Crown of Thorns

Dear Commons Community,

There are many heroic stories coming out of Paris of people especially firefighers who risked their lives during the blaze that engulfed Notre Dame on Monday.  Rev. Jean-Marc Fournier is credited with running into the cathedral to help save religious relics among which was the Crown of Thorns believed to be worn by Jesus Christ during his crucifixion.  The Crown of Thorns was brought to Paris by French King Louis IX in 1238. The Catholic Church believes it is a relic of the wreath of thorns placed on the head of Jesus Christ.

Rev. Jean-Marc Fournier, the chaplain to the Paris Fire Brigade who previously served as a military chaplain in Afghanistan, entered the cathedral with firefighters and helped form a human chain to remove some of the artifacts, the Washington Post reported.

A local journalist shared Fournier’s efforts by posting a photo of the chaplain and a story of his heroism on Twitter, detailing how he helped save the Crown of Thorns.  

“Father Fournier is an absolute hero,” a first responder told Irish radio station NewsTalk Tuesday.

“He showed no fear at all as he made straight for the relics inside the cathedral and made sure they were saved. He deals with life and death every day and shows no fear.”

Philippe Goujon, the mayor of Paris’ 15th Arrondissement, told reporters gathered outside Notre Dame Tuesday that Fournier insisted he be allowed into the smoldering building with firefighters.

Fournier was previously recognized for comforting victims and praying over the dead in the wake of the 2015 attacks that left 130 dead.

“I gave collective absolution, as the Catholic Church authorizes me,” he was quoted by Sky News quoted him at the time.

Paris’ Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Twitter recognized the volunteers who ran inside the cathedral to save the precious pieces and shared a video of some of the items being moved to the city hall for safekeeping. 

As Christians around the world observe this the holiest week of the year especially Good Friday, the saving of the Crown of Thorns has deep religious meaning.  Reverend Fournier and the firefighters who assisted him deserve the praise they are receiving.

Tony

Rev. Jean-Marc Fournier

Dear Commons Community,

The University of Tulsa with a $1 billion endowment for 4,000 students rolled out a plan last week that will result in the elimination of dozens of programs including majors, minors, and graduate offerings, but much of the resulting outcry has centered on undergraduate programs in the liberal arts.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“For too long, we have tried to be everything to everyone,” said Janet K. Levit, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, in remarks delivered to faculty and staff members and published on the university’s website.

Here’s how the university is defining itself now: “a high-touch undergraduate institution that provides all students with a firm grounding in critical and creative thinking, and that is STEM-heavy with a professional, practical focus.”

To that end, the restructuring enrolls new students in a University Studies program before they select their majors. It shifts departments into interdisciplinary divisions in its arts-and-sciences college. And it creates what it’s calling a “Professional Super College” combining business, health sciences, and law.

Restructuring programs and cutting majors are common moves for colleges looking to shore up the bottom line. But to some observers, the move was surprising at a private university that has a billion-dollar endowment to support some 4,000 students. Why is Tulsa making these changes, and what might its plan signal about higher education’s evolving identity and economics?

Role of the Liberal Arts

Tulsa is cutting graduate degrees in physics and chemistry, all of its theater degrees, and some business programs. But the cuts in its liberal-arts program, including the elimination of majors in philosophy and religion, have gotten the most attention.

Laura Stevens, an associate professor of English, tweeted that she is collecting material to “create an archive of testimonials from current TU students and alumni about the role the Liberal Arts have played in their education, career, life…” Matthew Dean Hindman, an assistant professor of political science, described in a Twitter thread the university’s actions as a “cartoonishly bad plan to eviscerate the liberal arts.”

While the changes touch every college at Tulsa, the one “far and away the most affected” is Arts and Sciences, Hindman said in an interview. It’s not just about cutting majors, he said. The plan suggests that the liberal arts are courses that students take when they first arrive in college, before they go on to major in something else. The move away from traditional departments, he said, will mean that students will experience the liberal arts in “broad categories” rather than disciplines.

A sad day for the liberal arts at Tulsa!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As I write this post, Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral is on fire. As reported by Reuters.

“Notre-Dame Cathedral went up in flames on Monday in a roaring blaze that devastated the Parisian landmark, a searing loss for the city and for France.

