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26 Nov 18:52

Kulminator in Antwerp, Belgium

As far as passwords go, the one required to enter Kulminator is far from indecipherable. You ring the bell, and when either Leen Boudewijn or Dirk Van Dyke—the elderly husband-and-wife team behind the bar—cracks open the door, you declare that you’ve come “to taste beer.” Only then will they step aside and grant you entrance.

Kulminator is equal parts beer-lover’s paradise and eccentric grandparents’ basement. Across from a shockingly impressive library of brews is a table cluttered with papers. You might find Van Dyke settled in there, reading the newspaper with a magnifying glass. Cuckoo clocks, piggy banks, and wreaths made from bottle caps and corks poke out among the many boxes covering the small space. Here, there is no attempt at the shiny, gastro-pub chic that’s overtaken other Antwerp bars. It’s all about the beer.

On any given night, the felt letter-board might list drafts ranging from a vintage Chimay Grande Reserve aged in rum barrels to Copenhagen's rare Mikkeller Black imperial stout. While they showcase beers from around the world, it's the Belgian brews, especially the Trappist varieties, that truly shine here: rich, creamy dubbels; bubbly, spicy tripels; tart krieken lambics; and more. If you visit around the Christmas season, you’ll also find bières de Noël, delightful winter warmers flavored with holiday spices. (Visiting in the summer months has its own perks, such as being able to use the courtyard in the back.)

In addition to the drafts, there are also thick tomes listing the hundreds of bottled options that range from new releases to precious aged varieties. Can’t find one of the beer-list binders? Just head to the giant book, displayed Bible-style, propped open and surrounded by candles on the bar.

A word of warning: Many of these beers pack a wallop. Take it slow and don’t come on an empty stomach. While Kulminator doesn’t serve full meals, they do offer meats and cheeses to pair with your brews.

26 Nov 15:18

What Is the Attention Economy? Here’s Why You Should Care

by Bertel King
attention-economy

There is a currency, online and off, more valuable than cash. It’s even worth more than your data. What companies increasingly want (ours included) is your attention. How do we make money when you aren’t paying us, and why is this a big deal?

What Is the Attention Economy?

The attention economy isn't limited to the internet
Image Credit: taha ajmi /Unsplash

When we discuss economics, usually we talk about money. In a monetary economy, money is the resource that’s up for exchange. Providers offer goods for sale, and we buy them.

In the attention economy, the currency is our attention. We’re offered information that may be financially free, but we pay with our attention.

We all have a limited set of time to walk this earth, which makes our time inherently precious. Our attention is a scarce resource, and the question facing many businesses is how to obtain it. They’re not alone. Non-profits and political organizations alike also compete for our focus.

The tactics have changed over the years. From newspaper salespeople shouting on street corners to commercials we can’t skip and news feeds determined by algorithms, the efforts to capture our attention are ever-changing.

Who Coined the Phrase “Attention Economy”?

American psychologist and economist Herbert A. Simon receives credit as perhaps the first person to describe the dynamics at work in the attention economy. He noted that in an information-rich world, a wealth of information results in a poverty of attention.

Simon died in 2001, having won the Turing Award and the Nobel Prize in Economics over the course of his life. Around that time, other academics inspired by Simon’s perspective such as Michael H. Goldhaber and Thomas H. Davenport were coining the phrase “attention economy.”

Who Funds the Attention Economy?

Many companies produce content that attracts eyeballs, and other companies pay those companies for access to those eyeballs. Think of anything you read or watch that is ad-supported, such as this website.

Newspapers that don’t get enough subscriptions, radio stations with too few listeners, and TV shows that don’t bring in a substantial number of viewers all fail to attract ad dollars. They’re not generating enough attention.

The Attention Economy and the Web

Woman looking at phone while at computer
Image Credit: William Iven/Unsplash

Ad revenue is just one of many ways of bringing in revenue, but it is the default and most dominant approach taken on the web. These ads depend on different metrics and technologies than those used in other industries.

Direct Ads & Ad Networks

Some websites sell ads directly. They offer companies a dedicated place to advertise to their readers, such as a banner ad across the top or the down the side. Advertisers are experimenting with every more creative (or blunt) ways to get us to view their ads, such as preventing us from closing an advert until after a certain amount of time has passed.

Direct ads aren’t limited to traditional websites. Social networks often use this model. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube make money selling ads to companies seeking to influence their millions or billions of users.

Many websites outsource the sales aspect to a third-party company. Google maintains one of the largest and most well-known of the networks: AdSense. Google provides websites with a short snippet of code to run on their website. Then Google connects ads with sites whose readers may be the most interested.

Cookies

Offline, ads tend to target publishers that appeal to a certain demographic. Companies looking to sell garden supplies place ads in gardening magazines. Want to sell car modifications? Try a racing channel.

On the internet, ads are less general. Thanks to tracking cookies and data generated through our online accounts, advertisers get to create detailed profiles specific to us. They can then serve us the ads we’re most likely to show interest in. If it feels like a certain ad is following you across the web, that’s because it is.

Page Views

Ads aren’t worth making if no one’s there to see them. How do advertisers know which websites can put their ads in front of eyeballs? Page views are the most prevalent metric companies use.

If a website receives millions of page views a month, then clearly people are looking. This has led to an internet culture driven on getting clicks, and all that clickbait headlines that entails.

Likes & Followers

Car beside a wall of graffiti that reads "All We Need Is More Likes"
Image Credit: Daria Nepriakhina/Unsplash

“Likes” are the positive affirmation users provide other users via built-in mechanisms such as the “Like” button on Facebook, the “Thumbs Up” on YouTube, and the “Heart” on Twitter. Receiving a large number of any of these measures is a way of indicating how much attention someone has received. Remember, if a certain number of people have liked something, even more have seen it.

Many of these likes come from people who follow someone else on social media, which keeps them informed on each new post. The number of followers gives an indication not only how much attention someone has received, but from how many people.

Issues Raised By the Attention Economy

Many of the contentious issues of our time are in part a direct result of the attention economy.

A Lack of Privacy

Prior to the web, the most specific information publishers could provide was perhaps an address and a phone number. Instead, they provided advertisers with general demographic data. Here is the area we serve. This is the average age of our viewers. This is how much money our readers tend to make.

Websites have more powerful tools at their disposal. Cookies can track an individual around the web and see which sites they visit. When you create an account, you give a website permission to log everything you do.

Companies claim this data is anonymous, but it’s easy enough for someone whose motivated to trace much of this information back to you.

Fake Ads, Polarization, and Outrage Culture

Endless arguments, the echo chamber, and misleading political ads clearly serve a disservice to our communities, democracies, and public discourse. Yet with so many people using and engaging with ads on social networks, it serves an enticing place for advertisers to grab your attention.

Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are decentivized from reducing outrage on their platforms (though Twitter has decided to stop accepting political ads). Outrage generates views, clicks, and more time spent on the site engaging in lengthy arguments and writing long diatribes.

YouTube’s algorithm is known to polarize people’s views, with each recommendation sending people further down the rabbit hole. Yet as long as people keep watching, that’s money in the bank.

For as long as there have been people, there have been disagreements. But the modern attention economy gives this difference a million microphones and generates profits from the noise that ensues.

Technology Addiction

Websites can see exactly which stories draw the most clicks or hold peoples’ attention the longest. With this data, we can better tune our content, making it harder for people to look away. The result is that people often don’t, at least not until they’ve already spent an hour or two more than they intended.

Online streaming services go even further. They analyze all the music or videos that we watch, compare them with others, and offer up recommendations tailored to our interests. Mobile games dish out notifications every few hours or days to draw you back in, just in case you were thinking of something else.

Peoples’ addiction to social media, online video, reading the news, and other online behavior isn’t an accident. This tech addiction is actively cultivated.

Do I Have Your Attention?

The attention economy is a complex ecosystem, where attention is more valuable than cash (typically, but not always, because attention leads to more cash). Who pays in this ecosystem?

  • You pay with your attention. Information sources compete for that attention in ever more intrusive and addictive ways.
  • Companies pay cash for that attention, whether to reach you with an advert or to turn your attention into a form of data-gathering.

The attention economy has enabled much of the web to happen. There are problems with the model, but with it generating so much wealth throughout the developed world, we can expect companies to try even more pervasive ways of grabbing our attention in the years ahead.

So you might want to get your hands on a time tracker to regain control of your time.

Read the full article: What Is the Attention Economy? Here’s Why You Should Care

26 Nov 14:47

Four Favorite Tools

by Kevin Kelly

We asked 150 remarkable creators to rave about four of their favorite tools. Their fabulous picks range from small phone apps to industrial-scale machines. It’s the usual diversity of Cool Tools in book form made by the Cool Tools team. We originally asked the guests to share these tools on our weekly podcast show which has been running for 5 years. We started with the best 150 shows so far, and then we compressed their recommendations into a 300-page book. Each spread of the book contains a short bio, four (sometimes five) tool reviews, illustrated, and information on where to get each tool.

Regular readers will notice that all the material in the book has appeared here on these pages. What the book provides, that this website does not, is an easy way to serve all the personal reviews at once. The guests include makers and creators like Adam Savage, Tim Ferriss, Kari Byron, Jimmy DiResta, Simone Giertz, Grant Thompson, April Wilkerson, and Bob Clagett. It’s handy, fun to read, very up-to-date, and useful.

Four Favorite Tools comes in two editions: a full color edition and a less expensive B&W version. Either would make a really great holiday gift.

-- KK

Four Favorite Tools: Fantastic Tools Selected by 150 Notable Creators ($40, Color) ($13, B&W)

Available from Amazon

Sample Excerpts:





26 Nov 14:46

Book Freak #28: A Guide to Personal Freedom

by mark

Book Freak is a weekly newsletter with cognitive tools you can use to improve the quality of your life.

Surgeon Don Miguel Ruiz had a near-death experience that caused him to rethink the way he had been living. He developed a set of four agreements with himself to help him life a more fulfilling life:
  1. Be impeccable with your word.
  2. Don’t take anything personally.
  3. Don’t make assumptions.
  4. Always do your best.

Use your words to create the life you want to live
“The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word. It sounds very simple, but it is very, very powerful. Why your word? Your word is the power that you have to create.”

Don’t swallow poison
“Taking things personally makes you easy prey for these predators, the black magicians. They can hook you easily with one little opinion and feed you whatever poison they want, and because you take it personally, you eat it up. You eat all their emotional garbage, and now it becomes your garbage. But if you do not take it personally, you are immune in the middle of hell. Immunity to poison in the middle of hell is the gift of this agreement.”

Ask questions instead of making assumptions
“If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don’t tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don’t understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions.”

Avoid self criticism by always doing your best
“Just do your best — in any circumstance in your life. It doesn’t matter if you are sick or tired, if you always do your best there is no way you can judge yourself. And if you don’t judge yourself there is no way you are going to suffer from guilt, blame, and self-punishment. By always doing your best, you will break a big spell that you have been under.”

Book Freak is one of four newsletters from Cool Tools Lab (our other three are the Cool Tools Newsletter, Recomendo, and What’s in my bag?).

25 Nov 18:30

For Sale: A 19th-Century Screw-Pile Lighthouse With a View of Key West

by Miss Cellania

A set of lighthouses off the Florida Keys is up for grabs now that the government no longer needs them. They spent 100 years warning sea traffic away from the coral reef several miles from shore, and they had to be hurricane-resistant, which required a design different from the brick and stone lighthouses you see elsewhere. One has already been given to a non-profit organization. Sand Key lighthouse, pictured above, has been on the auction block for most of this year. The other four will be given away, if the right owners can be found.  

Between 1852 and 1880, the U.S. government built six offshore reef lights. Also known as screw-pile lighthouses—because they stand on piles that are screwed into the sea bottom—these haunting towers look more like metal spiderwebs than buildings (a design that likely influenced a more famous tower across the Atlantic, built by an architect named A.G. Eiffel).

These outposts stand in just five feet of water, but they’re four to seven miles offshore, so the lives of their keepers came with distinct isolation. These lonely souls sometimes went weeks without human interaction. In some cases, the extreme solitude led to mental derangements. But on serene days, sharks swam by in crystal-clear waters, and nights were passed watching waves wash over the reef, illuminated by moonlight and burning whale oil.

