Category Archives: Post Human

Sadly, well never ID the first human to slide a digit or foreign object between the buttocks after doing number two.

SLUG SIGNORINOWhen and why did humans start wiping or manually cleaning themselves post-defecation, since animals generally don't do this? Roger

Many of humanitys greatest pioneersNewton, Edison, Rubikhave been fortunate enough to achieve household-name status for their groundbreaking work. Others, unluckier but no less visionary, must necessarily remain unknown. Sadly, well never ID the first human to slide a digit or foreign object between the buttocks after doing number two, just as well never locate the first person who decided it was a good idea to wash up afterwards. But we can figure out roughly when evolution would have made it necessary for our ancestors to develop a species-appropriate method of anal cleansing.

As you say, animals in general dont make a habit of wiping after defecationlimbwise, few are up to the task anyway. Birds and fish would seem to lack means, motive, or both. Some mammals, its true, do clean themselves when necessarythink of your cat licking itself. (Maybe dont think about it too long, though.) Only the most flexible hominids would be able to pull off that grooming trick, and the rest of us, I'd imagine, arent generally envious. Nor does it seem appealing to follow the lead of those species that occasionally drag their rumps along the ground to tidy up down below. (If you notice your dog engaging in such behavior, thats more likely an attempt to relieve fluid buildup in the anal glands than some canine stab at hygiene.)

Our pressing need to wipe is the result of a significant anatomical difference separating us from the rest of creation. You and I may be so used to having them that we dont think of our uniquely fatty, muscular posteriors as an evolutionary development that makes us stand out as humansor, more precisely, stand up. Considered strictly as an adaptation, the glutes certainly dont get all the good press that, say, the opposable thumb does. Nonetheless, the development of a stronger set of gluteal muscles was a major leap forward in enabling us to become an exclusively bipedal species.

It didnt happen all at onceAustralopithecus was strolling around upright nearly four million years ago with a body more akin to an apes than to ours. But eventually, between one and two million years ago, those of us who had sturdier hips and stronger muscles supporting them began to outrace our peers and our predators. The evolutionary advantage of the thickened layers of fat that cushion the glutes is less evidentsome scientists speculate they offered a reserve that could be burned off for energy when food grew scarce.

Essential as they proved to be, butts came with issues. Our anal cavity was now tucked away within two mounds of flesh. From our present-day acculturated vantage point, this might seem like an obvious improvement, helping to keep the anus out of sight and mind. But for prehistoric folks it created a hazard that our animal friends, what with their exposed bungholes, rarely faced: fecal residue might linger in there, and the accumulation of bacteria in so moist a locale could cause infection. Women were especially vulnerable, given the proximity of the exposed vagina and urethra.

So one of these buttock-equipped humansnamed by science Homo erectus, after their default posturewas probably the first wiper. Some rectal discomfort must have inspired this innovator to impulsively run a finger or two through the crevice and (ideally) wipe the accumulated crud off somewhere. H. erectus didnt stand on formalities, after all. Perhaps over time those who engaged in the habit prospered, and taught their offspring to do likewise. Nobody said evolution was pretty.

As human culture progressed, of course, taboos and rituals developed around our eliminatory regimens, some apparently rooted in prudence, others in disgust. By the time of Deuteronomy, divinely ordained pooping instructions had been set forth, enjoining the Israelites to scoot out of camp before doing their business and bring a little shovel along to cover up the evidence. At length toilet paper enters the picturethough as I mentioned in a TP column way back in 1986, folks were ripping pages out of the Sears Roebuck catalog before softer tissue became more widely available. Even today, many cultures prefer the gentle cleansing of the bidet, as we discussed at some length last year when someone wondered if wiping was necessary at all.