Flames that began in the early evening burst through the roof of the centuries-old cathedral and engulfed the spire, which collapsed, quickly followed by the entire roof.

A huge plume of smoke wafted across the city and ash fell over a large area. Parisians watched on, many of them lost for words.

“Like all our compatriots, I am sad this evening to see this part of all of us burn,” President Emmanuel Macron tweeted.

“Basically the whole rooftop is gone. I see no hope for the building,” said witness Jacek Poltorak, watching the fire from a fifth-floor balcony two blocks from the southern facade of the cathedral, one of France’s most visited places.

Firefighters tried to contain the blaze with water hoses and cleared the area around Notre-Dame, which sits on an island in  

Buildings around were evacuated.

Nobody was injured, junior interior minister Laurent Nunez said at the scene, adding: “It’s too early to determine the causes of the fire.” France 2 television reported that police were treating it as an accident.

“Everything is collapsing,” a police officer near the scene said as the entire roof of the cathedral continued to burn.

Macron canceled an address to the nation that he had been due to give later on Monday evening. A presidential official said Macron was to go to the scene of the blaze.

The cathedral, which dates back to the 12th century, features in Victor Hugo’s classic novel “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.” It is a UNESCO World Heritage site that attracts millions of tourists every year.

The Gothic cathedral is famed for its many carved stone gargoyles, stunning stained glass windows and the flying buttresses that hold up its walls.

“There are a lot of art works inside…it’s a real tragedy,” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told reporters at the scene.

The cathedral was in the midst of renovations, with some sections under scaffolding and bronze statues were removed last week for works.

The wood and lead spire was built during a restoration in the mid-19th century, according to the cathedral’s website. (Reporting by Sybille de la Hamaide, Simon Carraud and Sudip Kar-Gupta Writing by Robin Pomeroy Editing by Frances Kerry).

What a loss and tragedy for France!

Tony

Simply incredible. pic.twitter.com/cWIpdMpfzy

— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) April 14, 2019

Dear Commons Community,

Over the weekend, the sports story was Tiger Woods victory at the Masters Championship in Augusta, Georgia.  In a spectacular return to past glory, Tiger Woods won the 2019 Masters on Sunday, his first victory in one of golf’s four major tournaments in over a decade.

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has an op-ed today commenting on the onset of artificial intelligence (A.I.) applications in the insurance industry.  It raises important issues regarding privacy.  Here is an excerpt:

“A smartphone app that measures when you brake and accelerate in your car. The algorithm that analyzes your social media accounts for risky behavior. The program that calculates your life expectancy using your Fitbit.

This isn’t speculative fiction — these are real technologies being deployed by insurance companies right now. Last year, the life insurance company John Hancock began to offer its customers the option to wear a fitness tracker — a wearable device that can collect information about how active you are, how many calories you burn, and how much you sleep. The idea is that your Fitbit or Apple Watch can tell whether or not you’re living the good, healthy life — and if you are, your insurance premium will go down.

This is the cutting edge of the insurance industry, adjusting premiums and policies based on new forms of surveillance. It will affect your life insurance, your car insurance and your homeowner’s insurance — if it hasn’t already. If the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions should vanish, it will no doubt penetrate the health insurance industry as well.

Consumers buy insurance from companies to protect against possible losses. But this contractual relationship is increasingly asymmetrical. The insurance companies once relied on a mix of self-reported information, public records and credit scores to calculate risk and assess how much to charge. But thanks to advances in technology, the capacity to collect, store and analyze information is greater than ever before.

2018 report from the consulting firm McKinsey notes that “smart” devices — fitness trackers, home assistants like Alexa, connected cars and smart refrigerators — are proliferating in homes. The “avalanche of new data” they can provide will change the face of insurance…

…Artificial intelligence, in all its variations, holds great promise. The automated processing can help cut down costs, and even save lives. But the  opacity around many applications of automation and artificial intelligence are reason for pause. Not only do people have limited access to the code that determines key facets of their lives, but the bar to understanding the “reasoning” of algorithms and data sets is high. It will get higher as more industries begin to use sophisticated technologies like deep learning.”