While these lighthouses may seem like a bargain, ownership comes with the responsibility to maintain them as historic sites. Historian and president of the Florida Keys Reef Lights Foundation Eric Martin hopes to acquire Sand Key lighthouse and the others. He knows more about them than almost anyone, and tells the history of these lighthouses at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: State Library and Archives of Florida)

25 Nov 18:17

These Atlanta Hotel Bars Aren’t Just for Tourists

by Krista Miller
A shot looking toward the lounge and bar at hotel clermont in Atlanta
Hotel Clermont

Moody lobby lounges, drinks at bars with skyline views, and cocktail haunts inside ATL’s historic hotels

A hotel bar may not be the first place Atlanta’s city dwellers consider for cocktails or a glass of wine. However, that seems to be changing, as more Atlanta hotels focus attention on upping the drinks game with an emphasis on well-curated cocktail and wine lists meant to attract both locals and ATL tourists. Whether in town for business or a conference or just indulging in a weekend staycation as a local, grab drinks at one of these hotel bars around Atlanta.

Don’t see a favorite hotel bar listed? Send Eater Atlanta the details via the tipline.

25 Nov 18:16

Internet Archive To Preserve And Digitize Over 100,000 Vinyl LPs

by sodiumnami

Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library is digging up old vinyl records. These large black disks that are now being recognized for both their sound and aesthetic value will be collected, digitized, and preserved. The old vinyl records the Archive digs up will be added to their collection, as one of the resources the Internet Archive is compiling for their “Universal Access to All Knowledge”  campaign. The vinyl records will be joining the Archive’s collection of books and television recordings, as My Modern Met detailed: 

To do so, the Internet Archive has teamed up with the Boston Public Library earlier this year to digitize more than 100,000 audio recordings from the Boston Library’s sound collection. Within this assemblage are recordings in formats like wax cylinders, 78 RPMs, and LPs—although, at the moment, the project is focusing on the LPs.
CR Saikley, the Director of Special Projects at the Internet Archive, says, “The LP was our primary musical medium for over a generation. From Elvis, to the Beatles, to the Clash, the LP was witness to the birth of both Rock & Roll and Punk Rock. It was integral to our culture from the 1950s to the 1980s and is important for us to preserve for future generations.” These audio files were never translated into digital format, which means their content is at risk since it is locked in the physical vinyl. This makes the LP digitization project a priority for the Internet Archive and the Boston Public Library.
Currently, you can listen to 750 full LP albums by visiting Unlocked Recordings on the Internet Archive.

image credit: via wikimedia commons

25 Nov 18:16

Simple Tips for Vlogging: How to Create Better Content

simple tips for vloggingPhoto by martin-dm via iStock

The old adage "practice makes perfect" applies to a lot of things, including vlogging.

But when so many people are doing so many things with vlogs, the competition for an audience is definitely stiff.

That means that rather than going the trial-and-error route, you should set yourself up for success by following some tried-and-true tips for vlogging.

Below, check out our quick list of some simple vlogging tips to help you get started on the right foot!

How to Vlog: Learn How to Edit Videos

Let's work backwards and start at the end-product.

The vlogs you post on YouTube or whatever platform you use need to be polished and engaging, and that means understanding how to edit your videos.

Editing isn't just slapping different video clips together and adding a transition between them.

You need to use the editing process to make your videos engaging and dynamic. This means adding an intro sequence, an outro sequence, interesting transitions, weaving in B-roll, and adding music and on-screen effects like titles, to name a few.

Not sure where to get started? Check out the video above by Chris Hau.

Tips for Vlogging: Get the Right Gear

tips for vloggingPhoto by martin-dm via iStock

Getting geared up for making high-quality videos doesn't mean you need a $10,000 cinema camera and mic booms and all sorts of professional gear.

In fact, many vloggers use little more than their smartphone, a tripod, a light, and an external microphone to create really compelling videos.

If there's one piece of gear advice I bestow on you, though, it's this - get a gimbal.

You've probably seen your fair share of videos where the person in the video is sitting at home or standing outside or otherwise not moving around.

And while there is certainly value in these kinds of setups, your video will have an added layer of interest if you get mobile, and a gimbal will help you do just that.

horizon one gimbal

Gimbals are much more than a handheld stabilizer for your camera, too.

For example, the E-Image Horizon One gimbal shown above gives you full 360-degree movements on all three axes.

With advanced steady computing systems, it offers ultra-precise stabilization so you get super smooth footage that your viewers will appreciate.

You can record for 12 hours on the included batteries, so there's no lack of potential for getting incredible footage either!

Add to that a maximum payload of eight pounds and an accompanying smartphone app that allows you to modify the gimbal's settings to your precise specifications, and you have a rig that can greatly expand the creative possibilities for your videos.

See the Horizon One gimbal in action in the video above by Ikan International.

Vlogging Tips: Create a Compelling Story

vlogging tips 1Photo by martin-dm via iStock

Don't just talk at the camera in your vlogs. Instead, come up with a story that will engage viewers and compel them to watch your video from start to finish.

Creating a storyboard with a narrative for the video is a great way to come up with something of interest for your viewers.

The narrative should have three components: the setup, the conflict, and the resolution.

When setting up a video, explain to the viewers what the video is about - what's going on, who's there, what will you be doing, and so forth.

vlogging tipsPhoto by jacoblund via iStock

The conflict you present is any simple problem that you'll be addressing, whether it's a "how-to" vlog that teaches people how to do something, you talking about an important issue in the world today, or something in between.

Lastly, you want to bring resolution to the problem. Present ideas, solutions, and so forth. Explain to viewers how you've addressed the issue and what happened as a result.

Granted, each video you make isn't going to be about some earth-shattering problem that you've solved, but this notion of creating a narrative for viewers to follow is a great tool to use to create videos that keep people watching. That's just what you want!

How to Create a Good Vlog: Be Consistent

If your videos have consistency from one video to the next, you'll have a much greater chance of building a solid following with your vlogs.

That consistency needs to appear on multiple levels:

  • The type of content you discuss
  • The intro and outro sequences
  • The amount of videos you publish each week.

Along with that, aim to have a theme for your vlogs. That is, don't upload a vlog and title it "Vlog Day 1," as this tells the audience absolutely nothing about the content of the video.

Likewise, create interesting thumbnails that go along with your theme, again, in the hopes that it will engage viewers and compel them to click on the video to watch it.

Putting  in that extra effort to be consistent and have a theme will help you take your vlogging to another level!

Get more tips about how to vlog in the video above by famous vlogger Casey Neistat.

 




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25 Nov 16:44

How to Message Recruiters on LinkedIn the Right Way

by Shianne Edelmayer
message-recruiters

When searching for a job, at some point you’ll need to contact the company you want to work for. And that may mean you need to message recruiters on LinkedIn.

This can be a nerve-wracking experience, especially if you’re not used to doing it. However, using LinkedIn’s “InMail” service is actually easier than you might think.

In this article, we’ll explain how to message LinkedIn recruiters the right away—along with some do’s and don’ts for email etiquette as a whole.

Why You Should Message Recruiters on LinkedIn

How to Message Recruiters on LinkedIn

While anxiety-inducing, the act of reaching out is beneficial in helping you narrow down your search. This is because it lets you decide which companies and positions you want to apply for. It also gives you a good idea on what skills you need to improve in order to advance.

Think of cold emailing like a crucial aspect of career research. Maybe you’re interested in applying for a particular job, just not right now, and you want to know the interpersonal skills that the company searches for in potential candidates.

The practice of cold emailing can also help you get over the fear of emailing itself. By doing it a lot, you’ll learn how to write really good pitches.

When you message a recruiter on LinkedIn you’ll be using a service called LinkedIn InMail. In order to use InMail effectively, you’ll need a LinkedIn Premium account.

While you can message people without a Premium account, the big stipulation is that you need to be connected to them. If you’re reaching out to recruiters, the chances are high that you’ve never talked to them before.

Once you sign up for a Premium account, you’ll be given a set number of InMail credits: five messages per month.

If you want to know more about this service, here are some reasons why LinkedIn Premium is worth it.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Email Etiquette

The Best Way to Write a Cold Email

Before we show you how to use InMail, we should probably go through a few key “do’s and don’ts” when emailing people. These simple steps will keep you on a recruiter’s good side, and potentially increase your response rate:

Do:

  • Be conversational, approachable, positive, and enthusiastic. You don’t need to be overly casual, but a stiff opener is to your detriment. Get across the idea that you’re genuinely excited to learn more.
  • Make sure that you mention the post, person, or reason that prompted you to reach out to this recruiter. It tells them why you’re emailing, and makes it clear that you’ve thought your approach through.
  • Keep things short. Not only are long emails hard to read, but recruiters and hiring managers are busy people. They won’t have time to read essays.
  • Be polite and courteous. Again, you shouldn’t be stiff, but keep in mind you’re approaching strangers.
  • Think of cold calling like a networking opportunity. There’s no reason for this hiring manager to offer you a job on the spot. Better to play the long game and use it as a way to learn more about the company.

Don’t:

  • Pressure someone to give you a job. You’ll come off as entitled or needy.
  • Get angry if no one responds to your email. Sometimes that one-on-one communication isn’t meant to be.
  • DON’T SPAM. When you email someone, wait about one business week for them to respond. If they don’t reply, you can try sending off one more email to ask for a follow-up. If they don’t respond after that, don’t contact them. They’re clearly not interested in talking to you.

Now that you know the do’s and don’ts, let’s look at LinkedIn InMail.

How to Message Recruiters on LinkedIn

How to Message a Company on LinkedIn

First, make sure that you’re logged into your Premium account. Next, go to the profile page of the company that you want to contact.

While you can search for individual employees by name, there’s a high chance you won’t actually know the names of the recruiters you need to reach out to. By going to a company page, you’ll have to weed through a lot less, which makes your search easier.

For this article, let’s say you want to work at MakeUseOf. When you log onto the company page, click on the link that says See all [#] employees on LinkedIn.

Once you’re on the list, scroll through it.

Find the Right Person to Contact

When you’re scrolling through the list, you want to look for people whose job titles indicate that they are directly involved in the hiring process. These people will have up-to-date information on the company and the skills you’ll need in order to apply.

Additionally, you need to find employees you can actually send LinkedIn inMail to. Not everyone is open to them.

Once you find the right employee, click on their InMail button:

How to Use LinkedIn InMail to Message People

After you click the InMail button, a screen will pop up where you can compose your message.

Write Your Email

At the top of the message box, you’ll see the name of the employee, their picture, and their position at the company. Beneath that, you’ll see a section for your header, along with the email body.

At the bottom of the message box, there will be a line that shows your current InMail credits count. There’s also additional formatting options and a big blue button that says Send:

Send a Message to Someone on LinkedIn

Once you’re in the message box, you can compose your email. When doing so, make sure you keep in mind our list of do’s and don’ts for email etiquette.

After you’re done with your message, you can adjust it by using additional formatting tools located in the bottom left-hand corner of the message box. These tools are seen here in red:

Add a Picture to a Message on LinkedIn

Here, you have the option to add photos or attachments. However, because you’re reaching out to someone for the first time, we recommend that you don’t include them. They could lead your message to be marked as spam.

After you’re done formatting, press Send. And that’s it. That’s all you have to do to message a recruiter or hiring manager from a company. From here, it’s just a waiting game to see if they respond.

Does It Pay to Message Recruiters on LinkedIn?

Does Messaging Recruiters on LinkedIn Work

Yes, it does! Using InMail to contact recruiters actually works.

LinkedIn has its own set of tips for writing a good InMail on LinkedIn Help, and when I was reaching out to prospective employers myself, almost every single one of them emailed back.

By following our guide to messaging recruiters on LinkedIn you too could elicit a high response rate.

LinkedIn Profile Tips to Guarantee Success

Despite the prospect of cold calling being somewhat scary, it’s actually very useful. But messaging recruiters is no guarantee for career advancement. If you find you’re having no luck with it, there are other things you can do to get ahead.

With that in mind, here are the essential LinkedIn profile tips to guarantee success.

Read the full article: How to Message Recruiters on LinkedIn the Right Way

25 Nov 16:43

8 Simple and (Mostly) Free Ways to Improve Your Security

by Bertel King
simple-ways-security

We often think of security as something we can buy. While some code and computers are more secure than others, staying safe has more to do with our behavior.

Here are some ways you can change the way you use your computer to reduce risk to your data, privacy, and personal life.

1. Encrypt Your Computer

An open and exposed hard drive
Image Credit: Vincent Botta/Unsplash

A password prevents other people from logging into your computer when you’re away, but this doesn’t offer as much protection as it seems. Someone who knows how to take your hard drive out of your computer can access all of the data that you’ve created. That’s why you also want to encrypt your drive, so that others can’t access your data in this way.

Device encryption is usually a built-in option now, including on Windows 10. There are also free tools available that can do the job for you. VeraCrypt is one option that’s available for Windows, macOS, and Linux alike. But if you find this too complicated a job, many newer computers already come encrypted.

Your easiest option might be buying ones that does.

