose, and at length
some men of exceptional power
Supplanted both demons and gods by the atoms,
which last to this hour.

Yet they did not abolish the gods,
but they sent them well out of the way,
With the rarest of nectar to drink,
and blue-fields of nothing to sway.

From nothing comes nothing, they told us
naught happens by chance, but by fate;
There is nothing but atoms and void,
all else is mere whims out of date!

Then why should a man curry favour
with beings who cannot exist,
To compass some petty promotion
in nebulous kingdoms of mist?

But not by the rays of the sun,
nor the glittering shafts of the day,
Must the fear of the gods be dispelled,
but by words, and their wonderful play.

So treading a path all untrod,
the poet-philosopher sings
Of the seeds of the mighty world
the first-beginnings of things;

How freely he scatters his atoms
before the beginning of years;
How he clothes them with force as a garment,
those small incompressible spheres!

Nor yet does he leave them hard-hearted
he dowers them with love and with hate,
Like spherical small British A[...]
in infinitesimal state;

Till just as that living Plato,
whom foreigners nickname Plateau,
Drops oil in his whisky-and-water
(for foreigners sweeten it so);

Each drop keeps apart from the other,
enclosed in a flexible skin,
Till touched by the gentle emotion
evolved by the prick of a pin:

Thus in atoms a simple collision
excites a sensational thrill,
Evolved through all sorts of emotion,
as sense, understanding, and will

(For by laying their heads all together,
the atoms, as councillors do,
May combine to express an opinion
to every one of them new).

There is nobody here, I should say,
has felt true indignation at all,
Till an indignation meeting
is held in the Ulster Hall;

Then gathers the wave of emotion,
then noble feelings arise,
Till you all pass a resolution
which takes every man by surprise.

Thus the pure elementary atom,
the unit of mass and of thought,
By force of mere juxtaposition
to life and sensation is brought;

So, down through untold generations,
transmission of structureless germs
Enables our race to inherit the thoughts
of beasts, fishes, and worms.

We honour our fathers and mothers,
grandfathers and grandmothers too;
But how shall we honour the vista
of ancestors now in our view?

First, then, let us honour the atom,
so lively, so wise, and so small;
The atomists next let us praise,
Epicurus, Lucretius, and all.

Let us damn with faint praise Bishop Butler,
in whom many atoms combined
To form that remarkable structure,
it pleased him to call his mind.

Last, praise we the noble body
to which, for the time, we belong,
Ere yet the swift whirl of the atoms
has hurried us, ruthless, along,

The British Association
like Leviathan worshipped by Hobbes,
The incarnation of wisdom,
built up of our witless nobs,

Which will carry on endless discussions,
when I, and probably you,
Have melted in infinite azure
in English, till all is blue."

- James Clerk Maxwell,
Notes re the President's Address
at the British Association, 1874

Digital Privacy in Europe and the USA: California Governor Signs Landmark Electronic Communications Privacy Act Into Law

2015-10-09T21:21:00.000+02:00

We posted previously about developments in transatlantic digital privacy.

It is interesting in this regard to note that the landmark Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA viz. CalECPA) in the State of California, USA, has just been signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown.

CalECPA provides that a warrant is required for a great variety of digital searches and seizures by law enforcement agencies and similar bodies.

Read California Now Has the Nation's Best Digital Privacy Law in an article by Kim Zetter at WIRED, who writes:

"The landmark Electronic Communications Privacy Act bars any state law enforcement agency or other investigative entity from compelling a business to turn over any metadata or digital communications—including emails, texts, documents stored in the cloud—without a warrant. It also requires a warrant to track the location of electronic devices like mobile phones, or to search them.

The legislation, which easily passed the Legislature last month, is the most comprehensive in the country, says the ACLU."

Read the article here.

See EDRi for the newest developments in Europe on protecting digital freedom.

We are not always in agreement with the sources we cite, but one should be aware of what is going on in these areas of law, which impact everyone.

1410 Czech Prague Astronomical Clock Celebrated as October 9, 2015 Google Doodle

2015-10-09T17:29:00.000+02:00

Today, October 9, 2015,
the Google Doodle celebrates the
Prague Astronomical Clock
-- Prague orloj (Czech Pražský orloj) --
whose first recorded mention was October 9 in the year 1410.

"Prague (Praha, CZ) - Karlsplatz (Karlovo nám) Uhrenturm" by Guido Radig - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Commons.
View the amazing functions that this astronomical clock already had -- more than 600 years ago and more than 100 years PRIOR to the solar-centric 1543 Copernican Revolution of Copernicus.

"Schema Orloj en". Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.

European Union Data Transfer Agreement with the USA Struck Down by High Court

2015-10-06T20:42:00.001+02:00

See Europe’s Top Court Strikes Down ‘Safe Harbor’ Data-Transfer Agreement With U.S. at TechCrunch.

Google Goes to Alphabet Officially Following the Real Alphabet Leader

2015-10-03T19:17:00.000+02:00

Google has officially gone Alphabet.

But make sure you get OUR book FIRST

Click the link for the print version of
The Syllabic Origins of Writing and the Alphabet

Click the image above
for the Kindle edition for Kindle,
and the Amazon Kindle App for Android, iPad, iPhone

and then look at the later
-- now "going official" --

Google Alphabet.

We are ALWAYS ahead of the pack,
even ahead of Google's Alphabet.

When it comes to the REAL Alphabet,
there is only ONE leader,
and it is not Google.

Facebook Notes Gears Up for the Blogging Market

2015-09-26T22:45:00.001+02:00

Everyone a blogger now? as Facebook Notes makes substantial changes.

Andrew Tarantola has the story at Engadget in Now anybody can be a blogger using Facebook Notes.

Sky Earth Native America 1, Edition 2, eBook Version via Amazon for Kindle, Android and iOS

2015-09-22T16:14:00.003+02:00

Sky Earth Native America 1, Edition 2, by Andis Kaulins is available on Kindle eBooks via Amazon at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B015NNDU3M

and has the specifications listed below. The .pdf mixed text and image files have been converted as graphic images in order to have Kindle MOBI file versions that make it possible to view these volumes with Kindle, Android and iOS.

File Size: 73096 KB
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Andis Kaulins; 2 edition (September 20, 2015)
Publication Date: September 20, 2015
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B015NNDU3M
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray: Not Enabled
Word Wise: Not Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Sky Earth Native America 2, Edition 2, by Andis Kaulins is available on Kindle eBooks via Amazon at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B015NNWEAC

and has the specifications listed below. The .pdf mixed text and image files have been converted as graphic images in order to have Kindle MOBI file versions that make it possible to view these volumes with Kindle, Android and iOS.

File Size: 73875 KB
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Andis Kaulins; 2 edition (September 20, 2015)
Publication Date: September 20, 2015
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B015NNWEAC
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray: Not Enabled
Word Wise: Not Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Sky Earth Native America in TWO Volumes as Edition 2: Table of Contents for Volume 2: Mound Key, Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve, Florida as an Ancient Map of North America?

2015-09-22T14:53:00.004+02:00

Is Mound Key, Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve, Florida an Ancient Map of North America?