Bear in mind that our ancestors might not have needed to wipe as vigorously or diligently as we do. Their diet, however omnivorous and haphazard, lacked the modern poisons that gunk up our GI tractsCheetos and Twinkies were hard to come by in paleolithic times, you know. And toilet use hadnt yet trained them to relieve their bowels in an unnatural seated position. Squatting in the woods not only puts less strain on the system (possibly making squatters less prone to hemorrhoids) but allows smoother fecal passage, alleviating some of the need to wipe. Homo erectus had more to teach us, it seems, if wed only been wise enough to listen.Cecil Adams

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When and Why Did Humans Start Wiping or Manually Cleaning Themselves Post-Defecation? - Washington City Paper

This weeks restrictions on larger electronic devices in carry-on luggage from many of the Middle East and North Africas largest airports by the governments of the US and UK is an effort at making it more difficult for terrorists to attempt to blow up airplanes at will. Whether the restrictions are based on intelligence reports, recent event history, the application of common sense, or some combination of all of them, it is yet another incremental step in the direction of attempting to ensure the safety of the flying public. But one could certainly argue that it is also like placing a band-aid on a gaping wound while creating more of a false sense of security in a system that is rife with gaps, inconsistencies, and vulnerabilities.

One irony, of course, is that almost none of the airports and airlines impacted by the regulation are in failed states, where there is ample reason to presume that the air transportation infrastructure does not come close to meeting U.S. Federal Aviation Administration security standards. And, as has been demonstrated numerous times in recent years, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has itself failed to live up to its own security standards. For example, in a nationwide test in 2015, the US Department of Homeland Securitys (DHS) Office of the Inspector General was able to successfully transfer mock explosives or banned weapons through airport security screening systems 95 percent of the time.

Also in 2015, only two major US airports made comprehensive employee screening part of their operational protocol -- meaning that all other major airports in the country do not do so. Another DHS investigation found that the TSA had failed to identify 73 employees of airlines, airport vendors, and other employers with active clearance badges who had links to terrorism. In other words, the TSA was inadvertently sanctioning the employment of individuals with terrorist links to work in roles that could endanger the US public. So, the US is not exactly in a position of authority in terms of setting the gold standard for airport and airline security.

While it should be presumed that the U.S. government has good intelligence-based reason to single out the airports and airlines that it did in its action, there are a number of problems with the approach. Among them, other airports and airlines from failed states, or from countries which are known to be a safe-haven for terrorists, are not included in the restrictions. There is also little to prevent a terrorist who might otherwise have chosen the subject airports and airlines to simply choose another origination point or airline. The restrictions may also ultimately backfire, and encourage terrorists to seek even more sophisticated means of targeting commercial aviation in the future.

What would be even more useful than imposing additional passenger restrictions would be for airport and airline security officials to adopt protocols that not only integrate the latest intelligence, but also the human factors that have made Israels El Al Airlines so successful at thwarting potential attacks. All vehicles that arrive at Ben Gurion Airport must first pass through a preliminary security checkpoint where armed guards search the vehicle and exchange a few words with the driver and occupants to gauge their mood and intentions. Plain clothes officers patrol the area outside the terminal building, assisted by sophisticated hidden surveillance cameras which operate around the clock. Armed security personnel patrol the terminal and keep a close eye on people entering the terminal building. If any persons seem suspicious or anxious, security personnel will approach them and engage them in conversation in an effort to gauge their intentions and mood. Vehicles are subject to a weight sensor, a trunk x-ray and an undercarriage scan.

Departing passengers are questioned by highly trained security agents before they reach the check-in counter. These interviews could last as little as one minute or as long as an hour, based on such factors as age, race, religion and destination. Unlike in many western airports, passengers are not required to remove their shoes while passing through physical screening processes. Furthermore, there are no sophisticated x-ray machines; rather, traditional metal detectors are still in operation.

The passenger-oriented security system is more focused on the human factor, based on the assumption that terrorist attacks are carried out by people who can be found and have been stopped through the use of this simple but effective security methodology. That said, there is a great array of equipment and technology available for the authorities to help combat any potential terrorist attacks. For example, checked baggage is put in a pressure chamber to trigger any possible explosive devices and robots patrol the airport grounds.

Ben Gurion airport does not sub-contract its security to private companies. Given their priority in ensuring safety and preventing terrorist attacks, the personnel on duty at Ben Gurion are highly trained army graduates who have specialist skills in detection and interrogation. They leave nothing to chance and are able to monitor the most minute details. Officials think of passenger security as a series of concentric circles, with increasing scrutiny as individuals arrive closer to the plane.