Download: VeraCrypt for Windows | macOS | Linux (Free)

2. Encrypt Your External Storage, Too

A USB stick
Image Credit: Sara Kurfeß/Unsplash

Encrypting the data on your computer is important, but you almost defeat the purpose of the entire exercise if you backup your machine to an unencrypted portable hard drive or carry files around on an unencrypted flash drive. You want to encrypt these forms of external storage too, that way gaining access to these drives take as much effort as breaking into your encrypted PC.

You can sometimes encrypt external storage using the same method you use for your computer. Linux users can do this by reformatting their drives into the encrypted LUKS format, which you can usually do without having to install any additional software.

On Windows and macOS, you can again turn to programs like VeraCrypt. There are also some external drives that come with software to handle the encryption for you.

3. Power Off Encrypted Devices

A powered off MacBook
Image Credit: Unsplash

Encrypting our data provides us with more security, but this is easier to circumvent while our machines are on and running. There are ways to acquire or bypass your password and gain access to decrypted data while your laptop is asleep.

To maximize your defenses when you’re not at your computer, power it all the way down. When your machine is fully powered down, someone must go through the effort of breaking encryption or attempting to guess your (hopefully longer) encryption password. These things are possible, but they take more effort or resources than many people are willing to put in.

4. Keep Your Data Offline

At the rate data breaches occur, we have much to be anxious about today. Purchasing an electronic device often means facing pressure to create another account for another service, where we will give someone else our personal contact information, maybe share our credit card, and generate a lot of revealing data.

One way to reduce this anxiety is to actively choose to keep your data offline. Popular wisdom right now may be to backup all of your files online, but you have other options. Portable hard drives and USB flash drives are more affordable than ever (and it’s easier now to encrypt them).

You can also choose not to purchase devices that require online accounts. You don’t need to buy a smart thermostat when a programmable one and knowledge of your own behavior can achieve a similar end result.

You don’t have to avoid all online services, but you reduce your risk if you don’t allow yourself to fall into the habit of signing up for every account you’re prompted to.

5. Turn Off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

Librem 13 kill switch

We live in what is in what is increasingly called an always-connected world. But just because you can live your life with an ever-present connection to the internet already established, that doesn’t mean you have to. You have the option to turn off your Wi-Fi connection. Better yet, tell your computer or phone not to auto-connect.

Manually connect to the internet whenever you’re ready to get online.

By only going online when you want to be online, and disabling your connection otherwise, you reduce a company’s ability to monitor what you do on your device and make it more difficult for someone to remotely gain access to your computer (while also cutting down on distractions).

If you purchase a model with privacy switches, you can physically sever the networking component, preventing remote access until you flip the switch again.

Treat Bluetooth the same way you do Wi-Fi. If you don’t have any devices currently connected, then turn it off. In both cases, you may improve your battery life in the process.

6. Disable Your Webcam and Microphone

Now that our devices come with webcams and microphones, there are more ways to compromise our privacy. People can not only view what we’ve saved to our computers or the websites we visit, they can see our faces and the rooms we’re in. They can hear our voices and those of our loved ones.

By default, your webcam and mic aren’t always on, but they’re lying dormant waiting for an app or command that triggers them to wake up. If you disable them, they won’t wake up even if a command comes in.

You can disable these devices at the software level. If your computer has privacy switches (or you use a desktop where the camera and mic have to be plugged in), you can do so at the hardware level. If nothing else, you can put a sticker over the webcam

7. Use Fewer Apps

The macOS dock on a MacBook
Image Credit: Mikaela Shannon/Unsplash

The more complicated a piece of software is, the more likely someone will find an exploit. That’s because there are so many components and lines of code for developers to write in a secure way. A single flaw in any aspect of the system is all it takes to break in.

Many times, the vulnerability someone exploits isn’t in the operating system itself but in a separate program that we chose to install. Think your web browser, office suite, or email client. Sometimes the risk comes via supposedly innocent apps like PDF readers.

If you install fewer apps, you not only reduce your likelihood of downloading malicious software, but you reduce your chances of being vulnerable to an exploit found in an otherwise legitimate app. You also protect yourself from being dependent on software that could go away once a developer or company loses interest.

8. Download Free and Open Source Apps

Everything that’s on your computer exists somewhere as a line of code. Whether we’re writing a document, watching video, or playing a game, we’re interacting with language. With most commercial software, we can’t view the code behind what we’re doing and we don’t have the freedom (or permission) to try.

We have to trust that nothing shady is going on.

Fortunately there are alternatives available in the form of free and open source apps like Mozilla Firefox, LibreOffice, and VLC. You can even purchase computers that come with open source operating systems from companies like System76, Purism, and ZaReason. Or you can replace the OS on a computer you already own.

Free software doesn’t restrict what we can see. You can keep this code on your computer, have it audited, modify your copy however you wish, and share it with others. This mitigates your risk of software going away overnight, as often happens with cloud services.

I’m not saying that free software is inherently more secure than proprietary software (there’s a lot to that debate). But using free software on your desktop is the only way I’m aware of to have true control over what’s on your computer, trust that a company isn’t monitoring what you do, and maintain access to the programs that you rely on.

What Steps Have You Taken?

Remember, absolute security is a myth. We put locks on our doors not to make our homes impenetrable but to make the job difficult enough to dissuade others from making the effort.

Often, improving your security isn’t about adding more, it’s about using less. Less time connected means fewer times your computer is accessible remotely. Using fewer online services means fewer sites that can leak your data. Creating less data means you have less information to safeguard in the first place.

Some companies will collect and leak your data without your control, but there’s still a lot of power that’s in your hands. And there are steps you can take to counter data breaches when they happen.

Read the full article: 8 Simple and (Mostly) Free Ways to Improve Your Security

25 Nov 16:35

What Are Dual SIM Phones? Do You Really Need One?

by Megan Ellis
simcard-vs-esim

Dual SIM phones come with a variety of benefits, making them a must-have for many people. However, not everyone understands what dual SIM means or how dual SIM phones work.

We’re here to explain everything you need to know about dual SIM phones, their benefits, and how eSIMs fit into this picture.

What Is a Dual SIM Phone?

dual sim phone slots

Dual SIM phones support the insertion and use of two SIM cards on a single device. This differs from a single SIM device, which only has a slot for one SIM card.

The majority of dual SIM phones have active dual SIM functionality. A dual SIM phone can support two active SIMs at the same time, without requiring you to remove and swap SIMs to change phone number.

This means you can receive calls and texts from both lines. You can also usually adjust which SIM is your primary data or voice call card. Some dual SIM phones even support the ability to hold a single conversation with two callers on two different lines.

Meanwhile, the other type of dual SIM phone is a standby dual SIM device. Standby dual SIM devices require you to switch between SIMs in your device settings to activate them. Your phone only connects to one network at a time, so you won’t receive texts or calls for both at the same time.

There are also dual SIM smartphones that support the addition of either a second SIM or a microSD card—not both. This is a limited type of dual SIM functionality seen on older smartphones that means you have to choose between a second SIM or extra storage.

What Is an eSIM?

A more recent type of dual SIM phone is one that supports an eSIM. An eSIM, or embedded SIM, is a built-in microchip that acts as an electronic (rather than physical) SIM card. Since it enables remote SIM provisioning, an eSIM does not need to be swapped out when changing carriers. Rather, these embedded SIMs use software to load profiles and mobile plans from your mobile operator.

While eSIMs can completely replace the physical SIM card in a device, they are also used in dual SIM devices. For example, the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR smartphones feature a dual SIM setup with a nano-SIM and an eSIM.

However, due to the inconsistent adoption of eSIM technology by manufacturers and mobile carriers this setup is not widespread yet. Most dual SIM devices still use two physical SIM cards. It is likely that more dual SIM devices featuring an eSIM will appear in the future as the technology spreads.

You can find out more about how to use and set up an eSIM in our guide on the topic.

Dual SIM vs Single SIM: The Benefits of Dual SIM Phones

dual sim galaxy note 10 smartphone.jpg

There are a variety of benefits to having a dual SIM versus a single SIM phone. In fact, many consumers rank dual SIM support as an essential feature for their smartphones.

Here are some of the benefits of dual SIM phones over phones that only support one SIM card…

Two Numbers on One Phone

Dual SIM phones allow you to use two different phone numbers on a single device. This is useful for people who may have a personal and work number, but don’t want to use two different devices.

Getting the Best Carrier Deals for Data and Calls

A dual SIM phone lets you take advantage of the best deals when it comes to carriers. Often you will find that one carrier has great data rates, while another has better voice call or overall bundle deals.

Using a dual SIM device lets you take advantage of both deals. You can use one SIM for your data bundle, and another for other bundles.

Since dual SIM phone settings allow you to set your primary call and primary data SIMs, it’s incredibly easy to use this approach.

Keeping Your Old Number Without Needing to Port

If you don’t want to go through the hassle or cost of porting your old number to a new carrier SIM, you can always use a dual SIM device. Depending on your contract terms, your old carrier will usually convert the old SIM to a prepaid SIM. You can then add a second SIM to your device from a new carrier.

While porting your number is relatively easy, this also depends on how efficiently your carrier handles customer service. Some people don’t want to go through the transition period involved in porting a number.

With a dual SIM device, you can still receive calls and texts to your old SIM, and don’t have to worry about porting your number.

Stay Connected During Carrier Outages

Another lesser-known benefit of dual SIM phones is the ability to stay connected during carrier outages or coverage gaps. Carrier coverage can differ in certain areas, with some having better connectivity in certain zones. With a dual SIM phone, you can try to switch to your other SIM to see if you get better connectivity.

This also works when it comes to carrier-specific outages. If one carrier is experiencing technical difficulties, you can switch to your other SIM in the meantime.

Dual SIM Phones: Which Brands Make Them?

smartphone variety comparison

Dual SIM smartphones are more prevalent than ever, so they are no longer really limited to specific devices or brands. Most devices released since 2018 have dual SIM support.

However, smartphone companies with major stakes in China and developing markets tend to include dual SIM functionality more often. Their track record of dual SIM support is also longer, meaning that many devices released before 2018 from these brands will still have dual SIM slots.

Nevertheless, major American brands such as Apple and Google now also include dual SIM functionality in the newer iPhone and Pixel devices.

Other brands that frequently make dual SIM smartphones include Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, Sony, LG, and OnePlus. If you are interested in a dual SIM smartphone, check the specifications of a smartphone you are considering buying. This will let you know whether it supports dual SIM functionality.

How to Manage Your SIM Card

If you’re still hesitant about the technicalities of dual SIM phones, or want to find out more about your single SIM cards, there are tools to help you.

Managing your SIM cards isn’t as daunting as it seems. In fact, SIM cards actually have quite a bit of data and useful information you can use.

If you want to find out more about your own SIM, check out our guide on Android apps to manage your SIM cards.

Read the full article: What Are Dual SIM Phones? Do You Really Need One?

25 Nov 16:33

5 Reasons to Set Up a Guest Network on Your Router

by Christian Cawley
router-guest-network

Your router is a gateway to the internet. It’s also an entry point for hackers looking to exploit vulnerabilities. Do you trust your router to protect your network?

One way to increase Wi-Fi security is to set up a guest network on your router. Here’s how to do that, and five reasons why a guest wireless network improves network security.

How to Set Up a Guest Network on Your Router

A guest network is a network that runs parallel to the standard network on your router. Both originate with the same router, but they have different SSIDs (Service Set Identifier, the broadcast name of the router).

It’s easy to set up a guest network on a router.

That is, assuming your router has a Guest Network option. Because wireless routers are so different from manufacturer to manufacturer, specific instructions for this are tough to explain.

So, in very general terms, you have two options to set up a guest network:

  • Check the documentation, find the Guest Network option, enable it
  • Create a guest network manually

Whether your router supports guest networks will determine if you can use it or not. If the router has no guest network option, you might consider installing DD-WRT or some other custom router firmware.

But why do you really need a guest network setting up on your router? These five points should convince you.

1. Stay Secure from Hackers

Hackers want your data. They want to control your devices, force you to pay for release, sniff around for interesting data, steal your identity, that kind of thing.

You can take steps against this by securing your router.

For the best results, ensure you have changed the default password on your router. Also, take the time to change (or even hide) the SSID for the main network.

Then create a guest network to obfuscate the “real” network. Unless you’re being specifically targeted by hackers, they’re unlikely to spend time looking for a possible secondary network. They’re more likely to take the easy option.

2. Keep Your Smart Home Devices Separate

google home smart devices lock

Smart home technology and Internet of Things (IoT) devices are not known for their inherent security. While the situation is no-doubt improving, many devices (smart cameras, lights, locks) have been sold with security flaws.

These flaws allow hackers to access the devices remotely. There’s potential there for further access to other devices on your network, particularly hardware running apps to control the smart home gear.