Sky Earth Native America 2: American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy, Volume 2, Edition 2, 262 pages, by Andis Kaulins. Publication Date: September 20, 2015. Language: English. List Price: $49.99. Trim Size 7" x 10" inches viz. 17.78 x 25.4 cm. Full Color on White paper. 266 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1517396831 (CreateSpace-Assigned). ISBN-10: 1517396832. BISAC: History / Americas. Create Space Title ID: 5745813. http://www.createspace.com/5745813

Table of Contents by Page and Subject for Volume 2, Edition 2

page 3 - Table of Contents, Volume 2
page 11 - Preface
page 13 - Book Publications by the Author on Law, Legal History, and Ancient Astronomy and Land Survey
page 17 - Mounds of the State of Florida Revised Map includes Mound Key as a Map of North America ca. 1150 B.C. [#61]
page 22 - The Ultimate Test for Art and Archaeological Aptitude - "ArtArchApt" Shows Your "ArtArchAptness" [#62]
page 25 - Mound Key and Other Sites in the Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve South of Fort Myers Florida as Stars of Cetus [#63]
page 28 - Dali and da Vinci through July 26, 2015 at "the Dali" Museum in St. Petersburg: Minds Machines & Masterpieces
page 28 - The Lake Jackson Mounds in the Florida Panhandle Mark a Rectangle of Stars to the Left of the Head of Cetus at the Lower Extremity of the Stars of Taurus [#64]
page 30 - The Grand Mounds at Little Talbot Island State Park in Northeast Florida near Jacksonville mark Ecliptic, Vernal Equinox, and Calculate Precession ca. 240 B.C. [#65]
page 33 - Shields & Grant Mounds at the Mill Cove Complex Jacksonville Florida Have the Shape of a Fishhook & Fishing Weight as Located at the Mouth of Pisces [#66]
page 37 - Alternative Browser "Pale Moon" as a Fork of Mozilla Firefox but No Australis Keeps Firefox 28 Customizability Including Tabs BELOW the Address Bar and Full Profile Migration
page 40 - Shell Rings Sapelo Island Darien Georgia Mark Upper Stars of Pisces as Early Snorkeler Water Serpent Whale/Manatee, Shark, Sardine, Octopus, Starfish and Tropical Fish [#67]
page 44 - Pinson Mounds in Tennessee -- Largest Middle Woodland Mound Complex in the USA -- Sauls Mound, Ozier Mound, Earthworks -- Mark the Stars of Cassiopeia as a Bird [#68]
page 48 - Terra Ceia Island and Madira Bickel Mounds Between St. Petersburg and Bradenton Florida Represent Stars in Cetus as Mortar Pestle Dough & Bakers Peel [#69]
page 50 - Long Key White Sand Mound Boca Ciega Bay Gulf Coast Florida St. Petersburg as Stars of Cetus and Eridanus [#70]
page 54 - It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear: Sequential Presentation of Information More Important than Content
page 54 -Big Mound City and the Big Circle Mounds in Florida Marked Neighboring Groups of Stars in Cetus Separated by the Celestial Meridian in ca. 670 A.D. [#71]
page 58 - Philip Earthworks at Lake Marion, Florida show the Circle of Stars at 34 Ceti, 38 Ceti, 39 Ceti and 42 Ceti, with 34 Ceti the Star On the Edge of the Circle [#72]
page 60 - Fort Center Lakeport Florida Mounds Earthworks Mark Cetus Left of Stars Marked by Big Circle Mounds [#73]
page 62- Letchworth-Love Mounds Monticello Florida's Largest Pre-Columbian Earthworks, Mark Stars of Aries [#74]
page 64 - Kolomoki Mounds Blakely Largest in Georgia mark the Bright Stars of Aries at the Vernal Equinox ca. 200 BC [#75]
page 66 - Antiquarian Discovery Charles Dickens Pickwick Papers
page 68 - Tick Island DeLeon Springs Lake Woodruff Florida marks Stars at the Circlet of Pisces [#76]
page 72 - Rollins Shell Ring and "Ringlet" Mounds Fort George Island Cultural State Park Jacksonville Florida, SW of the Grand Mounds Little Talbot Island State Park, Mark Stars of Pisces at Alpha Piscium and Portray a Man of Native America [#77]
page 75 - Tomoka Mounds Middens Ormond Beach Florida Mark Primarily the Stars of the Lower Fish of Pisces as a Shark with the Head to the Left and the Body to the Right [#78]
page 78 - Turtle Mound Largest Shell Midden USA Near New Smyrna Beach in Florida Marks Delta Piscium and the Mount Royal Temple Mound Near Welaka Marks Xi Piscium: Map of Florida Mounds of the Lower Fish of Pisces [#79]
page 81 - Does Mankind Really Want Mysteries of the Past to be Solved? Facts as Unwanted Visitors in the World of Academic and Other Wishes and Emotions [#80]
page 85 - Native America Contributions to Modernity: Maize (Corn), the Potato, the Tomato, Tobacco, and Machu Picchu [#81]
page 89 - Machu Picchu Peru Marks Ophiuchus in its Architectural Design Construction as Inca Cosmological Levels[#82]
page 92 - Intihuatana (Inti Watana) at Machu Picchu as Solar Apex, Apex of Sun's Way on its Galactic Orbit in the Galaxy [#83]
page 93 - Other Stars Marked in the Environs of Machu Picchu? [#84]
page 94 - Cognition of Geographic Information and Human Spatial Orientation : Systems of Landmarks in Ancient Eras
page 95 - Population Genetics Puts Origins of Indo-European Languages in the East in the Corded Ware Kurgan Culture
page 103 - New Genetic Research Says Human Out of Africa Migration Was Via Egypt and Not Via Ethiopia
page 104 - Saksaywaman in Cuzco, Peru Represents Aquila as the Quechua ch'aska kancha "Stellar Constellation" Cha(s)kay Waman, the Falcon Constellation [#85]
page 112 - SaksayWaman as Star Groups of the Heavens Between Tullu Mayu and Sapphi Mayu, the Ends of the Milky Way [#86]
page 115 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman as Inca Astronomy - Image 1of 14 Decipherment Images taken Left to Right - Here Marking Libra, Virgo, Corvus, and the Equinox Line [#87]
page 117 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman as Inca Astronomy: Image 2 of 14 Marks Crater & Tail of Hydra [#88]
page 118 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman - Image 3 of 14 Marks Leo Cancer Hydra Canis Minor & Major and Canopus [#89]
page 119 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman: Image 4 of 14 Marks Orion Gemini Taurus Auriga [#90]
page 120 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman: Image 5 of 14 Marks Perseus Pleiades Aries Andromeda Pegasus [#91]
