Trib coverage of water polo at Highland Park Pool on Saturday

https://TinyURL.com/water-polo-trib

Pass the word. Bring a lawn chair, snacks and some cold drinks in a cooler. Plus, your swim suit, of course. Pool opens in the shallow end at 1 pm. Just pay the day rate if you don't have a pool tag. 

Election brochure and CD Cover for Elect.Rauterkus.com

Some old materials, blast from the past. 

Email blast: Crisis

Reaching out via email.

https://pairlist6.pair.net/pipermail/412-public-news/2018-March/000052.html

Who wants to be the Pittsburgh voice for this open source utility?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jen Caltrider, Mozilla
Subject: I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

A whole new way your voice matters.

Dear Pittsburgh Yinzers, We all sound different when we speak. What does that mean for voice recognition? When Siri hears a beautiful Irish brogue or Scottish burr or the accent of a non-native English speaker, she can get tripped up. And Siri has the full force of Apple's voice data collection operation behind her algorithm to help her understand. What about the small developer who wants to build a voice activated app? Where do they go to get samples of all the beautiful voices speaking from around the world? Up until recently, their options were to spend a fortune buying data to train their algorithms from big corporations or put their product out into the world with an untrained algorithm. It's time for a better option. Meet Mozilla's new project, Common Voice. It's an open collection of labelled voice data anyone can use to create highly accurate voice recognition software. Well, it will soon be that, with your help. In order to create this valuable public resource, we need people who speak English in all sorts of wonderful ways to go and contribute voice samples. (Note: right now Common Voice is only collecting English samples, but stay tuned, we plan to add other languages very soon.) Here's what you do — click over to the Common Voice website. There are two ways you can help. You can click "Speak" and follow the instructions to leave some of your own voice samples. You'll be asked to allow the website to access your microphone. Don't worry, we're Mozilla, we care about your privacy and won't use your microphone for anything but recording the short sentences you'll read. Have fun playing around with that. I know I did. If leaving a voice recording isn't your thing, you can also just listen. Click the "Listen" link and you'll be asked to listen to some sentences others have read and verify they got it right. That's it. It's actually a ton of fun. As voice recognition becomes more important in our digital world, everyone — from startups to students at university to that friend of yours who just likes to tinker — should be able to make sure their apps recognize all our beautiful voices. That's how we build a healthy Internet, one step at a time. Thank you, Jen Caltrider Mozilla Thanks for reading! You're receiving this email because we think you're neat. Donate to Mozilla   |   Download Firefox 331 E. Evelyn Avenue Mountain View CA 94041 Legal • Privacy

Pitt students, police and dorm entry pushing

Accurate? Truthful? I'm not sure. But, here is a statement worth reading.

Thomas Merton Center Blog
Dear Dean of Students, Apologize for Lying about the Litchfield Towers Protest
Posted: 18 Nov 2016 12:45 PM PST
November 18, 2016
By Tallon Kennedy

On November 17th, a group of protesters took to the streets of Pitt’s campus to rally against tuition hikes, to voice support for making the University of Pittsburgh a sanctuary campus, as well as to voice concerns for the wave of racism and alt-right ideologies surfacing throughout the country as a result of Trump’s election to the presidency.

The students went into the Towers Residence Hall on campus, and according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, police forces ordered the students to leave the residence hall, and when the protesters refused, the police got violent, pushing the demonstrators out of the dormitory, and using batons against them. The Post-Gazette also reported that the students began pushing back, and claimed that since they pay tuition to the University, that they have a right to protest in a residence hall they help pay for.

Since the incident, the response from the campus authorities has been less than admirable. Vice Provost and Dean of Students Kenyon Bonner sent out a statement to the student body, saying that, while the University wants to protect the students’ rights to protest on campus, that “protesters do not have the right to act in a manner that disregards the safety of others or damage property,” and that students who do protest without following the law “risk losing the great privilege of attending” the University.