Agents also pay close attention to the parts of the airport that passengers do not frequent, such as fences around the airports perimeter, which are monitored with cameras at all times, and radar systems that check for intrusions when weather prevents cameras from effectively broadcasting. The Israelis focus on the human factor is not of course infallible, but the range of methods employed at Ben Gurion has proven to be extremely effective in preventing terrorist attacks, as its history demonstrates. Even so, many security and terrorist experts believe that, if this were always accompanied by the latest passenger-oriented security technology, Ben Gurions security would be even more robust.

The Israelis have taken on board the concerns of civil liberties groups and researchers in developing technology that could ease concerns about racial profiling, through the use of innovative check-in kiosks, but this can never of course replace the intuition and gut instinct that accompanies human interaction. Many airport authorities around the world have sought to benefit from the Israelis approach to airport security, though none use the entire range of tools at their disposal. In the end, limitations on financial and human resources, and preferred methodologies, determine just how thorough or inadequate security protocols can be.

If more airport authorities were to adopt Ben Gurions approach, surely it would be more difficult for those intending to do harm to succeed. There is a lot to be said for emphasizing eye contact, behavioral cues, and instinct when addressing the subject of airport security. Rather than continuing to implement ever broader restrictions on law abiding passengers, governments would perhaps be better off devoting the resources necessary to focus on the human intelligence and other protocols that very few airports and airlines actually provide, and that the Israelis have proven work very well.

*Daniel Wagner is Managing Director of Risk Cooperative and co-author of the book Global Risk Agility and Decision Making.

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The World's Airports and Airlines Need More Human Intelligence - Huffington Post

The Sunshine fire that has been burning west of Boulder since early Sunday morning appears to be human-caused, Boulder County sheriffs officials said late in the day. The fire has scorched 62 acres and is now 50 percent contained, officials said.

Cmdr. Mike Wagner said the general area where the fire started, at Sunshine Canyon Road and Timber Trail, has a network of unofficial social trails and is known to have lots of transient campsites.

The Boulder Office of Emergency Management said firefighters plan to monitor the perimeter of the 62-acre fire and focus on protecting structures overnight. No structures have been damaged.Evacuation orders for residents of 426 homes remain in place.

Crews hope to contain the blaze fully on Monday.

Wagner said residents of the more than 400 homes evacuated early this morning were prohibited from returning at night, with high winds forecast around midnight. Re-evacuating at night is more difficult, he said.

Things get exponentially more complex in the dark, he said.

Fire officials plan to reassess the evacuations in the morning, with an update expected around 8 a.m., Wagner said.

Theyre hoping they can keep control of it overnight and really start mopping up tomorrow, he said.

No homes or structures have been damaged or destroyed, officials said, and there have been no reported injuries.

The contained area is off the heel of the fire near Sunshine Canyon Drive and the Centennial Trailhead, officials said.

Onlookers gathered at a roadblock on Fourth Street and Mapleton Avenue just east of Sunshine Canyon and worried the fire would spread into town or that they would be evacuated. But Belle Star, a resident of Boulder for the past 17 years, said she was not so scared while taking shelter atEast Boulder Community Center.

I woke up to the sound of pounding at my front door at 5 a.m., and policemen were meticulous about making sure everybody in my condo was out, she said, explaining that officials wrapped yellow caution tape around door handles indicating they had spoken with a resident. I grabbed my sister and my cat and I left. Your priorities change when they want you to act fast.

Star lives at Fourth and Pearl Streets and said shehas experienced other natural disasters before, including the Boulder Flood in 2013 and several fires.She said her main concern was the wind picking upand spreading the fire.

They might have it out by tonight, but you never know, she said. It all depends on the wind and which way it blows.

Wagner said:I think it really hinges onwhat the weather does tonight.Were not able to utilize aircraft at night, and evacuations are harder.

Officials were concerned earlier in the day about gusting winds because the fire was within a mile of downtown.

The Boulder Office of Emergency Management placed more than 1,000 phone calls ordering predawn evacuations. The fire was reported about 2:30 a.m. Sunday. The calls resulted in 426 homes being evacuated.

Six aircraft dropped water and slurry, saidBarb Halpin, a spokeswoman for the Boulder Office of Emergency Management. Residents were warned to avoid Wonderland Lake, where water refills were conducted.