page 121 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman: Image 6 of 14 Marks Cassiopeia Equinox Cepheus [#92]
page 122 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman: Image 7 of 14 Marks Draco Aquila Cygnus Lyra Ophiuchus Cygnus Cepheus [#93]
page 123 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman: Image 8 of 14 Marks Serpens Caput Sagittarius [#94]
page 124 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman: Image 9 of 14 Marks Inca ATOQ the Fox, Scorpio (tail to the left) [#95]
page 125 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman: Image 10 of 14 Marks the Great Llama Centaurus Lupus [#96]
page 126 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman: Image 11 of 14 Marks Llama Cancha Yutu Tinamou [#97]
page 127 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman: Image 12 of 14 Marks Crux the Southern Cross [#98]
page 128 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman: Image 13 of 14 Marks Dark Constellations Toad Hanp'atu Serpent Mach'acuay [#99]
page 129 - Decipherment of SaksayWaman: Image 14 of 14 Marks the End Section of Mach'Acuay the Dark Constellation [#100]
page 131 - A "Readable" Full Decipherment Photo Image for SaksayWaman via a Link to the Bitmap [#101]
page 132 - Qurikancha Gold Altar Map Cuzco Peru Inca Inti Sun Temple as Crux Southern Cross plus Milky Way and Galactic Meridian [#102]
page 139 - Rock Art Ererê Brazil Uses Same Astronomical System as Found at Cusco: Inscripcoes em rochedos do Brasil Figure 4 Hartt: First of a Series of Six Postings [#103]
page 142 - Rock Art Ererê Brazil Figure 5 Hartt[#104]
page 143 - Rock Art Ererê Brazil Figure 6 Hartt[#105]
page 144 - Rock Art Ererê Brazil Figure 7 Hartt[#106]
page 145 - Rock Art Ererê Brazil Figure 10 Hartt[#107]
page 146 - Rock Art Ererê Brazil Figure 1Hartt[#108]
page 147 - "Heart of the World" at La Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City of Colombia, South America, Marks the Stars of Corvus and Also Has a Southern Hemisphere Sky Map Megalith [#109]
page 151 - Petroglyph Boulders viz. Petroglyphic Megaliths as Former Tribal Boundaries in Native America [#110]
page 153 - Kokopelli as Boötes Playing Flute Extending to Ursa Major: Mortendad Cave Petroglyphs Los Alamos New Mexico USA as Marking Stars of the Heavens ca. 1750 B.C. [#111]
page 154 - Kokopelli as Kokopetiyot (koko-petiyot): Boötes the Herdsman with Flute or Horn[#112]
page 156 - Blythe Intaglios California Arizona Border as Astronomical Tribal Landmarks Involve Environmental Suits[#114]
page 162 - Painted Rock, La Piedra Pintada, Carisa Rock viz. Carrol Rock, Carrizo Plain, San Luis Obispo County, Largest Pictograph Site in California, Marks Stars of Virgo [#115]
page 166 - Keystone Petroglyphs Mendocino County, California, Mark Stars of Virgo at the Autumn Equinox ca. 500 B.C. [#116]
page 169 - Spyrock (Spy Rock) Petroglyphs Mendocino County California Mark Stars of the Sky ca. 3000 B.C. [#117]
page 171 - The Klamath River Petroglyph Boulder as Sky Map [#118]
page 173 - A "Virgo" Fertility Origin for the Name of Oregon? [#119]
page 177 - Roosevelt Washington Columbia River Rock Inscriptions at Horsethief Lake State Park are Sky Map ca. 750 B.C. in the Shape of a Dog-like Animal's Head like Machu Picchu [#120]
page 180 - Lost Slakaiya Rock Petroglyphs of Eel River California are a Sky Map ca. 3400 B.C. and Perhaps an Ancient Map of the Northern Pacific Northwest Including Alaska [#121]
page 184 - Rock Formation at Big Butte Montana Marks Boötes [#122]
page 188 - Pictograph Cave State Park Montana Giant Cliff Wall "Cupules" (Holes) as Stars ca. 3000 B.C. [#123]
page 191 - Medicine Wheel Locations in Alberta, Canada Mark Stars of Sagittarius, Corona Australis and Telescopium [#124]
page 192 - Distribution of Pictographic Rock Art Sites in Alaska and a Decipherment Map as Astronomy by Location [#125]
page 195 - Tuxedni Bay Clam Cove Alaska Carvings Rock Art SW of Anchorage: Tuxedni as Cygnus Clam Cove as Aquila [#126]
page 204 - Alaska Rock Art Geographic Distribution Corresponds to Traditional Tribal Territorial Divisions of Cultures [#127]
page 215 - Feniak Lake Alaska Noatak National Preserve 3-Sided Megalith Marks Stars & Astronomical Parameters [#128]
page 218 - Rumsen Rock Presidio Monterey California Near the Sloat Monument is Fertility "Virgo Megalith" [#129]
page 221 - Rio Hurtado Valley Norte Chico Chile Rock Art Deciphered as Crux Centaurus Musca ca. 600 A.D. [#130]
page 225 - Anasazi Ancestral Pueblo Rock Art St. George Ivins Utah as Sky Map from Serpens Cauda to Aquila ca. 1000 B.C. at the Emergence of the Early Basketmaker Era II [#131]
page 227 - Skaitok Boulder Spence's Bridge British Columbia Canada as a Sky Map of Stars Similar to Anasazi Pictographs [#132]
page 230 - Sambaqui - Shell Midden Mounds of Santa Catarina, Brazil, Jabuticabeira Region Mark the Turtle viz. Tortoise of Heaven as the Stars of Columba at the Bottom of the World [#133]
page 235 - The Great Google Earth Eagle Mystery Challenge and the Seven Principles of an Eagle: The Eagle as the Messenger to the Great Spirit, the Creator [#134]
page 238 - A First Nations Clue to the Location of the Eagle of The Great Google Earth Eagle Mystery Challenge: The Boundary Commission Trail as the Oldest Highway in the West and the Boundary Between the USA and Canada [#135]
page 242 - Manitoba Manitou and the Eagle [#136]
page 243 - A Hypothetical Ancient Land Survey Map of Native America and the Cahokia Birdman Tablet Compared [#137]
page 245 - Location of the Mystery Eagle at the "Old" Pilot Mound, Manitoba: Aquila in Land Survey of Native America [#138]
page 248 - Jeffers Petroglyphs of Minnesota as Sky Maps ca. 750 B.C. Minnesota Marks the Stars of Hercules [#139]
page 252 - Petroglyphs of Area of Slabs, Area das Lajes, Amazon Basin, Manaus, Brazil, as a Sky Map ca. 3000 B.C. [#140]
page 255 - The Equator Megalith of Brazil Highway BR-174 North of Manaus near Rorainópolis, State of Roraima, Brazil [#141]
page 259 - About the Author