Tony

NASA Astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly

Dear Commons Community,

What happens to your body after nearly a year in space? Plenty. Most things return to normal once you’re back on Earth ― but not all of them.  That’s the findings of NASA’s “Twins Study,” the results of which were published Friday in the journal Science.    As reported:

The study tracked the physiological and cognitive changes of astronaut Scott Kelly as he spent 340 days in space, then compared them to his twin brother, Mark Kelly ― who is also a retired astronaut ― back home.

NASA collected and analyzed 317 stool, blood and urine samples from both Mark and Scott over the course of the year. It also tested such things as the twins’ memory, as well as their heart and eye function. (Scott also received a flu vaccine aboard the International Space Station ― the first vaccine ever administered in space ― and his body reacted appropriately. While aboard the ISS, his immune system was much more active than his twin, the study found.)

Although 559 people have gone to space, only eight have spent more than 300 consecutive days in orbit. This has led to a scarcity of information about what happens to the human body in microgravity over time ― important information to have if NASA is serious about sending humans to Mars in the coming decades. A trip to the Red Planet takes about 300 days.

Scott returned to earth roughly three years ago, and he is mostly back to his regular self, NASA found, including his immune system, cognition and microbiome. But 7% of his gene expression has yet to revert to its pre-flight status, potentially because of DNA damage due to increased radiation exposure. 

And in another genetic surprise, the ends of Scott’s chromosomes ― a protective sequence called telomeres ― actually lengthened in space. Typically those get shorter as we get older, and their length is correlated with age-related health risks like heart disease and cancer.

“So, certainly we imagined, going into the study, that the unique kinds of stresses and extreme environmental exposures like space radiation and microgravity, all of these things, would act to accelerate telomere loss,” Susan Bailey, a researcher at Colorado State University and a co-author of the research, said at a press conference earlier this week. “We were surprised.” 

But Bailey cautioned against getting your hopes up that NASA has stumbled across a cure for aging.

“I don’t think that [the elongation] can really be viewed as the fountain of youth and that people might expect to live longer because they’re in space,” she said.

NASA found that Scott’s telomeres shortened “within days of landing” back on Earth. It’s unclear why, exactly, though the explanation may be decidedly terrestrial: Scott’s diet in space contained more folate (vitamin B9), which likely played a role.

Overall, though, NASA researchers came away encouraged by the findings.

“The bottom line is,” Scott told Space.com, “from all these studies — and, granted, this is an experiment with one data point … would be that there’s nothing that we saw that would prevent us from going to Mars.” 

Interesting Stuff!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has just issued a study stating that President Donald Trump’s new tax law aided corporations so radically that twice as many companies paid no federal taxes whatsoever in 2018.  despite billions of dollars in profit, according to the new study.  As reported by Bloomberg and The Huffington Post.

The study found that 60 of some of the largest publicly held companies paid no taxes — compared with an average of about 30 each year from 2008 to 2015, before Trump and congressional Republicans passed the tax law that took effect in 2018. The measure heavily favors corporations and the wealthy.  Companies such as Amazon, Netflix, Chevron, Eli Lilly, Delta Airlines, General Motors, IBM and Goodyear were among the tax-free corporate titans.

The analysis is based on 2018 financial filings of the country’s largest 560 publicly held companies.         

The companies that paid nothing in taxes were “able to zero out their federal income taxes on $79 billion in U.S. pretax income,” according to the study, first  reported by the Center for Public Integrity and NBC News.

Corporations reaped the benefits of a tax rate slashed from 35% to 21% in Trump’s tax law, and exploited various deductions, tax credits and rebates. 

“Instead of paying $16.4 billion in taxes, as the new 21 percent corporate tax rate requires, these companies enjoyed a net corporate tax rebate of $4.3 billion, blowing a $20.7 billion hole in the federal budget last year,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy report says. 

Farm equipment manufacturer John Deere, for example, reported earning $2.15 billion in U.S. income before taxes. It owed no U.S. taxes in 2018 and reported the government owes the company $268 million because of various deductions and credits, the report says. 

The cut in the corporate tax rate alone will save corporations $1.35 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

As for the nation, revenues from the corporate tax fell by 31% in 2018  to $204 billion.