Gov. John Hickenlooper authorized support from the Colorado National Guard, including equipment such astwo UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, one CH-47 Chinook helicopter and a refueling truck from the Colorado Army National Guard.

Aircraft from Buckley Air Force Basewere assisting.

The OEM placed about 3,700 callsto those onpre-evacuation notice, telling residents to beprepared to leave. About 8p.m., 836 homes remained on pre-evacuation.

Police were patrolling the area at night to address concerns about possible burglaries to evacuated homes.

Wagner said 250 state and local firefighters and 50 fire vehicleswere involved throughout the day Sunday. One firefighter told Wagner that there was no moisture in the soil of the burn area and said it was like June.

The Boulder officeswebsite experienced high traffic and intermittently dropped offline during the day. Users were asked to refresh often or get information on Twitter at @BoulderOEM oron Facebook.

Conditions are ripe for fire throughout the Front Range, said Bernie Meier, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder.Boulder had a record 80-degree high Saturday, breaking the record of 77 for March 18 set in 1907.

Winds were light, about 5 mph at 8:30 a.m., but by 11 a.m., the weather servicewas recording gusts of 40 mph, with sustained winds of 5 to 10 mphpushingthe flames in the wooded area a couple of miles west of Pearl Street.

Humidty was low, at 14 percent.

The fire was first reportedon the mountainside nearSunshine Canyon and Timber Lane when someone noticed glowing on the mountain, and we sent deputies, said Gabi Boerkircher, a spokeswoman with the Boulder Office of Emergency Management.

Boulder County Public Health advises people to avoid outdoor activities if they can see or smell smoke.

Some residents in the pre-evacuation zone in the Highland neighborhood were watching the fire from Eben G. Fine Park and waiting to see if the wind picked up before packing.

Ben Egner said that althoughhe hadnt packed anything yet, he has a list in his head that includes musical instruments, books, his hard drive and his dog, Petunia. He said he found out about the fire after getting a text from a neighbor early this morning.

For another neighbor, Beth Prehn, it was a phone call from a friend at 5:30 a.m. that alerted her. At about 7 a.m., she took a picture of flames lighting up Sunshine Canyon.

That was scary, she said.

Now, looking at smoke instead of flames, I feel a lot better, she said.

Officials closed Boulder Canyon Drive to all traffic.

The general evacuation perimeter is Poorman Road to the west, Fourth Street in the city of Boulder to the east, Boulder Canyon Drive to the south and Sunshine Canyon Drive to the north, according to the sheriffs office.Traffic is being rerouted on a portion of Boulder Canyon Drive at Sixth Avenue, down Arapahoe, and returning to Boulder Canyon Drive, the office of emergency management said.

Within the city of Boulder, the area of Fourth Street east to Broadway, and Mapleton Avenue to Canyon Boulevard are on pre-evacuation notice.

A Public Call Center line is open for non-emergency calls: 303-413-7730.

Residents ordered to evacuate can use the East Boulder Community Center, 5660 Sioux Drive.

Large animals can be evacuated to the Boulder County Fairgrounds. Small animals can be taken to the East Boulder Community Center, but residents are asked to bring crates if possible.

Multiple fire agencies responded, including the Boulder Rural Fire Protection District, the Boulder Fire Department, the Greeley Fire Department and the Sheriffs Fire Management Program. The Denver Fire Department has dispatched five engines and 21 workers.

Seth Frankel, who was warned that he and his family may need to evacuate, said he had packed up generations of things that cant be replaced and was ready to go if the air quality got worse.

He said smoke was pouring toward neighborhoods and many dead trees were combusting and sending black smoke into the air less than a half-mile from his home. But he and his wife, a Boulder native, and three daughters have dealt with fires and floods before.

Its always alarming and always on your mind, but its not an uncommon sensation around here, said Frankel, who has lived in Boulder for 20 years.

Frankel got word of the fire early Sunday from a neighbor who received a warning call, and he was outside with neighbors watching the flames and smoke. But he let his daughters, 9, 11 and 13, sleep in.