Sky Earth Native America in TWO Volumes as Edition 2: Table of Contents for Volume 1: Astronomer Surveyor Priests from Europe in Ancient Days?

2015-09-22T14:51:00.001+02:00

Sky Earth Native America 1: American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy, Volume 1, Edition 2, 266 pages, by Andis Kaulins. Publication Date: September 20, 2015. Language: English. List Price: $49.99. Trim Size 7" x 10" inches viz. 17.78 x 25.4 cm. Full Color on White paper. 266 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1517396817978-(CreateSpace-Assigned). ISBN-10: 1517396816. BISAC: History / Americas. Create Space Title ID: 5745812.
http://www.createspace.com/5745812

Table of Contents by Page and Subject for VOLUME 1, Edition 2

page 3 - Table of Contents: Volume 1
page 11 - Preface
page 13 - Prologue 1: The History of Civilization: Winston Churchill on the Rule of Law as a Prerequisite to Human Progress
page 15 - Prologue 2: Anthropomorphic Rocks Featured in America's 1st Surrealist Film, Object Lesson, already in the year 1941
page 22 - Prologue 3: Book Publications by the Author on Law, Legal History, and Ancient Astronomy and Land Survey
page 26 - The Great "Google Earth" Image Mystery
page 27 - The Great "Google Earth" Image Mystery: Hints to Solution
page 29 - Judaculla Rock Cherokee Dividings : Research Beginnings
page 30 - Starry Night Pro as our Astronomy Software for Research
page 31 - Judaculla Rock Decipherment 1
page 33 - Petroglyphs of North Carolina and Georgia Mark Stars
page 36 - Two Petroglyph Boulders of Northeast Georgia near Helen Mark Stars of Canis Major, Canis Minor, Orion & Taurus
page 38 - Allen Rock Petroglyphs in Habersham County, Georgia USA Mark Stars of the Heavens Principally Orion
page 41 - Hiawatha: Holder of the Heavens: A Solution to The Great Google Earth Image 34.890653 -83.880198 Mystery
page 46 - Hiawatha as Atlas and Orion, the Iroquois Aron-Hiawagon with Hiawagon = Hiawatha, the "Holder of the Heavens"
page 49 - Prehistoric Mankind's Primary Technologies Were Rooted in Astronomy; Economies Were Based on Land & Property
page 51 - The Great Mound, Petroglyph and Painted Rock Art Journey of Native America Begins! [Posting #1 of this Series]
page 52 - Grave Creek Mound Archaeological Complex Moundsville West Virginia Marks Cygnus [Posting #2 of this Series]
page 55 - The Center of the Mound System of Native America: Great Serpent Mound, Newark, Chillicothe [#3 of the Series]
page 58 - The North Ecliptic Pole and Draco as Marked by the Newark Earthworks in Ohio [#4]
page 61 - Draco and the Hopewell Mounds of the Mound City Necropolis in Chillicothe, Ohio [#5]
page 62 - Precession: North Celestial Pole and Ursa Minor as Marked by Mounds and Earthworks in Chillicothe, Ohio [#6]
page 68 - Criel Mound Dunbar South Charleston West Virginia Mark Stars of Cepheus and North Celestial Pole in ca. 300 BC [#7]
page 71 - Wolf Plains Mounds of Ohio as Southeasterly Stars of Draco Near the North Ecliptic Pole [8th]
page 73 - Google Earth Pro Free as of February 1, 2015
page 73 - The Paint Creek Valley Mounds, Seip and Baum Earthworks, and Fortified Hill in Ohio as Stars of Ursa Major near the Big Dipper and North Celestial Pole [#9]
page 76 -The Great Serpent Mound in Ohio Marks Stars of Draco & Mounds and Earthworks Help to Calculate Precession [#10]
page 83 - Effigy Mounds National Monument, Harpers Ferry, Iowa, as Stars of Libra, Boötes, Ursa Major, Perseus, Pleiades [#11]
page 87 - Effigy Mounds at Poverty Point, West Carrol Parish, Louisiana as Astronomy: Thunderbird of the Pleiades [#12]
page 90 - Poverty Point Needs Review [#13]
page 91 - Painting in Cave of Indian, Tamaulipas, Burgos Municipality, Mexico, Marks Taurus, Orion ca. 2300 B.C. [#14]
page 96 - John Bedell on Aztec Surveying & Ancient Civilizations: Land Survey and Astronomy Drove Mathematical Progress
page 96 - Las Labradas Petroglyphs Baja California Sur Mexico Mark Tropic of Cancer Summer Solstice Canis Major [#15]
page 101 - Sierra de San Francisco El Vizcaino Reserve Baja California Sur in Mexico: Rock Art as a Sky Map ca. 1000 B.C. [#16]
page 105 - A Baseline X,Y Axis for An Ancient Native North America Land Survey with a Portrait of an Astronomical Land Surveyor as an Ollama Game Player on Tlachtli [#17]
page 109 - Etowah Ocmulgee Lamar Mounds Georgia Mark Summer Solstice ca. 1200 A.D. and 1450 A.D. Respectively [#18]
page 112 - Great Thunderbird Challenge for World's Archaeologists, Astronomers Archaeoastronomers: 1 Petroglyph 60 Stars!
page 115 - The State of Modern Archaeology and Astronomy: Thundering Acclaim for the Thunderbird Challenge or Not?
page 123 - Y-Axis of Native North America Land Survey - Herschel, Saskatchewan Canada to Ancient Sites in Mexico [#19]
page 128 - The Bottom of the Y-Axis of the Ancient Native North America Land Survey by Astronomy in Mexico: Monte Alban, Santos Reyes Nopala, Mitla, Rio Copalita [#20]
page 132 - Rock Art Sites of Southern Saskatchewan, Canada, Mark Stars of Scorpio and Autumn Equinox ca. 3000 B.C. [#21]
page 134 - Herschel Petroglyphs, Monoliths & Rocks Mark Primarily Stars of Scorpio and Autumn Equinox ca. 3000 B.C. [#22]
page 139 - Herschel Petroglyphs Monolith #1 as Sky Map ca. 3000 B.C. and Survey Plan of Ancient Native North America [#23]
page 143 - Herschel Petroglyphs Monolith #2 Marks Stars at Head of Scorpio Marking Autumn Equinox ca. 3000 B.C. [#24]
page 146 - Herschel Petroglyphs Monolith #3 Marks Scorpio [#25]
page 148 - Thunderbird of Roche Percée Petroglyphs of Saskatchewan Canada Marks Stars Below Hydra by Canis Major[#26]
page 153 - Temple of Seven Dolls Dzibilchaltun Merida Marks Front Shield Stars of Orion at Celestial Equator ca. 200 B.C. [#27]
page 157 - Mitla in Oaxaca Mexico Marks Stars of Lepus Columba [#28]
page 159 - Palenque Chiapas Mexico Marks the Stars of Columba [#29]
page 161 - Texas Man-With-Raised-Arms Petroglyph Marks Stars of Taurus at Palo Duro Canyon (2nd largest in USA) [#30]
page 164 - North Dakota Mounds at Valley City State University Medicine Wheel Park Mark Stars of Serpens Caput and Ophiuchus and the Autumn Equinox in ca. 3000 B.C. [#31]
page 166 - The Megalith of Cañon el Porvenir Zaragoza, Coahuila, Mexico near the Twin Peaks of Los Picos de Davis and near Del Rio, Texas Marks Gemini ca. 3000 B.C. [#32]
page 170 - Rock Art Sites in Southwestern Arizona Mark Stars of Leo and the Summer Solstice ca. 3000 BC at Quitobaquito [#33]
page 173 - Toltec Mounds Arkansas Mark Stars of Auriga as a Boat, plus Milky Way, Galactic Equator & Galactic Meridian [#34]
page 175 - Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma Mark Stars Between Gemini Auriga and Lynx and Mark the Galactic Meridian [#35]
page 177 - Cahokia Mounds Platforms & Palisades Mark Stars of Ursa Major as a Bow-and-Arrow Wielding "Galactic" Hunter [#36]
page 181 - Cahokia Monks Mound Birdman : Mystery of Official Cahokia Logo Tablet and Monks Mound [#37]
page 183 - Cahokia Monks Mound : The Missing Heart[#38]
page 185 - Cahokia at the Heartland of Ancient Native America! [#39]
page 189 - Cahokia Birdman Tablet Has Sky Map Etched on the Stone Surface: The Crosshatch Back Side Diagonals Each Marked Six Degrees of the Heavens: The Birdman was Surely the "Astronomer Surveyor Priest" [#40]
page 195 - The Winterville Mississippi Mounds Mark Theta Aurigae at Mound A and Nearby Stars in Auriga Lower than the Upper Toltec Mounds Star Menkalinan [#41]
page 198 - Marksville Emerald Mound and 46 Locations in Louisiana and Mississippi Mark Stars of Auriga: The Indian Trail Natchez Trace Thus Followed Edge of the Milky Way [#42]
page 202 - Moundville Earth Mounds near Tuscaloosa Alabama Mark Stars of Perseus [#43]
page 205 - The Shelton Stone Mound Complex Group 2 near Jacksonville Alabama Marks Stars of Perseus [#44]
page 208 - The Shelton Stone Mound Complex Group 1Marks Stars of What We Today Call Camelopardalis Above Perseus [#45]
page 209 - Shelton Stone Mound Complex Group 3 near Jacksonville Alabama Marks the Pleiades and Stars of Aries [#46]
page 210 - Flinders Petrie and the Shelton Mound Wall and Boulder Complex Groups 12 3 Together as a Weaver & Vertical Warp-Weighted Backstrap-Type Loom [#47]
page 217 - The Bottle Creek Mounds North of Mobile Alabama Mark the Stars of the Pleiades [#48]
page 219 - Ancient Mounds of the Florida Peninsula Mark the Stars of Cetus -- Crystal River Mounds, Horr's Island (now the "other" Key Marco), Miami Circle and More [#49]
page 224 - Crystal River Mounds of the Crystal River Archaeological State Park in Florida Mark Stars at the Head of Cetus [#50]
page 226 - Crystal River Mounds Megalith (Stela #1) Deciphered [#51]
page 233 - The "Next" Great Google Earth Image Mystery [#52]
page 235 - Brickell Point Miami Circle Florida as a Sky Map[#53 - #57]
page 245 - Miami Circle, Nazca, Northern Hemisphere Sky Map, Aztec Calendar Stone, Izapa Stela 5, Google Earth Mystery [#58]
page 255 - Location of Next Google Earth Image Mystery Image [#59]
page 258 - The Fact Avoidance Syndrome in Mainstream Science
page 258 - Nazca (Nasca) Mystery Image as Anthropomorphic Cupule Marking of Stars of Andromeda and Pisces on Earth [#60]
page 264 - About the Author