The problem with this statement is that no reports indicate that the protesting students were damaging property as Bonner claims, or were acting in any manner that would make them a genuine risk to the safety of others, as Bonner also claims. This blatant lie from the Vice Provost is reprehensible, and is no doubt attempting to raise fear and antipathy of protests across campus, and is attempting to quell any protests from breaking out in the future. I believe Bonner has a moral obligation to retract his statement and to clear up the lies that he has espoused. University officials must be held accountable for their falsehoods and for promoting antipathy towards peaceful protests.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s report indicates that the protest didn’t become violent until the police started to use force. By all means, up until that point, the protest was a peaceful one, and while it’s fine to argue that Litchfield Towers is private property, and thus the protesters didn’t have a right to protest there, to suggest that the protesters were damaging property or compromising the safety of others is a blatant falsehood. If anything, the actions of the police in the situation were more damaging to the safety of community members than anything else.

Kenyon Bonner, Vice Provost, Dean of Students, if you want to take the moral high ground, you should apologize for lying about the Litchfield Towers protest.

To contribute to the bail of the students arrested at the peaceful protest, you can go here: https://fillerpgh.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/anti-fascist-legal-defense/

LiveCode 8.1 Released: Fast Networking and sFTP Support

8.1 is available now and has a ton of great new features for you. View this email in your browser 8.1: A Major Minor Feature Release We are delighted to announce the release of LiveCode 8.1. As the first significant release post 8.0, it has a raft of important new features for you as well as refinements, enhancements and the usual herculean bug squishing efforts. New Networking Layer This release brings you a vast improvement in the networking speed and capabilities of LiveCode. The new tsNet networking layer, included in LiveCode Indy and LiveCode Business, can speed up networking operations anywhere between 3x and 250x, depending on the type of operation. As it wraps the existing networking commands you will not need to rewrite any code, you will automatically benefit from this improvement. The new layer also adds support for additional protocols such as sFTP, SMTP and TLS. For full details please go here. Auto include inclusions Have you ever had the experience that your app works perfectly when running in the IDE, but when you build the final standalone it suddenly stops working? Was it because you forgot to include some vital component that your app needed to run? If so, you are not alone. 8.1 to the rescue. It now automatically searches for and includes any extensions or libraries your app needs. Read more about this new feature here. Goodbye Quicktime Also in this release, for multimedia playback, the Player Object has been replaced by a new player object using Directshow instead of Quicktime. Dependency on Quicktime is removed by this new player. Read more here. LCB Enhancements The Infinite LiveCode project has made good progress, with consequent enhancements to LiveCode Builder. Variables now get initialised by default, unsafe blocks and handlers can be used to flag sections of code that do dangerous things, and you can even include raw bytecode if necessary. Love for the IDE The IDE has lots of other upgrades, too: a keyboard-navigable Project Browser that highlights any scripts that failed to compile, a beautified dictionary user interface, and access to the message box just by starting to type. It even colorises your script as you type. New Extension Added You can now access HealthKit on iOS to integrate activity, sport and health data on iOS devices (requires an Indy or Business license). Additionally, the SVG widget has new scaled width and height properties, and the Line Graph widget now supports a scatter plot of data and a variety of new styles. And Even More There are dozens of other smaller features added in this version, explore the release notes for an exhaustive list. Worth checking out: GPS location history system for Android and iOS list files and folders without changing the current folder "filter" now works on arrays extended new "return" syntax lets you write functions & commands that set "it" appropriate resize cursors now show when dragging to change stack size  Fixes and enhancements 157 specific fixes and enhancements were made between LiveCode 8.0.2 and 8.1. Since the release of 8.0 a grand total of 220 bugs have been fixed, leading to a better, smoother, happier coding experience. This release is now available from your LiveCode account, or you can download here.  Read More Share Tweet Share Forward

Mindful presentation in five segments. Presenter is Richard King.

Part 1 = 21 minutes.



Part 2 = 1 minute and 53 seconds.



Part 3 = 3 minutes and 26 seconds.



Part 4 = 5 minutes and 12 seconds.



Part 5 = 40 seconds.