Its still alarming, but theres no panic, Frankel said. We will be long since gone when parents are no longer smiling.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Watch the Denver Post documentary, The Fire Line: Wildfire in Colorado]

Original post:
Officials suspect human cause in Boulder's Sunshine fire - The Denver Post

On March 21, 1960, thousands of black people in Sharpeville marched to their local police station to protest the enforcement of pass laws. At that time, every black (African, Indian or coloured) person in South Africa had to carry a dompas, which stated where they were allowed to be. Any person caught by police without it was arrested.

Robert Sobukwe, leader of the Pan Africanist Party, rallied his party members and others in Sharpeville to participate in the march. The protesters left their passbooks at home, and gave themselves up for arrest.

Police opened fire on the demonstrators without orders, killing 69 people. The day was from then on known as Sharpeville Day.

Drum magazine's assistant editor Humphrey Tyler reported the following at the time:

The police have claimed they were in desperate danger because the crowd was stoning them. Yet only three policemen were reported to have been hit by stones - and more than 200 Africans were shot down. The police also have said that the crowd was armed with 'ferocious weapons', which littered the compound after they fled.

I saw no weapons, although I looked very carefully, and afterwards studied the photographs of the death scene. While I was there I saw only shoes, hats and a few bicycles left among the bodies. The crowd gave me no reason to feel scared, though I moved among them without any distinguishing mark to protect me, quite obvious with my white skin. I think the police were scared though, and I think the crowd knew it.

After the African National Congress came to power in 1994, the name of the commemorative day was changed from Sharpeville Day to Human Rights Day, and declared a public holiday. At the advent of democracy in South Africa, days of commemoration were changed from people- and site-specific names to accommodate everyone in the country.

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Human Rights In South Africa Since Sharpeville, How Far Have We Come? - Huffington Post South Africa (blog)

WASHINGTON For the first time, aUnited Nationsreport has recognized biodiversity and healthy ecosystems as essential to human rights.

The report, authored by U.N. Special Rapporteur John Knox, a human rights expert and professor of international law at Wake Forest University, comes amid a biodiversity crisis that many scientists have pegged as the beginning of Earths sixth mass extinction event.

Biodiversity is really necessary for the full enjoyment of rights to food, water, health the right to live a full and happy life, Knox told The Huffington Post on Thursday. Without the services that healthy ecosystems provide across the board, we really cant enjoy a whole range of human rights. And healthy ecosystems really depend on biodiversity.

The assessment, which Knox presented to the U.N.s Human Rights Council at a meeting this month in Geneva, Switzerland, concludes that, in order to protect human rights, states have a general obligation to protect ecosystems and biodiversity.

The U.N. has not taken a formal position on the matter. The Human Rights Council is considering whether to adopt a resolution recognizing the relationship of biodiversity and human rights. Knox said a decision is expected by the end of the month.

THOMAS SAMSON via Getty Images

In many ways, the rate of species extinction which humankind has sped uproughly 1,000 times, according to a 2005 assessment is as much of a crisis as climate change, Knox says. Yet it gets far less attention. As he notes in the report, the Secretariat of theConvention on Biological Diversity found in 2010 that nations have failedmiserably in meeting adopted targets to reduce biodiversity loss.

Had the international community met its goals, Knox told HuffPost, it would have gone a long way toward protecting the variety of life on Earth.

Im not saying Im the great expert on what needs to happen on biodiversity, he said. Im saying that the people who are the experts have spoken and states have agreed with them on what needs to happen on biodiversity, and [theyre]not living up to that commitment.

Ultimately, biodiversity loss has grave and far-reaching implications for human well-being, Knox writes. Those implications include reduced fishery and agriculture yields, depleted sources of medicine, and increased infectious diseases and autoimmune disorders. Most vulnerable are the indigenous communities that directly depend on healthy ecosystems for food, water and even culture.

Knox calls on nations to minimize damage to ecosystems and biodiversity, both from private entities and government agencies, as well as recognize and protect those most vulnerable, including indigenous populations.

Inger Andersen, director general of theInternational Union for Conservation of Nature, was among those who praised the report.

People have the right to benefit from nature for their livelihoods and for rewarding and dignified lives, Andersen said during a human rights panel event last week. This includes, for example, the right to food for all, for present and future generations; the right to water; the right to housing; the right to health and many other social, economic and cultural rights. All of these depend on functioning ecosystems and biodiversity.