The next posting has the Table of Contents for Volume 2 of Sky Earth Native America.

What About the European - Native American Connection via Haplogroup X? Sky Earth Native America Published in TWO Volumes as Edition 2: General Description

2015-09-22T14:22:00.003+02:00

What About Haplogroup X?
Was there European influence via ancient seafarers in Native America?

Why do Native American populations have Haplogroup X?

Haplogroup X is also found in European populations, also e.g. especially in the Orkney Islands of Scotland.

Did the megalithic culture of Europe, found extensively on the Orkneys, bring systematic astronomy to the New World thousands of years ago?

The Wikipedia writes at Haplogroup X (mtDNA):

"Haplogroup X is found in approximately 7% of native Europeans, and 3% of all Native Americans from North America.... Sub-group X2 appears to have undergone extensive population expansion and dispersal around or soon after the last glacial maximum, about 21,000 years ago. It is more strongly present in the Near East, the Caucasus, and Mediterranean Europe; and somewhat less strongly present in the rest of Europe. Particular concentrations appear in Georgia (8%), the Orkney Islands (in Scotland) (7%), and amongst the Israeli Druze community (27%). Subclades X2a and X2g are found in North America, but are not present in native South Americans."

The book Sky Earth Native America has now now been published in TWO Volumes as Edition 2 and may provide some answers to the above questions.

Sky Earth Native America has been published as a book in TWO Volumes via CreateSpace.com and can be viewed at the following two links. Both volumes are "Edition 2" since there had to be a change made from "Edition 1", which is no longer published, and that is why this posting has been amended as follows:

http://www.createspace.com/5745812 Sky Earth Native America 1: American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy, Volume 1, Edition 2, 266 pages, by Andis Kaulins. Publication Date: September 20, 2015. Language: English. List Price: $49.99. Trim Size 7" x 10" inches viz. 17.78 x 25.4 cm. Full Color on White paper. 266 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1517396817978-(CreateSpace-Assigned). ISBN-10: 1517396816.
BISAC: History / Americas. Create Space Title ID: 5745812.
http://www.createspace.com/5745813 Sky Earth Native America 2: American Indian Rock Art Petroglyphs Pictographs Cave Paintings Earthworks & Mounds as Land Survey & Astronomy, Volume 2, Edition 2, 262 pages, by Andis Kaulins. Publication Date: September 20, 2015. Language: English. List Price: $49.99. Trim Size 7" x 10" inches viz. 17.78 x 25.4 cm. Full Color on White paper. 266 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1517396831 (CreateSpace-Assigned). ISBN-10: 1517396832. BISAC: History / Americas. Create Space Title ID: 5745813.

Both volumes have the same cover except that one has "Volume 1" on the front cover and the other has "Volume 2" on the front cover. The earth image on the cover was created using public domain space photos of the Earth from NASA.

Although this publication is primarily for my own records, there may be a few persons who are interested in acquiring these two volumes. The following two postings after this one present the Table of Contents of each book volume.

Both book volumes contain the following basic book description:

"Alice Cunningham Fletcher observed in her 1902 publication in the American Anthropologist that there is ample evidence that some ancient cultures in Native America, e.g. the Pawnee in Nebraska, geographically located their villages according to patterns seen in stars of the heavens. See Alice C. Fletcher, Star Cult Among the Pawnee--A Preliminary Report, American Anthropologist, 4, 730-736, 1902.
Ralph N. Buckstaff wrote: "These Indians recognized the constellations as we do, also the important stars, drawing them according to their magnitude. The groups were placed with a great deal of thought and care and show long study.... They were keen observers.... The Pawnee Indians must have had a knowledge of astronomy comparable to that of the early white men." See Ralph N. Buckstaff, Stars and Constellations of a Pawnee Sky Map, American Anthropologist, Vol. 29, Nr. 2, April-June 1927, pp. 279-285, 1927.

In our book, we take these observations one level further and show that megalithic sites and petroglyphic rock carving and pictographic rock art in Native America, together with mounds and earthworks, were made to represent territorial geographic landmarks placed according to the stars of the sky using the ready map of the starry sky in the hermetic tradition, "as above, so below".
That mirror image of the heavens on terrestrial land is the "Sky Earth" of Native America, whose "rock stars" are the real stars of the heavens, "immortalized" by rock art petroglyphs, pictographs, cave paintings, earthworks and mounds of various kinds (stone, earth, shells) on our Earth.

These landmarks were placed systematically in North America, Central America (Meso-America) and South America and can to a large degree be reconstructed as the Sky Earth of Native America."

Both volumes have the following "internal" cover:

I also appended the following information about myself as the author:

"Andis Kaulins is a joint EU and USA citizen, born in Germany in 1946, who received his B.A. from the University of Nebraska in 1968 in English and Political Science and his J.D. (Doctor of Jurisprudence) law degree from Stanford University Law School in 1971.

Kaulins is an alumnus associate of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, an international law firm headquartered in New York City. Kaulins is also a former FFA Law Lecturer in Anglo-American Law, University of Trier Law School, Trier, Germany, where he taught Anglo-American Law, Legal Research and Legal Writing to ca. 200 students per semester.

Kaulins is a co-author of the leading German-English English-German Dictionary of Business, Commerce and Finance, published by Langenscheidt and Routledge, now in its 4th edition in the Langenscheidt version under lead author Ludwig Merz. The other co-author is Dr. phil. Heinz Werner.