Guard.CLOH.org is updated

http://Guard.CLOH.org

Code named, Guard_Input, this service helps Lifeguards, swim coaches, camp coordinators and others involved with the Swim & Water Polo activities to communicate about health insights of students in our programs.

This process puts information to the coaches within the programs and not in a file box deep within the school's office behind the nurse's desk.

This is not a secure process, but rather a practical one. Communicate only the information that you feel is important to the coaches and lifeguards, not pharmacy specifics, please.

Links:

• Dropbox for the various Guard applications. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s9a4y2v64redtdj/MIRw81ooi0
1. Android download. This is the .apk file for Android smart phones and tablets. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s9a4y2v64redtdj/o264gdf6Rn/Guard.CLOH.Org/Guard.CLOH.Org.apk
   
2. Windows application. This is the .exe file to get for Windows computers. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s9a4y2v64redtdj/PuueZcJr0P/Guard.CLOH.Org1/Windows/Guard.CLOH.Org.exe
   
3. Macintosh application. This is the OSX for those running Mac computers. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s9a4y2v64redtdj/RyEwEjRkNd/Guard.CLOH.Org1/MacOSX/Guard.CLOH.Org.app
   
4. The the LiveCode file for programmers running LiveCode Community is in the DropBox directory too.
• http://aforathlete.wikia.com/wiki/Guard.cloh.org Wiki page for Guard.CLOH.Org. This is where suggestions for the software applications can be posted.
• Articles within the South Pittsburgh Reporter's Summer 2013 supplement that tells the back story about Guard.CLOH.Org:
1. Technology is our friend at Swim & Water Polo Camp, article. Google Document.
2. How Are You? Health Information Communication, article. Google Document.
3. Safety. Some tips from Cassy, article. Google Document.
• http://Guard.CLOH.org This page!

Can you spare $10 or $25?

Exciting!



Crunch time is here.

This is worthy.

Pay if forward.

Program at the Mt. Lebanon Library: The History and Impact of Financial Power – 1868 to 2008

Free Program Series at the Mt. Lebanon Library

A facilitated program series planned and moderated by John Hemington, on The History and Impact of Financial Power –1868 to 2008, will be held at the Mt. Lebanon Library. It will examine, evaluate and draw conclusions from the historical, political and economic roots of both the Great Depression and the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 (GFC). We will try to determine whether the same processes, problems and ideas which led to the Great Depression are related to the events which triggered the GFC. We will also critique the contribution of mainstream economic ideas, models and policies and whether they may have contributed to the ongoing turmoil in the world’s economies today and what this bodes for the future?

The group will meet twice a month to discuss readings from the three books and the cumulative issues raised by these readings. The program will last for a year, beginning on the first Tuesday of March, the 5th, from 7:00 p.m. until 8:45 p.m. and subsequent 1st Tuesdays (except for July which will be the 9th). The 2nd monthly meeting day will be determined at the initial meeting. The program is free but will involve a commitment of time and a willingness to read the three books over the course of the year – listed below – on which the program is based. Clearly, not everyone will be able to attend every session, but a good faith effort should be made to attend as many as possible and to read the material assigned.

Even for those with a good background in history this should be a fresh and revealing experience. Our goal is to demonstrate conclusively that there is not just one history connecting events over time, but perhaps as many different histories as there are historians; and that critical study and evaluation is required to come to meaningful conclusions. Participants will be encouraged to carefully evaluate the facts behind issues before arriving at judgments about the nature of current events. There is no interest in furthering any particular political agenda, view or ideology in this program, therefore, three non-mainstream – but highly credible – authors have been selected for the core reading material. Because the material is primarily historical and minimally technical any reasonable literate individual should be able to participate fully. The discussions will be moderated to minimize argumentative speeches and debates. The idea is for conclusions to be focused on the factual substance covered in the materials – not on personal political or cultural prejudices. An extensive list of optional readings will be provided.

Carroll Quigley, whose book Tragedy and Hope is central to this project, is one of the very few historians whose studies focused on the activities and operations of the world’s “power elite” in the twentieth century and is reputed to have been the only historian ever given unfettered access to the Archives of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Rockefeller Archives. Prior to his death in 1977 Quigley taught at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where one of his students was Bill Clinton. Earlier in his career he taught at both Princeton and Harvard.