By using a guest network for smart home and IoT devices, you protect other hardware. Laptops, PCs, tablets, and phones, NAS devices, consoles—they’re safely connected to your main network. It makes sense for devices with less robust security to be kept remote from those storing your vital data.

3. No Need to Share Your Router’s Main Password

You have guests. Perhaps it’s party night, or simply a babysitter. The guest(s) wants access to your Wi-Fi network. Do you give them the passkey?

While suggesting they use their own mobile internet connection is tempting, the better option is to allow guest access.

Now, many routers ship with a feature called WPS. Wi-Fi Protected Setup was intended to make it easier for devices to connect to wireless routers. However, it offered an opportunity for hackers to exploit, and as such is discouraged from use.

In fact, WPS should be disabled on your wireless router. If it’s not, disable it right away.

Instead of WPS, you can simply suggest visitors use your guest network. Keep your router’s main password secret.

4. Manage Access to Your Router

router ethernet ports

Another advantage of using a guest network is that you can manage access to your router. So, keep your TV, console, PC, etc. connected to the main network. Save the guest network for visitors, kids, smart home devices, and so on.

That way, you know that hardware you rely on is connected securely, safe from intrusion from other devices.

It might be worth taking the time to check who has access to your network from time to time. You can do this by signing into the router’s admin screen. Alternatively, employ an app like Fing, a network tool available for Android and iPhone. It displays all devices on a chosen network.

It’s a useful way to see what connections have been made and which devices you might like to eject from your network.

5. Disable the Guest Network to Limit Access

Finally, you can disable the guest network without losing connectivity for other hardware. Why might you do this?

First, there may be an issue with your IoT or smart home tech. Keeping it separate from your main network is clearly wise. Disabling the hardware’s internet connection while keep your other more reliable tech online is wise. After all, you might need to research the issue.

Second, you might want to simply deactivate access to the guest network. Perhaps a visitor has outstayed their welcome, or a child is watching kids shows on Prime Video.

While parental control software is a better option for managing child access to the internet, this works too. Just remember to re-enable the guest network when it is required again.

If Your Router Supports Guest Networks, Enable It!

Setting up a guest network on supported routers is simple. Enabling the feature improves security, keeping your activity private and secure. It helps to prevent unauthorized access and intrusion on your network, protecting the data you send and receive.

Using a guest network on your router:

  • Keeps you secure from hackers
  • Allows you to separate smart home devices from PCs and smartphones
  • Avoids having to share the password with visitors
  • Allows easy access management
  • Can be disabled at any time

Want more security on your home network? Check our guide to the best VPN routers for the ultimate in online privacy.

Read the full article: 5 Reasons to Set Up a Guest Network on Your Router

25 Nov 15:54

AI Phone App Learns Baseball Signals

by Al Williams

Watching a sport can be a bit odd if you aren’t familiar with it. Most Americans, for example, would think a cricket match looked funny because they don’t know the rules. If you were not familiar with baseball, you might wonder why one of the coaches was waving his hands around, touching his nose, his ears, and his hat seemingly at random. Those in the know however understand that this is a secret signal to the player. The coach might be telling the player to steal a base or bunt. The other team tries to decode the signals, but if you don’t know the code that is notoriously difficult. Unless you have the machine learning phone app you can see in the video below.

If you are not a baseball fan, it works like this. The coach will do a number of things. Perhaps touch his cap, then his nose, brush his left forearm, and touch his lips. However, the code is often as simple as knowing one attention signal and one action signal. For example, the coach might tell you that if they touch their nose and then their lips, you should steal. Touching their nose and then their ear is a bunt. Touching their nose and then the bill of their cap is something else. Anything they do that doesn’t start with touching their nose means nothing at all. If the signal is this easy, you really don’t even need machine learning to decode it. But if it were more complicated — say, the gesture that occurs third after they touch their nose unless they also kick dirt at which point it means nothing — it would be much harder for a human to figure out.

The code uses SDEC (Sequence-Domain Encompassed Correlations) to look for patterns in an ASCII string. We couldn’t help but think this would probably be applicable to a lot of other things where you were looking for a sequence of things.

The video has a pretty good Sunday supplement explanation of machine learning. It includes some details like hidden layers without getting bogged down too much in math or actual coding. If you haven’t dug into machine learning yet, this won’t make you an expert, but it will give you some orientation.

If you want a more detailed explanation of how machine learning works, try this one. Even the Arduino can get in on the act.

 

25 Nov 15:25

How to Behave in a British Pub: A World War II Training Film from 1943, Featuring Burgess Meredith

by Ayun Halliday

Forewarned is forearmed, so in 1943, the United States Office of War Information created a training film to prevent soldiers bound for Great Britain from earning their Ugly American stripes.

The excerpt above concentrates on pub etiquette, casting actor and Army Air Corps captain Burgess Meredith in the role of a discreet military Virgil, explaining in hushed tones the British penchant for non-chilled beer and smoking or reading the paper unmolested.

He also cautions incoming GIs against throwing their money around or making fun of kilt-wearing Scotsmen—commonsense advice that still applies.

To ensure the message sticks, he conjures a cringeworthy, semi-sloshed bad apple, who struts around in uniform, braying insults at the locals, until he disappears in a puff of smoke.

No wonder the reception’s a bit frosty, when Meredith, ventures forth, also in uniform. But unlike the brash baddie who went before, Meredith has vetted his hosts, approaching as one might a skittish animal. He offers cigarettes, enjoys a game of darts as a spectator, and buys his new friends drinks, being careful to choose something in their price range, knowing that they will insist on reciprocating in kind.

The film is primarily concerned with teaching restraint.

In another section of the not-quite-38-minute film officially called A Welcome to Britain (see below), Meredith cautions young recruits to take small portions of food, knowing how restricted their hosts’ rations are.

The most uncomfortable teachable moment comes when an elderly Englishwoman spontaneously invites a black GI to tea, after thanking him for his service:

Now look men, you heard that conversation, that's not unusual here. It’s the sort of thing that happens quite a lot. Now let's be frank about it, there are colored soldiers as well as white here, and there are less social restrictions in this country. An English woman asking a colored boy to tea, he was polite about it, and she was polite about it. Now, that might not happen at home, but the point is, we're not at home, and the point is too, if we bring a lot of prejudices here, what are we going to do about them?

(No advice to young black soldiers on whether they’re honor bound to accept, should an elderly Englishwoman invite them to tea, when they were perhaps en route to the pub.)

Watch the entirety of A Welcome to Britain, including a cameo by Bob Hope at the 30 minute mark, here.

For an updated guide to British pub etiquette, check out the American expats of Postmodern Family reaction video here.

via Daniel Holland

Related Content:

Free: British Pathé Puts Over 85,000 Historical Films on YouTube

1,000,000 Minutes of Newsreel Footage by AP & British Movietone Released on YouTube

How the Fences & Railings Adorning London’s Buildings Doubled (by Design) as Civilian Stretchers in World War II

Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Monday, December 9 when her monthly book-based variety show, Necromancers of the Public Domain celebrates Dennison’s Christmas Book (1921). Follow her @AyunHalliday.

How to Behave in a British Pub: A World War II Training Film from 1943, Featuring Burgess Meredith is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooksFree Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

25 Nov 14:27

More Americans Want Bigger Government—If It's Free

by J.D. Tuccille

Good news for control freaks and nanny-staters across the U.S.: Americans' support for a bigger, more active government is edging up, potentially creating an opening for politicians and activists who want their countrymen to snuggle in the warm bosom of a nurturing state that provides an ever-greater variety of goods, services, and rules for people's lives. There's just one catch: Americans don't want to pay for it. Support for a big, muscular government falls off a cliff if it comes with a price tag.

"Since 2010, the percentage of Americans saying government should do more to solve the country's problems has increased 11 percentage points, to 47%, and the percentage wanting government to take active steps to improve people's lives is up eight points, to 42%," Gallup reported last week. Forty-nine percent think the government is doing too much, and 29 percent prefer a government that provides just basic services.

Here's the opportunity politicians—especially Democrats—have been looking for as they promise "Medicare for All," student loan forgiveness, universal basic income, government-supported housing, subsidized child care, and more. Progressive standard-bearers Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have made particular waves with their plans for government largesse, but Pete Buttigieg and others have their own schemes for turning the federal government into Santa Claus with a bottomless bag of gifts.

But a government that provides everything to everybody is going to run up some bills. Oh, you can cut some existing programs and transfer the funds to other programs, but that's hardly going to satisfy the demands of "Americans saying government should do more." More programs and spending will require more resources that have to come from somewhere. And since bake sales usually fall a bit short when you're talking about funding government takeovers of large segments of the economy and extensive new programs, that's going to mean turning tax collectors into busy beavers.

Whoops.

"A more active government would almost certainly result in higher taxes," Gallup adds. "However, relatively few Americans favor that approach… In the latest poll, 25% would opt for increased taxes and services, 32% want no change and 42% prefer smaller government."

Support for higher taxes to pay for expanded government is up a bit in the survey from years past, but it remains a distinctly minority taste.

That means Americans are growing increasingly enthusiastic about placing orders for health care, higher education, housing, and more from the government—for free. But when they see prices on the menu, they balk, big time.

It's not just survey questions about an abstract activist government that give Americans second thoughts—specific examples do the same. Medicare for All gains overwhelming support—as high as 71 percent in a Kaiser Family Foundation survey—from Americans so long as they think it's entirely cost-free and devoid of tradeoffs. But throw in some real-world qualifiers, and that support erodes.

"Net favorability drops as low as -44 percentage points when people hear the argument that this would lead to delays in some people getting some medical tests and treatments," the Kaiser survey adds. "Net favorability is also negative if people hear it would threaten the current Medicare program (-28 percentage points), require most Americans to pay more in taxes (-23 percentage points), or eliminate private health insurance companies (-21 percentage points)."

Costs for these plans are unavoidable. Warren's spending schemes would run to at least $26 trillion in new taxes, although she likes to pretend that her scheme would be paid for by a wealth tax that would simultaneously extract funds from successful people while punishing them for their success. Sanders himself concedes that his plan for government-run health care would cost between $30-$40 trillion over ten years. He honestly admits that it would be the middle class that constitutes the majority of the population—not just some rich people somewhere—who would foot the bill.

Tens of trillions of dollars in new taxes are likely to prove a bit of a hurdle for Americans who want lots of new goodies from the government only if they're entirely free.

If you're looking for more evidence that people are a little confused about what they want, try asking Americans about the widely reported growing enthusiasm for socialism. Capitalism—the free market—remains the preferred choice of 60 percent of respondents, with 39 percent having a positive view of socialism, according to Gallup. As with everything in this country, the division is increasingly partisan: Positive views of socialism have risen to 65 percent among Democrats and declined to 9 percent among Republicans. Fifty-two percent of Democrats have a positive view of capitalism vs. 78 percent of Republicans.

But, do you know what almost everybody likes? Eighty-seven percent of the population has a positive view of free enterprise, including 92 percent of Republicans, 88 percent of Independents, and 83 percent of Democrats. Ninety percent of Americans have a positive view of entrepreneurs, including 93 percent of Republicans, 90 percent of Independents, and 88 percent of Democrats.

Age-wise, only 47 percent of those 18-34 have a positive view of capitalism (52 percent like socialism), but 81 percent of them give a thumbs-up to free enterprise and 90 percent dig entrepreneurs. Just as interesting, only 28 percent of Americans want more business regulation, while 38 percent want less.

Wait… How can people like the entrepreneurs who start private businesses that function in a system of free enterprise so much more than capitalism, which is a synonym for free enterprise? And how can they expect relatively lightly regulated entrepreneurial enterprise to thrive in a government-run, socialist economy?

At a guess, drawing from the data for support of activist government, socialist-leaning Americans most strongly favor the kind of socialism that doesn't impose any costs or inconveniences on people starting and running businesses. That's a nice way of saying that people don't know what the hell they're talking about, but they'll happily favor things that you tell them are nice, so long as they cost nothing.

This would be a good time to bang your head against the wall in exasperation.

For what it's worth, Gallup points out that support for bigger government has been higher in the past—specifically after 9/11, and in the aftermath of the recession of 1992-1993. That means Americans' desire for a more activist government ebbs and flows, often increasing after traumatic national shocks. But people's enthusiasm for private enterprise and low taxes lives on.

24 Nov 15:45

This Day in History: D. B. Cooper parachuted from a Northwest Airlines

24 Nov 15:36

Unplug With a Stay in These Minimalist Campers in Washington State

by Miranda Smith
Featured roam beyond.jpg?ixlib=rails 2.1

Nestled within the lush coastal forests and misty mountains of Washington state, ROAM Beyond’s rustically refined “glampers” and unplugged set-ups are redefining what it means to go off-road in the era of Instagram, where using a stylish form of transportation (hello, #vanlife) and access to modern amenities and comforts are just as important as the picturesque location. 