“This was a more precipitous decline than in any year of normal economic growth in U.S. history,” Matthew Gardner, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy senior fellow, wrote in the report.

Trump insisted before his law was passed that the corporate tax cut would pay for itself. He argued that the giveback would trigger a boom in business operations that would lead to increased taxes on ballooning income, which would plug the giant hole in the budget.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. The nation’s budget deficit is now the biggest in history. 

During his campaign, Trump vowed to eliminate the $19.9 trillion national debt in eight years. Instead, it jumped 41.8 percent in just the first four months of this fiscal year (which runs from October through September). 

An April Government Accountability Office report called the “federal government’s current fiscal path … unsustainable.” The cost of interest alone on the national debt runs $896 million each day.

Trump’s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow insisted Thursday that “economic growth” has already “paid for a good chunk” of the tax cuts. The budget outlook is “not as bad as many people say,” he said.

Bloomberg pointed out that Kudlow’s declaration defies data from his own administration.

What a fiscal mess Trump has gotten the country into.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York State officials ripped the Trump Administration after federal environmental officials signed off on General Electric’s clean-up of PCB-tainted Hudson River sediment, with Gov. Andrew Cuomo announcing plans for a lawsuit over the decision.

The Environmental Protection Agency, ignoring the complaints of New York politicians and environmentalists, granted GE a “Certificate of Completion” for its $1.7 billion removal of 2.75 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated river sediment north of Albany. Critics supported additional dredging to lower the level of contaminants.

“We take this effort seriously,” said EPA Regional Administrator Peter Lopez. “No person or organization will be let off the hook for the contamination of this historic and valuable waterway.”

Cuomo and state Attorney General Letitia James immediately declared plans for a lawsuit against the EPA over its decision regarding the tainted stretch of the 315-mile Hudson.

 “We know PCB levels remain unacceptably high in the riverbed and in fish,” said Cuomo. “Since the EPA has failed to hold GE responsible for fulfilling its obligation to restore the river, New York state will take any action necessary to protect our waterways — and that includes suing the EPA to demand a full and complete remediation. Anything less is unacceptable.”

Cuomo said the White House “time and time again puts corporations and polluters’ interests ahead of public health and the environment.”

GE spilled and discharged tons of PCBs — or polchlorinated biphenyls — from its factories north of Albany into the Hudson decades ago. The final “Certificate of Completion of the Work” for GE is likely more than five decades down the road, the EPA said.

“The EPA’s decision today is a failure of leadership by the Trump Administration to protect clean water for New Yorkers who are demanding a full cleanup of the Hudson River,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

Lopez said the remedial certificate did not rule out future dredging on the river.

“The dredging was very effective in removing the contaminated sediments,” added Lopez. “There are no hot spots in the Upper Hudson, only three localized areas of interest, as we call them.”

A GE statement said the EPA ruling confirmed that its clean-up project was a success, and the company promised to go forward with its Hudson River commitment.

“GE will continue to collect environmental data to assess ongoing improvements in river conditions and to work closely with EPA, New York State, and local communities on other Hudson environmental projects,” the statement said.

For those of us who live in New York, the Hudson River is one America’s remarkable waterways that was contaminated for decades by factories along its shores.  G.E. was a major polluter and legally fought any attempts by state and local governments to assume any responsibility for the damage done.  In 2005, G.E. agreed to dredge millions of yards of silt containing PCBs and other carcinogens.  The question is whether the dredging was enough.  According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the answers is no.  G.E. is admired in some corporate circles  but along the Hudson it is despised by many for what it did to our waterway.

Tony

Julian Assange Arrest in London

Dear Commons Community,

The following analyis is provided by the New York Times editorial staff.

“The arrest in London of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ends one bizarre saga, but opens a legal drama that is likely to stretch over many years and could probe uncharted areas of press freedoms and national security in the United States in the digital era. There is good reason to be watchful as the case unfolds.

Mr. Assange, a 47-year-old Australian, had spent almost seven years holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy, initially to avoid arrest on Swedish sex charges that have since been dropped, then British charges of skipping bail. But extradition to the United States was what Mr. Assange really feared, and what the cat-and-mouse game was always about.