Education, Past Positions and Publications

- Lincoln High School, Lincoln, Nebraska

- B.A. University of Nebraska

- J.D. Stanford University Law School

- Associate: Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, an international law firm headquartered in New York City

- University of Nebraska Law School -- Project on Appellate Court Delay (a National Center for State Courts project working with the Nebraska Supreme Court as a staff attorney)

- Arizona State University Law School -- Project on Law Enforcement Policy and Rulemaking (writing Model Rules of Procedure for police departments of major US cities)

- University of Kiel Law School, Germany -- Visiting Fellow, Institut für Ostrecht (East-West trade, Soviet Union, divided nations (Germany, Korea), Latvian Supreme Court decisions)

- FFA Law Lecturer in Anglo-American Law, University of Trier Law School, Trier, Germany, teaching Law, Legal Research and Legal Writing to ca. 200 students per semester

- Pharmaceutical and computer company consultant

- Co-author: Langenscheidt Routledge German-English English-German Dictionary of Business, Commerce and Finance

- Author: Stars Stones and Scholars

- Author: Ancient Signs: The Alphabet and the Origins of Writing

- Author: The Syllabic Origins of Writing and the Alphabet (Create Space print edition) (Kindle ebook edition)

- Men's Golf Champion at the age of 61 at the Mosel Golf Club, Cochem, Germany"

Online Fantasy Sports and Gambling and Gaming Laws : What is Legal? What can be Prohibited?

2015-09-21T23:22:00.002+02:00

The paternal nature of gaming and gambling lawmaking arises out of the well-meaning illusion that human vices can be eradicated by prohibitions, a faulty line of thinking already clearly repudiated by the failure of the Prohibition of alcohol beverages in the USA via the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which was subsequently repealed by the 21st Amendment to that same Constitution -- for the simple reason that the law did not work.

Amber Phillips at The Fix in the Washington Post asks:

Are daily fantasy sports even legal?

American and international laws on gaming and gambling reflect the minds of legislators trying to cope with "games of chance" in the real world.

What are the odds that the legislators have it right? Not very good.

Anyone who does not realize that life itself is in many respects a "game of chance" just has not been around long enough or seen enough. Life is a lottery in many, even important, aspects. You roll the dice and take your chances.

Is there ANY empirical evidence anywhere that gambling and gaming laws work, e.g. that they actually help to eliminate gambling or gaming addiction?

While it is regrettably very true that excessive gambling can cause personal and/or family ruin and can also be the cause of great harm to third parties, is there ANY evidence that legislation in force achieves ANY of the goals that moralistic prohibitionary laws intend? or are people simply kidding themselves?

The harms that excessive gambling viz. gaming cause should of course be reduced, but what is the right way to do it?

Chief among these harms is the simple fact that too many people modernly spend too much time on gambling viz. gaming pursuits, often to the detriment of their family, profession, and social and other responsibilities. How is that to be corrected?

Various age-old human vices may be bad, but simple prohibition does not appear to be the right method to get rid of them.

For laws, there has to be some empirical proof that prohibition-type legislation works. What is that proof for current gambling and gaming laws?

Certainly the prevailing standards are ridiculous,
and not just in the United States.

Take Germany as an example, where the German Lottery is state-owned and is a marvelous source of income for the government, expressly prohibiting private institutions from doing the same. Does that make it better? See:

The German Lottery

Gaming in Germany

We understand very well society's need to keep people from gambling away their fortunes, or their salaries, simply for the sake of gambling (or gaming).

Those who are addicted to such pursuits and who risk their financial well-being must ultimately be taken care of by others, so that the State has an over-riding interest to make sure this does not happen, at least, as far as possible. Anyone who wants to gamble away his or her fortune can still do so in the present world and "a fool and his or her money is easily parted". Do not worry about that. Many even do that on the stock market. Can we prohibit that gambling too?

Instead of strict prohibitions, why not put LIMITS on how much anyone can game or gamble in a given year, or month, or week, based on how much they earn, own or have? Why do gambling laws have to be totally permissive or totally exclusionary? Why not have the tax authorities issue individual gambling permits for given amounts, based on a person's financial returns?

A similar solution would be a possibility for alcohol abuse and drunk driving. One strike and you are out. Prohibit purchase and use of alcohol for offenders, not for those who can deal with alcoholic beverages responsibly.

Gambling and Gaming Laws and Online Fantasy Sports : What is Legal? What can be Prohibited? - See more at: http://lawpundit.blogspot.com/2015/09/gambling-and-gaming-laws-and-online.html#sthash.5jdWTlkn.dpuf

Stay Away from the New Sway of Microsoft 365

2015-09-19T12:32:00.000+02:00

Swayed Away! and do we mean AWAY.

Check out this Sway! "Swayed Away: The Problems With Microsoft's Sway"

We tried the new Microsoft 365 addition "Sway" today and here are the first text additions we made via the "plus symbol" that appeared when we clicked our first "card" which consisted originally of 5 points, as we added points 6 and 7:

6. What a complicated mess!!!!
7. Oh boy, it gets worse.

We have no idea who Microsoft has been hiring in recent years to design its programs viz. (modern-day jargon) "apps", but there are serious problems in Redmond.

It is clear that some things appear to be much faster under the hood in terms of better "app" programming, but the user interfaces have simply been awful, and Sway is no exception as we were confronted with various text and graphic layers of who knows what. Ridiculous!

We were fed up with the app Sway in no time because of a labyrinth of illogical paths that someone apparently thinks to be clever, but which your average user is going to throw into the wastebasket because of the underlying sentiment of "who needs that kind of a complicated mess!"

Interface designers and programmers forget the essential truth that PC and mobile "screens" move "bits" and "bytes" around, just like in the original days of the digital revolution. Nothing has changed on that score.

We can in fact describe those groups of "bits" and "bytes" as being essentially what people call "text" and "graphics". So we are dealing with text and images.

THAT'S IT. THAT's ALL THERE IS TO IT.

The job of app viz. program software designers is to forge the middle-man medium between "user" and "machinery" in order to get the software and hardware to do what the user wants as fast and efficiently as possible, or, if you are an artistic sort, as fast, as efficiently, and as creatively as possible.

To put it simply, as basketball's legendary coach John Wooden might have said, you have to do the basics FIRST. Things like, learn to tie your basketball shoe shoelaces properly so you do not get blisters because of unnecessary rubbing. Learn to make layups before you go out and practice razzmatazz behind-the-back sleuth passes, etc.

Sway follows the exact opposite philosophy and tries to present itself razzmataz-like from the outset and appears to hope that the user will figure out the basics later, if the user is willing to take the time and effort to do that. The answer is in many cases the user is probably NOT prepared to do that.

We applaud the idea of trying to come up with an application viz. program that makes the job of creation and sharing of text and images easier, but the less boilerplate the user must wade through, the better.

So we tried to illustrate the problems with Sway by placing the text of this posting into a Sway "Storyline" which we have titled "Swayed Away: The Problems With Microsoft's Sway". See Check out this Sway! "Swayed Away: The Problems With Microsoft's Sway"

It did not take long for the first serious impediment to appear as we clicked on the "insert" button (a menu item whose design seems to go back 40 years) via which we were going to insert this text posting into Sway from Blogger.

Sorry, but the only thing we saw there were the "suggested" inserts, consisting of photos of Microsoft founders and other Redmond or otherwise located dignitaries. We had to click on the "downward" arrow next to "suggested" to get a short list of available sources, which were limited to OneDrive, OneNote, Facebook, Flickr, Bing, PicHit, YouTube, Twitter, + Add Source, Upload.