Founded by two veterans of the adventure travel industry, ROAM Beyond consists of a series of remote, off-the-grid campsites in idyllic locales, where there are no hook-ups and virtually zero human development. Here, where people can best connect with nature, they set up their fashionable wooden campers, creating the perfect middle-ground between rugged tent-camping and RV-park camping, allowing for total immersion in the great outdoors without sacrificing comfort. 

ROAM Beyond

“Our sites are mobile and can be uniquely positioned to give guests a front-row seat to the most awe-inspiring landscapes and wildlife viewings in the perfect season,” says CEO and co-founder Corey Weathers. With adventure travelers often having to choose between lugging equipment miles into the wilderness or staying at a hotel far away from their end goal, ROAM Beyond provides a happy medium.

Debuting this past summer, ROAM Beyond (which is based in Seattle) worked with property owners and adventure travel tour companies to select their first two sites in Washington: one in Kalaloch on the coast of the Olympic Peninsula, and the other in North Bend, high in the Cascade Range. Both areas offer a wealth of outdoor adventure opportunities: at the Kalaloch location, the temperate rainforests, glacier-covered mountains, and pristine lakes and rivers of Olympic National Park are right next door, beckoning to hikers, climbers, and backpackers. In North Bend, myriad trails wind through the dense mountain forests to stunning overlooks. 

And ROAM’s up-scale campers are about as zeitgeisty as possible, blending style, functionality, and sustainability. Sleek and minimalist, the oblong-shaped mobile homes are custom-built by Homegrown Trailers, a Washington-based outfit that specializes in crafting sustainable, artisan campers and mobile dwellings.

ROAM Beyond

The simple, spartan interiors of blonde wood contain a queen bed (with fold-out bunks for larger parties), kitchenette with stovetop, refrigerator, and mini-bathroom with shower and toilet. Power is available for lighting and charging devices, as well as a hot water heater for cooking and showers. Accessories and amenities like camping gear, outdoor seating, blankets, duvet covers, and biodegradable cleaning products are also provided. 

But it’s the rustic wooden exteriors that are the real eye-catchers, outfitted using a traditional Japanese wood preservation technique known as yakisugi. Using a special method of heat treatment, the cypress boards commonly used in yakisugi become more waterproof and durable. Better able to prevent rot, decay, and withstand the elements, yakisugi siding is ideal for outdoorsy accommodations in all manner of environments, making it perfect for campers that don’t want to sacrifice style. In this case, the wood comes from the nearby Oregon branch of the Nakamoto Forestry, world-renowned for their yakisugi products.

But with yakisugi, aesthetic is just as important. The subtly-charred, tawny wood is a cabin lover’s dream; elegant and sharp, modern and sophisticated, a gleaming complement to the rugged surrounding wilderness. 

As for sustainability, the campers are outfitted with solar panels and composting toilets, and recycling and waste are taken care of after guests check-out. Renewable and reusable materials are also utilized throughout the construction process and during on-site use. Outside Magazine even called them “the most eco-friendly camper we’ve ever seen.” 

Most recently, ROAM Beyond will opened a new location in the Bavarian-esque town of Leavenworth for the holiday season. And big plans are in the works to expand to other scenic sites all over the States like Joshua Tree, Sedona, Zion National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, and Moab

For now, the Kalaloch, North Bend, and Leavenworth campers can be booked on Airbnb or Glamping Hub starting at $229 a night. 

ROAM Beyond
 



>>Next: 9 Best A-frame Cabins You Can Rent on Airbnb
 


 

24 Nov 15:31

8 things to know about Mister Rogers from the story that inspired the Tom Hanks movie

by Scottie Andrew
(CNN) Fred Rogers was public television's best-loved neighbor. His was a singular presence in the medium, marked by a kindness and understanding that endeared him to children and parents alike for 31 seasons of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.".
24 Nov 15:31

Not All Regulation Is Bad

by Howard Baetjer Jr.

City transport regulators have banned or hindered Uber and Lyft from operating, even though the public loves their convenience and drivers find the apps a good way to make money on their own terms. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prevents sick people from trying certain drugs that their doctors would like them to try and drug companies would like to sell them; many Americans who can afford it travel to other countries to get medicines the FDA denies them here. Banking regulation in America now prevents community bankers from making loans based on their judgment and knowledge of their would-be borrowers; the rules force lenders instead to follow formulas imposed by the regulators.

Government regulation is a problem. Through restrictions and mandates, it prohibits exchanges that peaceful people would like to make and requires transactions they do not wish to enter into. Thus it interferes with our liberty to interact as we choose.

But what do we do about it?

It won't do simply to say, "Let's deregulate," meaning to get rid of regulation altogether, because everybody wants what regulation is supposed to provide us: regularity and predictability in markets and assurance of quality and safety in the goods and services we buy.

When we get in a taxi or an Uber, we want to know that the driver is peaceable and responsible and that the car is in good condition. When we take a medicine, we want to know that it is safe and effective. When we put our money in a bank, we want to know that it has enough capital that we won't lose our savings if the institution has a run of bad luck. In short, we want goods and services to be well-regulated.

So it seems that we are stuck: Government regulation almost always denies liberty and usually causes economic harm, but we want the regularity, predictability, and quality assurance that regulation is supposed to provide. Does that mean the best we can do is to accept government regulation but try to rein it in, to limit it, to reduce the harm it does?

No. It is a semantic error to assume that regulation means government regulation. In fact, there is no such thing as an unregulated free market, because markets free of government regulation are very closely regulated by the choices and actions of market participants. And market forces regulate quality and safety better than government agencies can.

Regulation by Market

To regulate is to make regular and orderly, to hold to a standard, to control according to rule, as a thermostat regulates the temperature in a building.

Market forces do this constantly. Competing businesses offer what they hope will be a good value, then customers choose among the various offerings, then the competing businesses react to customers' and competitors' choices. That process is the market's regulator.

To take an example of market regulation so ubiquitous that many people don't even notice it, market forces regulate prices.

If the Giant supermarket near my home is charging $2 a pound for red peppers, the more upscale Eddie's Market will not be able to charge a whole lot more than that and still sell many red peppers. Neither will other grocery stores or the farm stands that open nearby in the summer. All will charge nearly the same price. There is strong regularity to the prices of red peppers at any place and time. This regulation is accomplished by each seller's response to the actions of his customers and competitors.

The same goes for quality. Consumers won't buy peppers that aren't fresh and firm if they think they can get better peppers at some other store. The grocers might wish they could sell last week's peppers that are getting soft on the shelf, but customers, along with the self-interested actions of other stores, won't let them. Their customers' choices and competitors' actions restrict the quality of produce they can sell. In this manner, market forces regulate quality.

The quality of red peppers can be directly observed. But what about goods and services whose quality and safety cannot be directly observed? We can't observe the criminal record of some taxi or Uber driver who comes to pick us up. We can't know by looking at it what side effects a medicine might cause. We can't observe the capital adequacy of a bank where we consider putting our savings.

In such cases we need somebody else who can give us assurances that the goods and services we consume are safe and of good quality. Enterprises in markets provide that kind of assurance all the time, in several ways.

Usually we don't just buy a product; we buy the product plus some assurance of its quality. Often, in fact, the quality assurance becomes a feature of the product.

One way is with branding. A brand like Sony or Black & Decker tells the customer, "You can trust this product." The company stakes its extremely valuable reputation on it. The same goes for franchises, which are brands of another kind. When we see the Holiday Inn sign, we know what to expect from a room there. It is not going to be great, but it will be clean and adequate.

While brands and franchises do give assurance of quality, the assurance is coming from the same company that wants to sell us the product. Such assurance is not always persuasive. Often we want assurance from some objective, outside, third-party assurer. The market provides these in abundance also.

There are third-party certifiers whose whole business is to provide reliable assurance of quality. Underwriters Laboratories is pre-eminent here. Manufacturers voluntarily pay that organization to assist in product design, to test their products, and to give them the famous U.L. seal of approval. Both customers and the manufacturers themselves want outside assurance that their products are safe and effective. (The manufacturer does not want to get sued.) Similarly, Good Housekeeping and the Better Business Bureau (BBB) give their seals of approval to, or withhold them from, various enterprises and their products. Credit-rating enterprises such as Moody's, Fitch, and S&P appraise financial instruments. (They did a bad job of this with mortgage-backed securities before the financial crisis, showing that they themselves were ineffectively regulated. But note that they are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission rather than by market forces.)

Then there are information providers, such as industry magazines and a variety of online quality-rating enterprises—among them PC Magazine's "Editors' Choice" awards, Angie's List, Carfax, Yelp, and Nextdoor. More recently there have arisen internet-based sharing and connecting services, such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and Thumbtack, a website for sourcing and then reviewing local professionals of various kinds. With respect to quality assurance, these are particularly robust: Their customer ratings make every consumer an inspector.

I saw the significance of these third-party certifiers up close recently when I hired a paver for my driveway. His pitch on Thumbtack, where I found him, begins, "We are a licensed contractor." OK, that's government's regulation. But then he immediately adds, "and accredited by the BBB," a private-sector certifier. Then comes his main pitch: "We also have an excellent reputation on Angie's List, winning the Super Service Award every year since 2010!!!" This contractor relies on private accreditation more than on government licensing, and so did I.

Providers of goods and services typically have insurance. So insurance companies become still another source of quality assurance. They have a financial incentive to make sure their clients' products are safe and of good quality—by requiring U.L. certification, for example—because they don't want to write checks to people who sue their clients.

How effective are these market institutions at giving us the kind of regulation we want? More, I'll argue, than government institutions are. Indeed, since government regulation is top-down, with the public exerting control only indirectly through the political process, government regulation is itself nearly unregulated. This is a flaw that makes it unresponsive to the public's wants and needs. Regulation by market forces, by contrast, is bottom-up, with the public exerting control directly in the market. It is not perfect—nothing human is perfect—but it works pretty well, and it is very responsive to the public's wants and needs.

Government Failure

How do different localities regulate the safety and quality of ride services, such as taxis, Uber, and Lyft? They do so via an agency—a public service commission or a taxi commission, say—that imposes various restrictions and mandates on the service providers aimed at preventing bad outcomes and promoting good ones.

But suppose that agency does a bad job. What regulates the regulator? Suppose, for example, that the agency is in bed with existing taxi companies threatened by ride-sharing services and therefore bans the operation of Uber and Lyft. Agencies did this for a while in Austin, Texas, and in Buffalo, New York. Or suppose the agency merely obstructs the operation of ride-sharing companies, as the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission did last December when it imposed minimum-wage rules on ride-sharing drivers. Such actions are directly against the interest of the public, who value these ride-sharing services. How is the regulatory agency's bad performance to be improved?

State or local legislatures are supposed to regulate the performance of their regulatory agencies. In some cases, they do. Several state legislatures, for example, have passed laws forbidding localities from interfering with ride sharing. But not all. Some legislatures are also in bed with the taxi companies and regulate in their interest rather than the public's.

When legislatures fail, who is supposed to regulate them? Members of the public, in their role as voters.

But the voters are not in a good position to affect the regulation of ride services or any other industry. Many people don't vote. Many who do vote are not interested in ride services. Most of those who are interested are what economists call "rationally ignorant." That is, it makes little sense for them to inform themselves about candidates' positions, because the chance that their vote will determine the outcome of an election is vanishingly small. So they vote without knowing what candidates think about ride-sharing regulation. They're also choosing among candidates who hold positions on many issues other than transportation, issues the voters may care about more. Accordingly, it is impossible for voters to weigh in on just the regulation of ride services. Plus, they vote only once every two years. This is a hopelessly indirect and attenuated way for the public to affect the regulation of ride sharing, or anything else.

A Lack-of-Knowledge Problem

Bank capital is a kind of cushion, a layer of cash a bank holds to keep it solvent if it should run into problems such as loans going bad. All banks need to hold some capital, but how much? Holding too much capital means not lending that money out for productive investment. Not holding enough means exposure to risk if the economy goes south. Who should decide what the right amount is, and how?

In the United States today, bank capital adequacy is regulated predominantly by the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). These bodies restrict banks' freedom to operate as they choose in myriad ways, prohibiting certain kinds of investments, requiring others, and dictating how much capital of what kind must be held against each kind of asset.

Have these "regulations" (wouldn't "restrictions and mandates" be a more descriptive term?) worked well to keep financial institutions sound in the last dozen years? Clearly not, as many banks needed capital injections during the financial crisis. Among the problematic regulations were some declaring that the debt of sovereign nations, such as Greece, is risk-free and thereby requires no capital backing. Those rules are still in effect.