It was in the United States that the materials posted on WikiLeaks created the greatest furor, first through the publication of a trove of classified documents supplied by an Army private, Chelsea Manning, and then by releasing material stolen from the computers of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The Obama administration was wary of pursuing Mr. Assange because WikiLeaks was essentially involved in investigative work common to a free press. But the Trump administration saw Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks as targets as soon as it took office. (Mr. Trump loved WikiLeaks in 2016 when it was embarrassing top officials of the Clinton campaign.) Two years ago, as director of the C.I.A., Mike Pompeo labeled WikiLeaks “a nonstate hostile intelligence service” after it released a cache of C.I.A. hacking tools. Efforts got underway then to build a case against Mr. Assange. This was confirmed through an inadvertent mention in a federal court filing last November.

Mr. Assange, meanwhile, managed to exhaust his welcome at the Ecuadorean Embassy, and on Thursday British police officers unceremoniously bundled the scraggly-bearded refugee off in a van. Soon after, Scotland Yard acknowledged that it was also acting on an American extradition warrant, after which a federal indictment was unsealed in the United States charging Mr. Assange with conspiring to hack a government computer.

The single charge is straightforward: It alleges that Mr. Assange helped the Army private break into a government computer in 2010 to steal classified and sensitive documents. According to the indictment, when Ms. Manning told Mr. Assange that she had no more material to send him, he replied, “Curious eyes never run dry in my experience.” Ms. Manning served almost seven years of a 35-year sentence for the leak, and is now back in jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.

The still-unproven charge is far less contentious than had it been, as widely anticipated, for espionage-related crimes. That would have been a direct challenge to the distinction between a journalist exposing abuse of power through leaked materials — something traditional newspapers like The Times do all the time — and a foreign agent seeking to undermine the security of the United States through theft or subterfuge.

These questions will arise in any event — starting with the extradition hearings, at which Mr. Assange’s lawyers are likely to argue that the American charges are politically motivated. And if Britain does extradite him, there is no certainty that the Trump administration, with its combative stance toward the press and its documented recent antipathy for Mr. Assange, will not throw more charges at him.

The issues WikiLeaks raises are vitally important. The responsibilities, ethics and rules of journalism are fast changing in an era when terabytes of secret data can be dumped in a flash, and when hostile governments like Russia’s can burrow into foreign computers for compromising information and then launder it through other channels.

The case of Mr. Assange, who got his start as a computer hacker, illuminates the conflict of freedom and harm in the new technologies, and could help draw a sharp line between legitimate journalism and dangerous cybercrime. Once in the United States, moreover, he could become a useful source on how Russia orchestrated its attacks on the Clinton campaign.

The administration has begun well by charging Mr. Assange with an indisputable crime. But there is always a risk with this administration — one that labels the free press as “the enemy of the people” — that the prosecution of Mr. Assange could become an assault on the First Amendment and whistle-blowers.”

This will indeed be a case that will be followed for years to come!

Tony

Holden Matthews

Dear Commons Community,

Louisiana authorities announced the arrest of Holden Matthews for arson in connection with the burning of three black churches.  As reported in the New York Times:

“While the victims prayed for the soul of the arsonist who burned down their houses of worship, investigators rushed to assemble clues, worried the assailant would strike again.

The detectives had noticed the same pickup truck in surveillance video footage near each of the three predominantly black churches that had been set ablaze and destroyed. They found the charred remains of a particular brand of gas can sold at a local Walmart.

Then the pieces came together, and the authorities announced the arrest of a 21-year-old white man who is the son of a local sheriff’s deputy and an aficionado of a subgenre of heavy metal, called black metal, whose most extreme practitioners in Norway have engaged in church burning, vandalism and killing.

In a Thursday morning news conference announcing the arrest of the man, Holden Matthews, the authorities said that they had not concluded their investigation and could not say whether racism had played a role.

Though the motive was less than clear, the results brought a measure of peace for a rural Cajun community that had been on edge since late March, when the first of the fires occurred.”

Congratulations to the authorities for taking quick action on these crimes.  And may the communities where the burnings took place find comfort in knowing that they can worship without fear.

Tony