Reading Material

Tragedy and Hope – A History of the World in Our Time (1966), by Carroll Quigley (through page 1083)
The Gods of Money – Wall Street and the Death of the American Century (2009), by F. William Engdahl
Debunking Economics – The Naked Emperor Dethroned (Revised Edition, 2011), by Prof. Steve Keen

If Interested Contact John Hemington at: jehemington -at- verizon -dot- net or show up at the initial meeting.

“We were taught by Dr. Quigley that mankind's greatest tragedies were the consequence of man’s adherence to mistaken or outmoded ideas. The most pernicious of these false ideas are the belief in the perfection of knowledge and that the truth is ours to possess. The belief in the infallibility of human knowledge destroyed classical civilization and threatens to destroy our own. It was faith in the false god of perfect knowledge that led to the silencing of Galileo by the Inquisition, the Reign of Terror in France, the slaughter of a whole generation at the River Somme and the burning of Wilhelm Reich’s books by the U.S. government. It was this same sort of intellectual intransigence that deluded our leaders into believing that strategic bombing could crush the Vietnamese Revolution and has led our civilization closer and closer to ecological disaster.”

William Erickson (Georgetown SFS ‘75)

One of the thousands of things you can do with LiveCode

I got a mention on another blog about the software I wrote to keep track of attendance at Swim & Waterpolo Camp with PPS Summer Dreamers. 

http://livecode1001.blogspot.com/2013/02/keep-track-of-kids-at-summer-camp.html#comment-form

The South Side Residential Parking Program went down in flames

Hi Director Ismail and Mayor Ravenstahl,

What's this letter dated Dec 21 from City Planning about the Residential Permit Parking Program? The South Side firmly defeated the parking program. It went down in flames. It is a done deal -- and NOT to happen -- for a few more years. 

What is this letter. 

Treason?

I live on the South Side Flats at 12th Street and the community went AGAINST the plan. There was a clear statement to NOT allow it because we could not agree on a number of pressing factors.

I went to many of those meetings and this issue was DEAD ON ARRIVAL to city hall. 

--
Ta.


Mark Rauterkus       Mark.Rauterkus@gmail.com  
PPS Summer Dreamers' Swim and Water Polo Camp Head Coach
Pittsburgh Combined Water Polo Team

http://Rauterkus.blogspot.com
http://FixPA.wikia.com
http://CLOH.wikia.com
412 298 3432 = cell

Worry time begins again!

Chip in for fighting with the SEA to save the Civic Arena

www.reusetheigloo.org 

www.preservationpittsburgh.org 

Last week, a judge denied the SEA’s request for “summary affirmance”. This means that the case to prevent demolition of the Pittsburgh Civic Arena will likely be heard and we must file additional paperwork for our appeal next week unless we withdraw the case due to lack of funds!

In Thursday’s Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Mary Conturo, SEA Exec Director, confirmed that the SEA still intends to apply for federal funding. This statement adds further validity that the SEA is breaking the spirit, if not the letter, of the federal preservation law in demolishing the Civic Arena. This could provide further ammunition for our appeal. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11300/1185326-53-0.stm

Board members of Preservation Pittsburgh are tentatively committing an additional $20,000 in pledges toward our legal fees. We need a match for us to reach our need of $58,000 We need to act quickly!

Even though demolition of the roof has already started, the SEA has not yet deconstructed the structural part of the roof – only the removal of surface stainless steel and asbestos. We don’t know when our appeal will be heard. If we should win, we could ask for an injunction to stop further demolition before our case is heard in district court. In the meantime, demolition continues.

This case has the potential to set national implications for the anticipatory demolition provisions of Federal Law. Preservation cases around the country could be affected by the outcome of this case. We also need time to recruit a world class organization, Cirque du Soleil as a prime tenant! Go to www.reusetheigloo.org to learn more!

Scott Leib, Preservation Pittsburgh

Rob Pfaffmann, Reuse the Igloo!