In criticizing government regulation of bank capital, I don't mean to imply that the regulators are corrupt or negligent. I believe most of them are competent professionals doing the best they can. But they face what's known as "the knowledge problem"—the fact that central planners cannot know all they need to know in order to plan effectively. Now, planning bank capital requirements is not comprehensive central planning of the whole economy. But bank regulators are still trying to plan the activities of an immensely large and complex sector, one that's intimately intertwined with most other sectors. It is just unrealistic to expect even the smartest and best-informed regulators to get it right. There is too much to know.

If the Fed and the FDIC do not do a good job of regulating bank capital, who is supposed to make them do it better? Congress is. But do its members have the necessary knowledge of monetary and banking history and theory to direct these agencies? Do they have the right incentives to make their decisions based on economics rather than politics? Have they tended to do a good job of regulating the financial regulators? The answers to those questions will differ for different members of Congress, but it seems clear that the majority are deeply ignorant of much of what they are asked to oversee.

If Congress does not regulate the Fed and the FDIC well, the system relies on the voters—rationally ignorant, voting on a package deal once every two or six years—to regulate Congress. As with government regulation of ride sharing, government regulation of bank capital is a deeply flawed process that fails to involve regular people in their role as customers. Better for regulation to be decentralized, distributed, and organic.

The story is similar with medicine. The FDA is charged with assuring quality. Its officials impose a variety of costly testing requirements on pharmaceutical companies and restrict the sale of any new drug or medical device for as long as they see fit. Their understandable but excessive caution has pushed the cost of getting a new drug from conception to market into the neighborhood of $1 billion. It has denied many patients access to drugs they and their doctors wish them to take, it has slowed the development of new therapies, and it has inhibited development of medicines for rare diseases.

If the FDA is misregulating through excessive caution, who is to regulate the FDA? Once again, Congress is, and voters are to regulate Congress if it fails in its task. Thus we face the same problems we saw above with government regulation of bank capital.

In contrast, let's consider how market processes regulate (or could regulate) the same three industries if they were free of government meddling.

Free Market Transportation

Regulation of quality and safety in ride services would be based on the choices not of bureaucrats but of the public, in the role of riders, not voters. They would choose among different offerings of taxi companies, ride-sharing companies, and any alternatives that might arise. In the absence of any government quality-assuring agency, the public would need to rely on quality-assuring enterprises.

Much of this assurance would come from brands. Taxi and ride-sharing companies seek to establish and maintain a reputation for good service. In a free market, they would set their own standards for background checks on drivers, inspection of vehicles, promptness of service, and the like, and then they would publicize those standards. Uber and Lyft do this now. Their background-checking procedures are more robust than those of many taxi commissions, and their driver rating process makes every customer an inspector. Additional assurance of taxi companies' quality would be provided by third-party certifiers such as Angie's List, Yelp, and the Better Business Bureau.

What assures the quality of the quality assurance offered by taxi companies, Uber, Lyft, Angie's List, Yelp, and others? Once again, it is the choices of the market participants involved, to which their competitors must respond. Consumers use Angie's List or Yelp (or both) to research taxi companies, and they reward those that provide the most useful and accurate information by returning to those sites. Taxi companies reward the best certifiers by displaying the certifications on their websites. Drivers reward Uber or Lyft (for good quality assurance, among other factors) by choosing to drive with one or the other. Anyone who lets quality slip, from the third-party certifiers to the taxi or ride-sharing companies to the individual drivers, tends to lose business.

This process of quality assurance is not perfect, but it is quick, fine-grained, and relentless. With respect to quality and safety, it makes taxi commissions at best an obsolete nuisance and at worst an impediment to progress.

Free Market Banking

The market process regulated bank capital until the Federal Reserve began central planning of the money supply in 1914. Until then, banks issued not only their own checking accounts but also their own banknotes.

To keep down the cost of exchanging these notes and checks with one another for payment, banks joined one or more clearinghouse associations. Each day the checks and notes for all the banks in the association were brought to the clearinghouse, where the mutual obligations were "cleared"—offsetting IOUs were canceled and the net obligations were paid.

Market-based bank capital regulation arose out of this system, because the banks in any clearinghouse association wanted assurance that their sister banks within the association were sound. Accordingly, they agreed, as a condition of membership in the association, to maintain the minimum capital requirements set by that association. They also agreed to periodic inspection of their accounts to make sure they were fulfilling their promises.

In this system, the quality-assuring entities—the capital adequacy regulators—were private-sector clearinghouse associations, not government agencies. What regulated their decisions? Market forces did: the choices of the market participants in the face of experience.

If a clearinghouse required its members to hold more capital than prudence required, those banks would not be able to make as many loans and would not prosper as they otherwise might have. Potential customers would take their business to banks in other clearinghouse associations with more appropriate capital requirements, and those banks would expand as a result.

Conversely, if a clearinghouse required less capital than the economic realities dictated, when an economic downturn occurred, some of its members would fail or have difficulties meeting their obligations to their partners in the clearinghouse. This problem would signal that the clearinghouse association needed to raise its capital requirements.

Note the way this process of bank capital regulation, and regulation of that regulation, takes into account the distributed knowledge and experience of different bankers in different times and places, and note how it provides the flexibility to adjust capital requirements in response to those differences. The knowledge and judgments of thousands go into the final rule. How different that is from top-down government regulation, in which decisions are made by bureaucrats based on their own limited knowledge and the political pressures of the time.

Market-based banking regulation was a constant work in progress, but it was still better than what we have had since. Remember that both the Great Depression and the financial crisis of 2008 happened on the Fed's watch.

Free Market Medicine

What of medicines? How would market forces, free of FDA interference, regulate their quality and safety? There would still be extensive testing of the safety and efficacy of different drugs, because everyone in the industry values such information. The testing would be done by the private sector—but then, so is the testing required by the FDA.

In addition to testing for FDA purposes, a tremendous amount of research is constantly being conducted by doctors and other researchers around the world, at medical schools and research hospitals and within pharmaceutical companies themselves. This research is presented at innumerable medical conferences and published in such journals as The LancetThe Journal of the American Medical Association, and The New England Journal of Medicine, among countless others.

These research institutions and publications are our primary source of information about the quality and safety of particular medicines for particular kinds of patients with particular illnesses. Even now, they are our main quality-assuring institutions. The difference in a market free of FDA restrictions is how that research would be evaluated and who would decide, based on the evidence, whether or not a medicine should be used in a particular case.

The average patient could not evaluate the research and choose therapies unaided. In a free market, patients would rely for help on still another layer of quality-assuring enterprises and individuals: their doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, and, indirectly, insurance companies. These would serve to regulate the safety and quality of pharmaceutical offerings. Doctors and pharmacists would make it their business to inform themselves about the safety and effectiveness of medicines. Hospitals, to protect their reputations and to protect themselves from lawsuits, would restrict the medicines that can be administered within their walls. Insurance companies, in their own financial interest, would require the providers they insure to prescribe only medicines that have been tested to standards the insurers deem prudent. All would learn from one another, by experience, what standards of quality and safety assurance are appropriate and which are overkill.

Most of this is true today. Federal officials do determine when drugs may go to market. But how they are used is regulated by market forces. Ultimately, by slowing the introduction of new treatments, the FDA reduces access to care.

Two Sorts of Regulation

With government regulation, the quality-assuring agency is a monopoly; with market regulation, quality-assuring enterprises must compete. With government, the quality-assuring agency is all but unregulated; with markets, quality-assuring enterprises are regulated by market forces. With government, the public votes in elections every few years; with markets, the public "votes" with dollars every day. With government, the public selects among candidates holding positions on many issues; with markets, the public makes a choice about the particular good or service in question.

With government, the regulating agency relies on bureaucrats' knowledge; with markets, the regulatory process draws on knowledge distributed throughout society. With government, bureaucrats face no competition from which to learn how to improve; with markets, enterprises are sharpened by their competitors. With government, the quality-assuring agency can ignore tradeoffs; with markets, quality-assuring enterprises have strong incentives to get the tradeoffs right. With government, there is no evolutionary selection of regulatory standards, methods, and quality assurers; with markets, there is. With government, regulators are vulnerable to "regulatory capture," in which an industry cozies up to the regulating agency and extracts favorable rules; with markets, there is no central authority to capture. Government regulation works by the restriction of choice. Market regulation works by the exercise of choice.

We need regulation of the quality and safety of the goods and services we buy. Because that regulation should be done as well as possible, it should be done by market forces, not by government.

24 Nov 15:20

How These 10 Entrepreneurs Make Gratitude a Daily Practice

by Rhett Power, Contributor
Giving thanks isn’t just for Turkey Day. The best leaders show their teams gratitude every day, all year long.
24 Nov 15:16

Hmmmmmmmmmm



Tags: George W Bush

1432 points, 48 comments.

24 Nov 15:15

Inside the Archive of an LSD Researcher With Ties to the CIA’s MKUltra Mind Control Project

by Tom O’Neill

On the night of July 4, 1954, San Antonio, Texas, was shaken by the rape and murder of a 3-year-old girl. The man accused of these crimes was Jimmy Shaver, an airman at the nearby Lackland Air Force Base with no criminal record. Shaver claimed to have lost his memory of the incident.

The victim, 3-year-old Chere Jo Horton, had disappeared around midnight outside the Air Force Base, where her parents had left her in the parking lot outside a bar; she played with her brother while they had a drink inside. When they noticed her missing, they formed a search party.

Within an hour, the group came upon a car parked next to a gravel pit; Chere’s underwear was hanging from one of the car’s doors. Shaver wandered out of the darkness. He was shirtless, covered in blood and scratches. Making no attempt to escape, he let the search party walk him to the edge of the highway. Bystanders described him as “dazed” and in a “trance-like” state.

“What’s going on here?” he asked. He didn’t seem drunk, but he couldn’t say where he was, how’d he gotten there, or whose blood was all over him. Meanwhile, the search party found Horton’s body in the gravel pit. Her neck was broken, her legs had been torn open, and she’d been raped.

Deputies arrested Shaver. At 29, he was recently remarried with two children and no history of violence. He’d been at the same bar Horton had been abducted from, but he’d left with a friend, who told police that neither of them was drunk, though Shaver had seemed high on something. Before deputies could take Shaver to the county jail, a constable from another precinct arrived with orders from military police to assume custody of him.

Around four that morning, an air force marshal questioned Shaver and two doctors examined him, agreeing he wasn’t drunk. One later testified that he “probably was not normal … he was very composed outside, which I did not expect him to be under these circumstances.” He was released to the county jail and booked for rape and murder.

Investigators interrogated Shaver through the morning. When his wife came to visit, he didn’t recognize her. He gave his first statement at 10:30 a.m., adamant that another man was responsible: He could summon an image of a stranger with blond hair and tattoos. After the air force marshal returned to the jailhouse, however, Shaver signed a second statement taking full responsibility. Though he still didn’t remember anything, he reasoned, he must have done it.

Two months later, in September, Shaver’s memories still hadn’t returned. The commander of the base hospital, Col. Robert S. Bray, ordered a psychiatric evaluation, to be performed by Dr. Louis Jolyon West, the head of psychiatric services at the air base. It fell to West to decide if Shaver had been legally sane at the time of the murder.

Shaver spent the next two weeks under West’s supervision. They returned to the scene of the crime, trying to jog his memory. Later, West hypnotized Shaver and gave him an injection of sodium pentothal, or “truth serum,” to see if he could clear his amnesia.

While Shaver was under, according to testimony, he recalled the events of that night. He confessed to killing Horton. She’d brought out repressed memories of his cousin, “Beth Rainboat,” who’d sexually abused him as a child. Shaver had started drinking at home that night when he “had visions of God, who whispered into his ear to seek out and kill the evil girl Beth.”

While Shaver was under hypnosis, he confessed to killing the young girl. At trial, he maintained his innocence.

At the trial, West made only a minimal effort to exonerate Shaver. The airman was found guilty. Though an appeals court later ruled that he’d had an unfair trial, he was convicted again in the retrial. In 1958, on his 33rd birthday, he was executed by the electric chair. He maintained his innocence the whole time.

The trial, which hinged on Shaver’s testimony, might have ended differently had the jury known about West’s past. According to newly surfaced papers from West’s archives, the psychiatrist had some of the clearest, most nefarious ties of any scientist to the CIA’s Project MKUltra. West’s files — especially his correspondence with the CIA’s longtime poisons expert, Sidney Gottlieb — shed new light on one of the most infamous projects in the agency’s history. Likely comprising more than 149 subprojects and at least 185 researchers working at institutions across America and Canada, MKUltra was, as the New York Times put it, “a secret twenty-five year, twenty-five million dollar effort by the CIA to learn how to control the human mind.” Its experiments violated international laws, not to mention the agency’s charter, which forbids domestic activity.