Kind of limited, we thought. We clicked "+ AddSource" and were then asked "Where do you want to get content from? Tell us all of your favorite places to find content for Sways, and we'll work on adding them. Thank you for your help." This is followed by unchecked boxes for iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, Pinterest, Instagram, Vimeo, Vine and an option line to enter another app viz. program at "Other" (Please specify), all followed by two clickable box buttons of "Not now" and "Send".

Entering the app "Blogger" and clicking "Send" did not result in an affirmation of any kind that the suggested "other" app had been sent, but rather, the screen returned to the same Sway into which we were trying to insert Blogger material.

What were we to do now?

So we clicked the next "menu" item, "Cards" which led us to a dropped-down kind of menu at the left of the screen with the overall heading "All Cards" and various options under that:
the option "Text" (and the submenu items "Text" and "Heading"),
the option "Media" (and the submenu items Picture, Video, Tweet, Embed, Chart (Preview),
and the option "Group" (and the submenu items Automatic, Stack, Comparison, Slideshow, and Grid).

As we passed the mouse cursor over "Text" we got a pop-up text reading "Insert Text Card".

Clicking that item produces a NEW card under the previous one which contained the title heading.

What a surprise. They managed to fool us by thinking that the menu heading "Insert" would cover the insertion of text.

Hunt and peck. Hunt and peck.

Try to find out where some cloudy minds in Redmond had put the command one was looking for. You want to insert text? Do not look under "Insert". Look under "Cards". This is sort of like relearning the meaning of English-language words.

Gee, this is 21st century programming? Not in our book.

So we now "inserted" this entire text up to this point (i.e. this paragraph) in our Blogger posting in the "new" Sway card using the old tried and true method of copy and paste.

(subsequently)

The double-line formatting it presented to us was not our taste at all and as we tried to get that straightened out an animated bar of some kind kept disturbing us immensely as it popped up and down out of the right upper Sway area called "Preview". What it was doing there we have no idea but it was VERY disturbing and inimical to our work. Perhaps someone out there knows what it is.

Then we clicked on the menu item "Cards" and under that "Image" and double-clicked on the Microsoft image of what appear to be Microsoft graphic user interface designers about a mile distant from what we presume are their users.

April Fool . Nothing happened. If you think double-clicking here will work for you, you are mistaken! But wait, additional clicking produced two messages viz. "command options" in an upper Sway line (upon one click), and you have to see this to believe it, the first offering you to "clear selection (1)" and the second a button with the word "Add".

Why the negative first?!!! Ridiculous. Does the "Add" mean "arithmetic" or do they mean "add the selection"? and why is it a mile removed from the actual selected image?

With trepidation, we clicked the outdated "Add" clickbox button. The initially clicked picture now appeared as an "Insert" in the "Card" and then another image card appeared, perhaps because we had been double-clicking. I clicked on the trash can and the extra card disappeared. Well, at least they got SOMETHING intuitively right.

We then added a picture as a "Card", a video as a "Card", and a Twitter posting as a "Card". We were going to embed the following:

"<a class="embedly-card" href="http://lawpundit.blogspot.com/">LawPundit</a>
<script async src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js" charset="UTF-8"></script>"

but met an impediment via the Sway message that "Sorry, we currently only support iframe based embeds." Copying that text is not allowed, so you have to write the whole sentence out by hand if you want to use it, as here. That is hardly sensible, these non-copy parts of apps and programs. To what purpose??

So we added the iframe tags

<iframe src="http://lawpundit.blogspot.com" style="width: 90%; height: 300px"
scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0" vspace="0" hspace="0">
</iframe>

No cigars. Sway gives us the message: "Sorry, we do not currently support non-secure embeds. Please use an embed with an HTTPS source."

So we tried this one:

<iframe src="https://www.createspace.com/4923438" style="width: 90%; height: 500px"
scrolling="yes" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0" vspace="0" hspace="0">
</iframe>

Forget it. Sway tells us: "Sorry, we do not currently support this site. Please look at the more information link above for a list of supported sites." Well, why not say that at the very beginning.

So we did that and to our absolute astonishment we find a meagre list limited to the following "sources": Channel 9, Docs.com, Flickr, GeoGebra, Giphy, Google Maps, Infogram, Mixcloud, Office Mix, OneDrive (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF documents), Sketchfab, SoundCloud, Sway, Vimeo, Vine and YouTube.

That is all. It is a VERY limited world out there, from the viewpoint of Microsoft. And then we tried out the "play" feature and made some "edits". One can hardly imagine it worse.

Sway is a joke, given the possibilities of other programs in our digital world.

Conversion of Books to eBooks: Kindle-Capable MOBI Files Created From Book Docs viz. PDFs Having Both Text and Images Using K2PDFOPT and CALIBRE

2015-09-14T16:35:00.002+02:00

We make no warranty that this will work for you. Perhaps another, simpler method is available. When we first did this, none was. The procedure described below is complicated, but doable and it works for us. Here is what we do.

The objective: Creating a MOBI file usable in a Kindle publication when the book to be converted to Kindle format includes images. Normally, this can be difficult or impossible to do, since Kindle is set up mainly for text-based books. When we used the automatic CreateSpace link to convert our print book to Kindle, all we got back was impossible garble. We needed a different solution.

The method: Converting native (i.e. normal) pdf files of text and images to a pdf file consisting of each page as a singular graphic image page, i.e. including text and graphics as one image, which is then shown in that format on Kindle.

First: Create a normal "native" pdf file of your book from e.g. a .docx file which can be done in Microsoft Word (latest version) via the "Export" function under the menu item "File". This works for us in the subsequently described conversion procedure. We can not speak for pdf files created by other programs.

Second: Download and use K2pdfopt. Load that native pdf file into the file list of the program K2PDFOPT (download the version suitable for your system). K2pdfopt has dozens of commands for tweaking pdf files.

Our objective is to obtain each page of our book as a separate image for our pdf file and then automatically obtain a new pdf file of the whole book formatted in that manner.

Here is how you do it with k2pdfopt.exe.

The Command settings in k2pdfopt for conversion of pages as graphic images:

Load your normal "native" pdf file into the file list (do not click "native" ! in the lower commands or you just get a "normal" pdf file again).

Add these options from the options below that list:

Additional options:

enter exactly the following text with hyphens and space
-bp -mc

Command-line version options

enter exactly the following text with hyphens and spaces
-mode copy -de 1.5 -odpi 167 -h 1180 -w 800 -ws 0.2

Settings

Max columns: 1
Document Resolution Factor 1.0
Crop Margins (in): Left 0.00 Top 0.00 Right 0.00 Bottom 0.00
Pages to convert: (all)

Check (select) with the checkmark the following options:

Color output if your pdf has pages in color
Ignore small defects
Forget the rest unless you have special option requirements

At the right top of that same command page at k2pdfopt,
enter the following settings:

Device: Kindle 1-5
Width 800 px
Height 1180 px
DPI 167 (not sure if this is standard or determined by the pdf)
Conversion Mode: copy

Make sure the conversion mode is "copy". Then click "Convert All Files" and each page of your pdf will be converted to a graphic image, one by one as you can see on the screen. If not, you may have to reformat your Word file and make sure you have "page breaks" after each page or your result can lead to different pages on the screen than what you had in the original.

The resulting pdf is a pdf composed of each page of the original source converted to one graphic image (both text and graphic image parts). This, however, reduces what the reader can do with the text in Kindle but is better than any other alternative known to us. The reader can zoom any page like a graphic image for easier reading, which is not only useful for texts, but also great for graphic images. Negative is that the font and text sizes can not be changed as such per se but can only be "zoomed". But it works.