Statement to Pittsburgh Public Schools Board and Administration from Mark Rauterkus, October 24, 2011

Statement to Pittsburgh Public Schools Board and Administration from Mark Rauterkus, October 24, 2011 *

Hello Board members, Superintendent and staff. My name is Mark Rauterkus. I live in the South Side and have two children that attend Pittsburgh Public Schools.

Later in your agenda you will see a personell matter. I am very happy and excited to say that I've accepted the swim coaching position for the high school boys swimming coach at Pittsburgh Obama. I am really thrilled. It is going to be exciting to work with the kids and such. I won't let the students or you down.

One person emailed me and said the whole burden of PPS Athletic Reform Task Force, something that I was working on prior, is now falling on my shoulders. This is something that I'm willing to accept. If I have enough access and good support, and I think that will come, we will do some amazing things and hopefully we can be that model.

A lot of sports, and I don't want to get all Knute Rockne on you, is about playing well with one another. I think we need to use sports as best we can to keep the kids good goals.

It is alarming that the Schenley building is for sale for $2-million and it is a loss of a swim pool, something I care about most, but also the gym.

My suggestion to you is, if you must, sell the school building but do not sell the athletic facilities. Perhaps you can put a rider on the sale of some sort.

When the schools with grades 6 to 12 were created, you have to remember you have a middle school facility with their own middle school teams. They need to be practicing after school. Then these schools also must serve high school teams as well. They all need to be practicing after school.

Let's hold onto those athletic facilities and use them.

Even right now, with the closed Peabody facility, we have to use that, all the time. That is another access thing. It is sitting idle and we should be using it for our swim season, swim lessons, water polo, fitness.

In September I took a team of high school boys to Columbus, Ohio, for a water polo tournament. We played in the JV brackets as Pittsburgh Combined in Worthington. In the last game, at Worthington, we won in a game over Upper Arlington. I want to thank Dr. Lane for putting that news into the Superintendent's report and our players were very happy to hear her congratulations on their play. Two weeks ago I gathered 17 players from the city and a few from Shaler, and we played two games on a Saturday evening against North Allegheny's Club Teams. The kids did great. Everyone was proud, as they should be. Then they figured, "Boy, if we had practices and a legit schedule, we'd be really, really good."

Speaking of access, I'm expecting we'll work out access to Westinghouse High School so we can do afterschool programs there and build up some aquatics programs there.

Speaking of Westinghouse, it appears to me that the name, Westinghouse, the colors and the mascot is important to them. It would be best to keep the name Westinghouse as well as the colors and the mascott.

Houses in the Schenley Farms neighborhood sell for more than $2-million dollars. This is a giant building and it has a swim pool and gym. If you must, sell the school, but get a fair price. And by all means, do NOT sell the school on the cheap and then have the new owners expect to get a tax break or tax abatement into the future. I'd say "No way to that." I have always been against TIFs and tax-breaks that take money from today's students. Different people, like homeowners, need to carry more of the tax burden. Plus, a tax break for some amounts to a bribe. That is never healthy.

We could use that swim pool and gym that is within Schenley. It is new. It is of great size for a high school programs. A condition of sale could be for the new owners to occupy the school and the district to retain the sports facilities.

We have talked about this before with the creation of the schools that span from grades 6 to 12. These schools need to have VARSITY, JV, FRESHMEN and MIDDLE SCHOOL teams. The Sci-Tech and U-Prep schools were built for middle school teams. Use the sub-standard gyms and pools in those schools for sports play for middle school students and then give access to the high school students of both U-Prep and Sci Tech, an easily walk, to Schenley for their JV and Varsity teams practices and games.

Intramurals present another area where PPS needs great expansion. We need to have the space available in the evenings to do those programs. Some can be done on a city-wide basis at Pittsburgh Schenley.

It is with sports where be learn how to best play well with one another. We have heard plenty from the factions at Oliver High School and Perry High School. We need more common ground. We need sports facilities so we can have better coaching opportunities, better school spirit, better fitness and a district that is going to retain its students and families.