At the trial, West maintained that Shaver had suffered a bout of temporary insanity on the night of Chere Jo Horton’s killing, but he argued that Shaver was “quite sane now.” In the courtroom, Shaver didn’t look that way. One newspaper account said he “sat through the strenuous sessions like a man in a trance,” saying nothing, never rising to stretch or smoke, though he was a known chain-smoker.

Large portions of West’s truth serum interview with Shaver were read into the court record. The doctor had used leading questions to walk the entranced Shaver through the crime. “Tell me about when you took your clothes off, Jimmy,” he’d said. The transcript of the interview, which survived among West’s papers, also showed West trying to prove that Shaver had repressed memories: “Jimmy, do you remember when something like this happened before?” Or: “After you took her clothes off, what did you do?”

“I never did take her clothes off,” Shaver said.

The interview was divided into thirds, and the middle third hadn’t been recorded. When the transcript picked up, it said: “Shaver is crying. He has been confronted with all the facts repeatedly.”

West asked, “Now you remember it all, don’t you, Jimmy?”

“Yes, sir,” Shaver replied.

Though lawyers scrutinized Shaver’s medical history, little mention was made of the base hospital where West’s archived letters indicate he had conducted his MKUltra experiments. Shaver had suffered from migraines so debilitating that he’d dunk his head in a bucket of ice water when he felt one coming on. His condition was severe enough that the Air Force had recommended him for a two-year experimental program. The doctor who’d attempted to recruit him was not named in court records or transcripts.

On the stand, West said he’d never gotten around to seeing whether Shaver had been treated in the experimental program. Lackland officials told me there was no record of him in their master index of patients. But, curiously, according to the base’s archivist, all the records for patients in 1954 had been maintained, with one exception: the file for last names beginning with “Sa” through “St” had vanished.

GettyImages-176423879-west-1574470252

Dr. Louis Jolyon West in San Francisco, Calif., in 1976.

Photo: Lawrence Schiller/Polaris Communications/Getty Images

West’s professional fascination with LSD was practically as old as the drug itself. For several decades, he was one of an elite cadre of scientists using it in top-secret research. Lysergic acid diethylamide was synthesized in 1938 by chemists at Switzerland’s Sandoz Industries, but it was not introduced as a pharmaceutical until 1947. In the fifties, when the CIA began to experiment on humans with it, it was a new substance. Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who’d discovered its hallucinogenic qualities in 1943, described it as a “sacred drug” that gestured toward “the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality.”

In the ’50s, even before hippies embraced the drug, “Very few people took LSD without having somebody being a ‘trip leader,’” Charles Fischer, a drug researcher, told me. The suggestibility from LSD was akin to that associated with hypnosis; West had studied the two in tandem. “You can tell somebody to hurt somebody, but you call it something else,” Fischer explained. “Hammer the nail into the wood, and the wood, perhaps, is a human being.”

West seems to have used chemicals liberally in his medical practice, and his tactics left an indelible mark on the psychiatrists who worked with him. One of them, Gilbert Rose, was so baffled by the Shaver case that he went on to write a play about it.

“In my 50 years in the profession, that was the most dramatic moment ever — when he clapped his hands to his face and remembered killing the girl,” Rose said in 2002 of Shaver and the truth serum interview. But Rose was shocked when I told him that West had hypnotized Shaver in addition to giving him sodium pentothal. Hypnotism, he said, was not part of the protocol for the interview.

He’d also never known how West had found out about the case right away.

“We were involved from the first day,” Rose recalled. “Jolly phoned me the morning of the murder. He initiated it.”

West claimed he was in the courtroom the day Shaver was sentenced to death. Around this time, he became vehemently opposed to capital punishment. Did he know his experiments might’ve led to the execution of an innocent man and the death of a child? If his correspondence with CIA head of MKUltra Gottlieb — predating the crime by just a year — had been presented at trial, would the outcome have been the same?

Almost as soon as they had access to it, government scientists saw LSD as a potential Cold War miracle drug. Full-fledged U.S. research into LSD began soon after the end of World War II, when American intelligence learned that the USSR was developing a program to influence human behavior through drugs and hypnosis. The United States believed that Soviets could extract information from people without their knowledge, program them to make false confessions, and perhaps persuade them to kill on command.

In 1949, the CIA, then in its infancy, launched Project Bluebird, a mind-control program that tested drugs on American citizens — most in federal penitentiaries or on military bases — who didn’t even know about, let alone consent to, the battery of procedures they underwent.

Their abuse found further justification in 1952, when, in Korea, captured American pilots admitted on national radio that they’d sprayed the Korean countryside with illegal biological weapons. It was a confession so beyond the pale that the CIA blamed communists: The POWs must have been “brainwashed.” The word, a literal translation of the Chinese “xi nao,” didn’t appear in English before 1950. It articulated a set of fears that had coalesced in postwar America: that a new class of chemicals could rewire and automate the human mind.

“You can tell somebody to hurt somebody, but you call it something else,” Fischer explained. “Hammer the nail into the wood, and the wood, perhaps, is a human being.”

When the American POWs returned, the Army brought in a team of scientists to “deprogram” them. Among those scientists was West. Born in Brooklyn in 1924, he had enlisted in the Air Force during World War II, eventually rising to the rank of colonel. His friends called him “Jolly,” for his middle name, impressive girth, and oversized personality. When he got out, he researched methods of controlling human behavior at Cornell University. He would later claim to have studied 83 prisoners of war, 56 of whom had been forced to make false confessions. He and his colleagues were credited with reintegrating the POWs into Western society and, maybe more important, getting them to renounce their claims about having used biological weapons.

West’s success with the POWs gained him entrance into the upper echelons of the intelligence community. Gottlieb, the poisons expert who headed the chemical division of the CIA’s Technical Services Staff, along with Richard Helms, the CIA’s chief of operations for the Directorate of Plans had convinced the agency’s then-director, Allen Dulles, that mind control ops were the future. Initially, the agency wanted only to prevent further potential brainwashing by the Soviets. But the defensive program became an offensive one. Operation Bluebird morphed into Operation Artichoke, a search for an all-purpose truth serum.

In a speech at Princeton University, Dulles warned that communist spies could turn the American mind into “a phonograph playing a disc put on its spindle by an outside genius.” Just days after those remarks, on April 13, 1953, he officially set Project MKUltra in motion.

Little is known about the program. After Watergate, Helms (who by that time was CIA director) ordered Gottlieb to destroy all MKUltra papers; in January 1973, the Technical Services staff shredded countless documents describing the use of hallucinogens.

In the mid-1970s, after the Times revealed the existence of MKUltra on its front page, the government launched three separate investigations, all of which were hobbled by the CIA’s destruction of its files:Vice President Nelson Rockefeller’s Commission on CIA Activities within the United States (1975); Senator Frank Church’s Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (1975-6); and Senators Edward Kennedy and Daniel Inouye’s joint Senate Select Committee hearings on Project MKUltra, the CIA’s Program of Research in Behavioral Modification (1977). When records were available, they were redacted; when witnesses were summoned to testify before Congress, they were forgetful.

We do know the project’s broadest goal was “to influence human behavior.” Under its umbrella were at least 149 subprojects, many involving research on unwitting participants. Gottlieb, whose aptitude and amorality earned him the nickname the “Black Sorcerer,” developed gadgetry straight out of schlocky sci-fi: high-potency stink bombs, swizzle sticks laced with drugs, exploding seashells, poisoned toothpaste. Having persuaded an Indianapolis pharmaceutical company to replicate the Swiss formula for LSD, the CIA had a limitless domestic supply of its favorite new drug. The agency hoped to produce couriers who could embed hidden messages in their brains, to implant false memories and remove true ones in people without their awareness, to convert groups to opposing ideologies, and more. The loftiest objective was the creation of hypno-programmed assassins.

The most sensitive work was conducted far from Langley — farmed out to scientists at colleges, hospitals, prisons, and military bases all over the United States and Canada. The CIA gave these scientists aliases, funneled money to them, and instructed them on how to conceal their research from prying eyes, including those of their unknowing subjects.

Their work encompassed everything from electronic brain stimulation to sensory deprivation to “induced pain” and “psychosis.” They sought ways to cause heart attacks, severe twitching, and intense cluster headaches. If drugs didn’t do the trick, they’d try to master ESP, ultrasonic vibrations, and radiation poisoning. One project tried to harness the power of magnetic fields.

MKUltra was so highly classified that when John McCone succeeded Dulles as CIA director late in 1961, he was not informed of its existence until 1963. Fewer than half a dozen agency brass were aware of it at any period during its 20-year history.

Sidney Gottlieb of the Central Intelligence Agency is pictured in a room near the Senate subcommittee on health hearing room here, Wednesday September 21, 1977. (AP Photo)

Sidney Gottlieb in 1977.

Photo: AP

West headed the psychiatry department at UCLA and the school’s renowned neuroscience center until his retirement in 1988. One day, among a batch of research papers on hypnosis in West’s archives there, I found letters between West and his CIA handler, “Sherman Grifford” — the cover name, according to John Marks’s “The Search for the Manchurian Candidate,” for Sidney Gottlieb. West, who had once written to a magazine editor that he had “never worked for the CIA,” had in fact worked closely with the agency’s “Black Sorcerer” himself.

The letters picked up midstream, with no prologue or preliminaries. The first was dated June 11, 1953, a mere two months after MKUltra started, when West was chief of the psychiatric service at the air base at Lackland.

Who would the guinea pigs be? West listed four groups: basic airmen, volunteers, patients, and “others, possibly including prisoners in the local stockade.”

Addressing Gottlieb as “S.G.,” West outlined the experiments he proposed to perform using a combination of psychotropic drugs and hypnosis. He began with a plan to discover “the degree to which information can be extracted from presumably unwilling subjects (through hypnosis alone or in combination with certain drugs), possibly with subsequent amnesia for the interrogation and/or alteration of the subject’s recollection of the information he formerly knew.” Another item proposed honing “techniques for implanting false information into particular subjects … or for inducing in them specific mental disorders.” He hoped to create “couriers” who would carry “a long and complex message” embedded secretly in their minds, and to study “the induction of trance-states by drugs.” His list lined up perfectly with the goals of MKUltra.

“Needless to say,” West added, the experiments “must eventually be put to test in practical trials in the field.” To this end, he asked Gottlieb for “some sort of carte blanche.”

Who would the guinea pigs be? He listed four groups: basic airmen, volunteers, patients, and “others, possibly including prisoners in the local stockade.” Only the volunteers would be paid. The others could be unwilling, and, though it wasn’t spelled out, unwitting. It would be easier to preserve his secrecy if he were “inducing specific mental disorders” in people who already exhibited them. “Certain patients requiring hypnosis in therapy, or suffering from dissociative disorders (trances, fugues, amnesias, etc.) might lend themselves to our experiments.” Official investigations into MKUltra yielded little information about its subjects, but West’s letter suggests that the program cast a wide net.

Gottlieb’s reply came on letterhead from “Chemrophyl Associates,” a front company he used to correspond with MKUltra subcontractors. “My Good Friend,” he wrote, “I had been wondering whether your apparent rapid and comprehensive grasp of our problems could possibly be real. … you have indeed developed an admirably accurate picture of exactly what we are after. For this I am deeply grateful.”

Gottlieb saluted his new recruit: “We have gained quite an asset in the relationship we are developing with you.”

West returned the camaraderie: “It makes me very happy to realize that you consider me ‘an asset,’” he replied. “Surely there is no more vital undertaking conceivable in these times.”

In 1954, around the same time as Chere Jo Horton’s murder, West began to split his time between Lackland and the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, where he would lead the psychiatry department.

West had told his prospective employer that his Lackland duties were “purely clinical” and that he’d “been doing no research, classified or otherwise” — and he asked the board of directors at Oklahoma for permission to accept money from the Geschickter Fund for Medical Research, which he called “a non-profit private research foundation.” In fact, as the CIA later acknowledged, Geschickter was another of Gottlieb’s fictions, a shell organization enabling him.

In 1956, West reported back to the CIA that the experiments he’d begun in 1953 had at last come to fruition. In a 1956 paper titled “The Psychophysiological Studies of Hypnosis and Suggestibility,” he claimed to have achieved the impossible: He knew how to replace “true memories” with “false ones” in human beings without their knowledge. Without detailing specific incidents, he put it in layman’s terms: “It has been found to be feasible to take the memory of a definite event in the life of an individual and, through hypnotic suggestion, bring about the subsequent conscious recall to the effect that this event never actually took place, but that a different (fictional) event actually did occur.” He’d done it, he claimed, by administering “new drugs” effective in “speeding the induction of the hypnotic state and in deepening the trance that can be produced in given subjects.”