Download Calibre. That k2pdfopt pdf "image" file of a book can then be converted to the necessary Kindle "MOBI" format using the program Calibre which can be downloaded online at http://calibre-ebook.com/.

Load the resulting k2pdfopt pdf file into Calibre and select the "Convert books" option and then pick MOBI from the list of options. Calibre converts the pdf file to MOBI -- if memory serves correctly, placing it into an automatically created CalibreBooks directory in a file named after the book author. At least, that is what we use.

Download KindlePreviewer. Check now to see how the book looks with the KindlePreviewer, which allows you to see the book in all Kindle versions, also iOS. You can now upload your book to Kindle.

Caveat Emptor: Please note that we do not do any personal consultations on this matter. We are simply reporting our experience, and if it is useful to you, fine. If not, you may have to tweak your own solution. We have at least shown then how it "could" be done. Surely improvements are possible.

The Economist This Week Features "Time to Fix Patents"

2015-08-06T20:43:00.001+02:00

The Economist this week features the subject of Time to fix patents.

Patent Law and the European Union (EU): Software-Related and Business-Method Patents Limited by U.S. Supreme Court Decision in Alice and Other Cases

2015-08-02T23:30:00.001+02:00

Patent-happy lawmakers in the European Union (EU) should be paying particular attention to what is happening in the United States in terms of patent law developments regarding software-related and business-method patents.

We missed this earlier due to our massive work on the ancient land survey of Native America by astronomy, but we were gratified to read a perspicacious article by Steven Seidenberg at the ABA Journal in Business-method and software patents may go through the looking glass after Alice decision.

We were light-years ahead of the competition -- i.e the rest of the legal community -- in our inexorable assessment more than 10 years ago and in years thereafter that patents had gotten totally out of hand and that something had to be done by the legal system to avert the economy being totally clogged by patent trolls and patents that had no business being granted.

The Alice case decision by the U.S. Supreme Court and several other patent decisions by SCOTUS have finally led to some long-needed reform of the patent monolith, although much more still needs to be done in the future to stop the pervasively negative influence that patent practices have had on technological innovation in recent years.

As Seidenberg writes:

“It’s a new world order in the aftermath of Alice,” says Dale S. Lazar, a partner in DLA Piper’s Reston, Virginia, office.

... and well it should be.

Read the whole thing here.

European Union Cookie Law Implementation is a Colossal Waste of User Time and Otherwise Valuable Webmaster Resources, Plugging the Networks Uselessly and Slowing Down Browsing

2015-07-27T19:27:00.002+02:00

The wheels of law turn slowly and one would think that something sensible is being done in the interim by the powers that be, but it is difficult in the present case to discover what that might have been.

We posted about the impending and in many regards superfluously invasive effects of the European Union Cookie Law more than three years ago, see e.g.:

How surprised we were then as a "publishing" blogger to receive an email today, July 27, 2015, from Google and the Google Ads Policy Team regarding "Important information regarding the user consent policy" which reads as follows:

"Dear Publisher,

We want to let you know about a new policy about obtaining EU end-users’ consent that reflects regulatory and best practice guidance. It clarifies your duty to obtain end-user consent when you use products like Google AdSense, DoubleClick for Publishers, and DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Please review our new EU user consent policy as soon as possible. This requires that you obtain EU end users’ consent to the storing and accessing of cookies and other information, and to the data collection, sharing, and usage that takes place when you use Google products. It does not affect any provisions on data ownership in your contract.

Please ensure that you comply with this policy as soon as possible, and not later than 30th September 2015.

If your site or app does not have a compliant consent mechanism, you should implement one now. To make this process easier for you, we have compiled some helpful resources at cookiechoices.org.

This policy change is being made in response to best practice and regulatory requirements issued by the European data protection authorities. These requirements are reflected in changes recently made on Google’s own websites.

Thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

Regards,
The Google Policy Team

© 2015 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043

As a publisher using a Google ads product, you are receiving this email to inform you of an important policy change."

We were gratified to see among the "EU cookie law solution choices" at cookiechoices.org that the solution we recommended more than three years ago, Cookie Consent by SilkTide, has emerged as the most popular solution. That is the good news.

The bad news is that the lawmakers at the European Union (EU) appear in the intervening years to have made little or no progress in adopting a user-friendly and webmaster-friendly set of rules and solutions regarding opt-ins and opt-outs for cookies.

Quite the contrary, they are contributing to a massive bloating and absolutely useless boilerplate bottlenecking of the Internet, thereby costing users valuable time by demanding even more superfluous clicks via the consenting process for every cookie-using web presence. A ridiculous state of affairs.

Opting in or out of cookies can be better and faster done simply by making the appropriate changes to the cookie options in modern browsers. The EU law is a colossal waste of time for webmasters, bloggers and users. WHO is responsible for this nonsense? They should not be in Brussels.

When one takes a look at the Cookie Consent Kit that the EU has developed, one really must ask for whom it was designed. Code-savvy webmasters need little coding assistance of this kind, whereas coding novices who run blogs or websites via the many portals and services offered, can do nothing with that overly complex, virtually useless kit. We will be surprised if anyone uses it.

We ourselves, as already stated more than 3 years ago, rely on the simple solution that SilkTide presents. Thank you.

The Wisdom ? of Parliaments and the Case of Weather Forecast Pioneer Admiral Robert FitzRoy

2015-07-12T22:27:00.000+02:00

How misled can your average politician or scientist be in thinking what is right?
today and yesterday?

Consider the story of the fate of weather forecast pioneer
Admiral Robert FitzRoy,
captain of the HMS Beagle for Charles Darwin's famous voyage.

Peter Moore at BBC News relates that story to us in
The Birth of the Weather Forecast
where we read informatively that:

"When one MP suggested in the [House of] Commons in 1854 that recent advances in scientific theory might soon allow them to know the weather in London "twenty-four hours beforehand", the House roared with laughter."

As amazing as it may appear to us in our modern world today, the idea of the possibility of "weather forecasting" was considered a lunacy by most people in mainstream politics and science as late as the 19th century.

Indeed, weather forecast pioneer Admiral Robert FitzRoy, "the father of weather forecasting", met with vast resistance in his era, but as Moore tells us:

"[T]oday his vision of a public forecasting service, funded by government for the benefit of all, is fundamental to our way of life.

His department, which began with a staff of three, now employs more than 1,500 people and has an annual budget of more than £80m....

Dame Julia Slingo, the Met Office's current chief scientist explains: "FitzRoy was really ahead of his time. He was not mistaken or eccentric, he was just at the start of a very long journey, one that continues today in the Met Office."

Little has changed in people, politics or science in the intervening 161 years.

Mankind remains as difficult to teach to rise above its biases, ignorance and superstitions as it was in the Commons of 1854 where weather forecasting was literally laughed out of the House -- by the unfit.

Paradoxically, Darwin is famous
but who knows about FitzRoy?

And yet we all should daily thank FitzRoy, and not Darwin.

FitzRoy was right -- weather can be forecasted.
Not perfectly, but enough to be of a very big help to mankind.

Darwin on the other hand told us that the "fittest" survive.
When we view the daily news, however, we are not sure about that.

Things appear to be more chance than merit,
and probabilities seem to guide survival outcomes more than fitness.