Our kids need high goals. So don't take away these goals, the physical hoops in the gyms, by selling the facility that is necessary for our schools to thrive.

And when the time is right, I would like to work to put in swimming and water polo programs at either Perry or Oliver High School as well.

* These were not my exact words.

Arita Gilliam Rue to PPS Board in October 2011

Arita Gilliam Rue to PPS Board in October 2011 in Google Document

Statement to the PPS School board from A.W.

Annette S. Werner PURE Reform

I'm here to talk about the proposed sale of the Schenley building.

The Schenley athletic addition - pool and gym- are asbestos free.

Again, the pool and gym added to Schenley in 1987 do not have asbestos plaster.

That is important information, because pools and gyms are of course very expensive. The district said the cost of just a new gym for Miller is $8M- and that would be a K-8 gym. The Schenley addition, which cost over $9M, would cost $18M in today's dollars.

It is bad enough to sell an $18M plus asset for 2M. Soon, however, we will be talking about money the district will need to spend to purchase what it just sold. The athletic facilities at U Prep are not suitable for a high school and not comparable to those enjoyed by other high school students in the district. Eventually it will become necessary to remedy the situation by adding new sports facilities, at great expense.

With the current state of the budget it will be difficult to roll in a wasteful expense unnoticed. There will be consequences in terms of higher taxes, more crowded classrooms, or both, and then repercussions in terms of enrollment and decisions people make about whether to live and locate businesses in the city. There are plenty of examples of urban school districts that ignored these considerations and have never recovered. Pittsburgh is not immune to these problems.

Now is the time to look ahead and prevent these unpleasant consequences. Put a padlock on the classroom portion of the Schenley building and preserve the very valuable sports facilities for PPS students. Maintenance costs of retaining the building can most likely be offset by fees for making the building available to other schools and organizations.

Looking beyond just this one building, insist on a realistic calculation of renovation costs when schools are closed or consolidated, and open those calculations to public scrutiny. Consider also the loss of options for the future when schools and plans don't turn out as expected. At some point we are going to have to take a good honest look at how the experiments of the last 6 years have turned out and one way or another, changes will need to be made; the only question is how much it will cost us.

Twitter in the classroom in East LA

CNN did a nice bit with a teacher who asks students to bring in their own technology for everyday classroom work.

The final statement of the segment talks of Twitter teaching the students at 140 chars at a time. Frankly, that seems wrong. Twitter is not so much the teacher but rather a new communication avenue to and from the teachers, students and community. Twitter isn't teaching just as WWI isn't teaching. It is a subject area but as far as housekeeping, i.e., remember to put in the hash-tags. The teaching comes from the teacher, mostly. The teaching comes from the students themselves, as always. That's self discovery, self expression, self growth.

I think we need to get rid of the hard, fast rules of NO CELL PHONES ALWAYS. There is a time and a place for everything, generally.

Now, we need to go back to CNN and tweet that the broadcast news folks are making a huge mistake by taking away the voice of Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico. CNN isn't letting him onto the debate stage in New Hampshire even when he is a candidate.

Address 'protocol' causes stir in city

Address 'protocol' causes stir in city: "'At this juncture, our advice is that council request that the Address Committee begin sending all recommendations to the body in formal bill form,' associate city solicitor Yvonne S. Hilton said."

Of course. This is a no-brainer. Pittsburgh City Council always wants others to do the jobs of the council for the councilors. The duties of crafting the legislation are going to be passed down to others, such as an address committee. Have the guys in Public Works who sit on that committee, or a 9-1-1 operator, or a firefighter, write the darn law. City council is there to vote on the written works of others, not come up with the laws too.

The proper thing to do is have the member of council who is also a member of the city address committee do the work and write the legislation. After the legislation is written, it should be presented to the address committee for prior approval. Then it should go to City Council for a full vetting among members and the public.

And, the law office does not need to be a referee among workers of the city.

Sports Reform: Business as usual is not welcomed, then. But now?

In the spring of 2010, Mr. Lopez, one of the top administrators of Pittsburgh Public Schools, hosted a meeting to talk about sports reform.