At the National Security Archives in D.C., I found the version of “The Psychophysiological Studies of Hypnosis and Suggestibility” that the CIA turned over to Senators Kennedy and Inouye in 1977. West’s name and affiliation were redacted, as expected. But the CIA’s version was also shorter, and watered down in comparison. West’s document was 14 pages. This one was five, including a cover page. Most glaringly, there was no mention of West’s triumphant accomplishment, the replacement of “the memory of a definite event in the life of an individual” with a “fictional event.”

One passage, not in West’s original, claims the CIA never used LSD in studies at all: “The effects of [LSD and other drugs] upon the production, maintenance, and manifestations of disassociated states has never been studied.”

West, of course, had studied those effects for years. But when it came to elaborating on his findings about implanting memories and controlling thoughts, even in the paper found in West’s own files, he offered few details. He seems to have been in a rudimentary phase of his research. Acid, he wrote, made people more difficult to hypnotize; it was better to pair hypnosis with long bouts of isolation and sleep deprivation. Using hypnotic suggestion, he claimed, “a person can be told that it is now a year later and during the course of this year many changes have taken place…so that it is now acceptable for him to discuss matters that he previously felt he should not discuss…An individual who insists he desires to do one thing will reveal that secretly he wishes just the opposite.”

Had the CIA doctored West’s original document to mislead the Senate committee? And if so, why would the agency have gone to so much trouble to hide experimental findings that weren’t ultimately all that revealing? Agency officials claimed the program had been a colossal failure, leading to mocking headlines like the “The Gang That Couldn’t Spray Straight.” Perhaps the agency wanted the world to assume that MKUltra was a bust, and to forget the whole thing.

1974-ORIGINAL CAPTION READS:  Close-up of the official seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The official seal of the CIA in 1974.

Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

The CIA seems to have pared MKUltra back in the mid-’60s, according to congressional testimony and surviving financial records, but Jolly West’s government-funded research continued apace. Late in the fall of 1966, West arrived in San Francisco to study hippies and LSD. Tall, broad, and crew cut, with an all-American look in keeping with his military past, he cobbled together a new wardrobe and started skipping haircuts. He secured a government grant and took a yearlong sabbatical from the University of Oklahoma, nominally to pursue a fellowship at Stanford, although that school had no record of his participation in a program there.

When he arrived in Haight-Ashbury, West was the only scientist in the world who’d predicted the emergence of potentially violent “LSD cults” such as Charles Manson’s Family. In a 1967 psychiatry textbook, West had contributed a chapter called “Hallucinogens,” warning students of a “remarkable substance” percolating through college campuses and into cities. LSD was known to leave users “unusually susceptible and emotionally labile.” It appealed to alienated kids who would crave “shared forbidden activity in a group setting to provide a sense of belonging.”

Acid, he wrote, made people more difficult to hypnotize; it was better to pair hypnosis with long bouts of isolation and sleep deprivation.

Another of his papers, 1965’s “Dangers of Hypnosis,” foresaw the rise of dangerous groups led by “crackpots” who hypnotized their followers into violent criminality. He cited two cases: a double murder in Copenhagen committed by a hypno-programmed man, and a “military offense” induced experimentally at an undisclosed U.S. Army base. (It’s not at all clear that the latter referred to Shaver’s killing of Chere Jo Horton.)

He’d also supervised a study in Oklahoma City, in which he’d hired informants to infiltrate teenage gangs and engender “a fundamental change” in “basic moral, religious or political matters.” The title of the project was “Mass Conversion,” and it had been funded by Gottlieb.

In the Haight, West arranged for the use of a crumbling Victorian house on Frederick Street, where he set up what he described as a “laboratory disguised as a hippie crash pad.” The “pad” opened in June 1967, at the dawn of the summer of love. He installed six graduate students in the “pad,” telling them to “dress like hippies” and “lure” itinerant kids into the apartment. Passersby were welcome to do as they pleased and stay as long as they liked, as long as they didn’t mind grad students taking notes on their behavior.

According to records in West’s files, his “crash pad” was funded by the Foundations Fund for Research in Psychiatry, Inc., which had bankrolled a number of his other projects, too, across decades and institutions. Dr. Gordon Deckert, West’s successor as chair at the University of Oklahoma, told me that he found papers in West’s desk that revealed that the Foundations Fund was a front for the CIA.

This wouldn’t have been the agency’s first “disguised laboratory” in San Francisco. A few years earlier, the evocatively titled Operation Midnight Climax had seen CIA operatives open at least three Bay Area safe houses disguised as upscale bordellos, kitted out with one-way mirrors and kinky photographs. A spy named George Hunter White and his colleagues hired prostitutes to entice prospective johns to the homes, where the men were served cocktails laced with acid. The goal was to see if LSD, paired with sex, could be used to coax sensitive information from the men. White later wrote to his CIA handler, “I was a very minor missionary, actually a heretic, but I toiled wholeheartedly in the vineyards because it was fun, fun, fun.”

At the Haight-Ashbury pad, though, West’s motives were vague. No one seemed to have a firm grasp of the project’s purpose — not even those involved in it. The grad students hired to staff West’s “crash pad” lab were assigned to keep diaries of their work. In unguarded moments, nearly all of these students admitted that something didn’t add up. They weren’t sure what they were supposed to be doing, or why West was there. And often he wasn’t there.

One of the diaries in West’s files belonged to a Stanford psychology grad student who lived at the pad that summer. The experience was aimless to the point of worthlessness, she wrote. When “crashers” showed up, “no one made much of a point of finding out about [them].” More often, hippies failed to show up at all, since many of them apparently looked on the pad with suspicion. “What the hell is Jolly doing, it is like a zoo,” the student fumed. “Is he studying us or them?”

When West made one of his rare appearances, he was dressed like a “silly hippie”; sometimes he brought friends to the house. Their general attitude, she wrote, “was that this was a good opportunity to have fun. … They spent a good deal of the time stoned.” She added, “I feel like no one is being honest and straight and the whole thing is a gigantic put on. … What is he trying to prove? He is interested in drugs, that is clear. What else?”

In December 1974, MKUltra finally came to light in a terrific flash of headlines and intrigue. Seymour Hersh reported it on the front page of the Times: “Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces.” The three government investigations that followed — the Rockefeller Commission, Church Committee, and the Kennedy-Inouye Select Committee hearings — looked into illegal domestic activities of various federal intelligence agencies, including wiretapping, mail opening, and unwitting drug testing of U.S. citizens.

The Church Committee’s final report unveiled a 1957 internal evaluation of MKUltra by the CIA’s inspector general. “Precautions must be taken,” the document warned, “to conceal these activities from the American public in general. The knowledge that the agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions.” A 1963 review from the inspector general put it even more gravely: “A final phase of the testing of MKUltra products places the rights and interests of U.S. citizens in jeopardy.”

The Church Committee found that MKUltra had caused the deaths of at least two American citizens. One was a psychiatric patient who’d been injected with a synthetic mescaline derivative. The other was Frank Olson, a military-contracted scientist who’d been unwittingly dosed with LSD at a small agency gathering in the backwoods of Maryland presided over by Gottlieb himself. Olson fell into an irreparable depression afterward, which led him to hurl himself out the window of a New York City hotel where agents had brought him for “treatment.” (Continued investigation by Olson’s son, Eric — dramatized by Errol Morris in the series “Wormwood” — strongly suggests that the CIA arranged for the agents to fake his suicide, throwing him out of the window because they feared he would blow the whistle on MKUltra and the military’s use of biological weapons in the Korean War.)

Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City, also called the Statler Hotel at one time, was immortalized by Glenn Miller in the song Pennsylvania 6-5000 which was the phone number of the hotel.

The Statler Hotel in New York, N.Y. where Frank Olson fell to his death.

Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

The news of Olson’s death shocked a nation already reeling from Watergate, and now less inclined than ever to trust its institutions. The government tried to quell the controversy by passing new regulations on human experimentation. Gottlieb’s destruction of the MKUltra files was investigated by the Justice Department in 1976, but, according to the Times, “quietly dropped.” Gottlieb had testified before the Senate in 1977 only under the condition that he received criminal immunity.

The Senate demanded the formation of a federal program to locate the victims of MKUltra experiments, and to pursue criminal charges against the perpetrators. That program never coalesced. Surviving records named 80 institutions, including 44 universities and colleges, and 185 researchers, among them Louis Jolyon West. The Times identified West as one of less than a dozen suspected scientists who’d secretly participated in MKUltra under academic cover.

Yet not one researcher was ever federally investigated, nor were any victims ever notified. Despite the outrage of congressional leaders and more than three years of headlines about the brutalities of the program, no one — not the “Black Sorcerer” Sidney Gottlieb, nor senior CIA official Richard Helms, nor Jolly West — suffered any legal consequences.

This article is an adapted excerpt from “Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties.”

The post Inside the Archive of an LSD Researcher With Ties to the CIA’s MKUltra Mind Control Project appeared first on The Intercept.

24 Nov 15:10

7 funky features on Tesla's Cybertruck

by Gary Gastelu
The electric Tesla Cybertruck may have outlandish styling but, at heart, it's still just a four-wheel, four-door pickup that you can read more about by clicking here. That said, it does offer plenty of features you won't find on many other mass-market trucks, and not ...
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This compact camping trailer expands to provide comfortable space for two.

24 Nov 15:02

Now You Can Get a Compass Better Than What the Military Has

Brunton has been making high-grade compasses since 1894. They're favored by geologists, forestry workers and the US military too.

24 Nov 15:02

SOME INTERESTING BITS OF HISTORY

by Mas
A longtime student of Depression-era bad guys and the lawmen who chased them, I came late to the 2007 book “The Complete Public Enemy Almanac” by William Helmer and Rick Mattix.  The latter I’m unfamiliar with, but Helmer is perhaps … Read more
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24 Nov 14:50

REVIEW: "MADIGAN" (1968) STARRING RICHARD WIDMARK AND HENRY FONDA; KINO LORBER BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION

by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)

“EARLY DIRTY”

By Raymond Benson

The filmmaker who made the iconic Clint Eastwood vehicle, Dirty Harry in 1971 also made something of an early test-run three years earlier in the form of a crime picture called Madigan. Starring Richard Widmark as a tough, cynical, and world-weary police detective in New York City, Madigan displays the same look, feel, and grit that the later Eastwood police procedural exhibits. And, like Harry Callahan, Dan Madigan doesn’t always follow the rules.

Don Siegel (credited here as “Donald” Siegel for some odd reason, for he had been “Don” in earlier films) had been a solid craftsman since the 1950s, responsible for such works as Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), the admirable remake of The Killers (1964), and Coogan’s Bluff (1968). Likewise, Madigan is a well-made thriller with a hard-boiled plot and realistic characters portrayed by an excellent cast that includes Henry Fonda, Inger Stevens, and James Whitmore.

The tale begins when Madigan (Widmark) and his partner Rocco Bonaro (Harry Guardino) screw up while attempting to bring in hoodlum Barney Benesch (Steve Inhat) for questioning, unaware that he is wanted for murder in Brooklyn. Benesch gets the upper hand on the pair and runs away with their guns. Police commissioner Russell (Fonda) isn’t happy about this, but he has other problems on his mind. Besides being involved in an adulterous relationship with a mistress (Susan Clark) that’s going south, Russell’s best friend on the force, Chief Inspector Kane (Whitmore), may be accepting bribes. Madigan has marital problems, too; his wife, Julia (Stevens), is fed up with him, for he is married more to the job than to her. As the two storylines converge, Russell orders Madigan and Bonaro to track down Benesch by following the leads of several colorful characters, including “Midget Castiglione” (Michael Dunn). Of course, the investigation culminates in a climactic shootout with tragic results.

Widmark is very good as the film’s protagonist, although the actor always seems to play “Richard Widmark” in whatever movie he’s in (except Kiss of Death, which made him a star as a psychotic killer). It is Fonda, however, who dominates the picture. Russell’s plotline is ultimately more interesting than that of Madigan’s, revealing a troubled, conflicted man who appears to have his mind on the job but his heart ready to chuck it all.

Kino Lorber’s new 1920x1080p Blu-ray looks slick and sharp, and it has optional English subtitles. An interesting audio commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson accompanies the movie, but there are no supplements other than the theatrical trailer and some TV spots.

Madigan became a short-lived television series in the early 70s with Widmark reprising his role, but it is the 1968 feature film that packs the punch. A warm-up to Dirty Harry? Perhaps not intentionally, but Madigan is a strong entry in Don Siegel’s filmography.

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22 Nov 23:39

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by Pia Silva, Contributor
I often encounter one-person businesses—whose beautiful websites look like they could represent a very successful company— that are struggling to get any clients at all. How can this be? Because they are missing this one, crucial piece of the branding puzzle.