Knox said he has a hard time understanding how this issue, with all of its effects on human health, doesnt get more attention. And he finds the conversation taking place in the U.S. troubling.

President Donald Trump has proposed deep budget cuts across the executive branch, including slashing the Environmental Protection Agencys fundingby 31 percent and the Interior Departments by 12 percent. Trump has also repeatedly called climate change a hoax and promised to pull the U.S. out of the historic Paris climate agreement.

We should really be ramping up our support for greater protection of biodiversity, not stepping back from it, Knox said. Climate change is making the biodiversity crisis much much worse. As the Trump administration seems to be pulling back from commitments to deal with climate change, among the other serious problems with that for the environment, its also going to have really disastrous effects to biodiversity.

Late last year, a report by the World Wildlife Fund warned that up to 67 percentof Earths wildlife could vanish by 2020.

Read Knoxs full report here.

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UN Expert: Biodiversity Is Essential To Human Rights - Huffington Post

Steve Murray sometimes gets together with other old-timers in the real estate industry, shares some wine and inevitably gets around to remarking, I sure wouldve thought it wouldve changed more by now.

Murray, president of consulting firm Real Trends, has been tracking for 40 years how U.S. real estate agents do their jobs. And over the past decade, the Internet has disrupted almost every aspect of a transaction that sits at the core of the American Dream. Everyone now has free access to information that used to be impossible to find or required an agents help.

But as a new home-buying season kicks off, one thing remains mostly unchanged: the traditional 5-to-6-percent commission paid to real estate agents when a home sells.

While the Internet has pummeled the middlemen in many industries decimating travel agents, stomping stock-trading fees, cracking open the heavily regulated taxi industry the average commission paid to real estate agents has gone up slightly since 2005, according to Real Trends. In 2016, it stood at 5.12 percent.

Theres not a shred of evidence that the Internet is having an impact, Murray said, sounding like he almost cant believe it himself.

The stickiness of the real estate commission is a source of fascination for economists and curiosity for consumers who are doing an increasing share of the home-buying legwork themselves online. It also offers potential lessons for workers in other industries worried about the Internets destructive powers. The Web has changed how agents hustle for a share of the estimated $60 billion paid each year in residential real estate commissions. But it hasnt taken their jobs. In fact, the number of agents has grown 60 percent in the past two decades.

It wasnt supposed to be like this.

Experts have been predicting the demise of real estate agents for years. Consider the title of a 1997 article in the Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management: The Coming Downsizing of Real Estate: The Implications of Technology.

In the mid-2000s, the arrival of real estate tech start-ups like Zillow, Redfin and Trulia spurred a fresh dose of anticipation. Realtors sacrosanct commission rates of 6 percent may be in danger, warned 60 Minutes in 2007. Jeff Jarvis, a City University of New York professor who examines the Internets effects, wrote a 2006 blog post predicting, Real estate agents are next.

Agents thought so, too.

The industry was fearful of the Internet. They didnt think theyd have jobs, said Leonard Zumpano, a retired finance professor who for years ran the University of Alabamas Real Estate Research Center.

The Web automated and simplified huge swaths of a process that once was complicated and time-consuming. With a few taps on a smartphone, home buyers and sellers now can find information that once required digging through musky deed books at the county recorders office. And the new technology has made agents more efficient. In many ways, their job is easier now.

Yet agents stand to earn more in commissions today than in the pre-Internet era, because of stable commission rates and surging home values.

In 1997, the typical commission on a median-priced U.S. home, adjusted for inflation, was $16,600.

Today, that commission is $20,131.

Its a mystery to me, Zumpano said. I wouldve expected commissions to go down.

In 2005, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission held a workshop to talk about why commissions had not fallen more. The American Bankers Association argued that the commission rate could be cut in half in a truly competitive market. Attendees at the workshop appeared to place great faith in the power of the Internet to lower commissions.

In a typical home sale, the commission is paid out of the sellers proceeds and split between the sellers and buyers agent. The rate is negotiable. But the traditional rate has held firm, even as an agents main advantage information has been eroded by the Internet.

Experts dont have a good answer for why these commissions have survived the Internets onslaught. They point to several potential factors. A home sale is a massive financial transaction. Its complicated. And it doesnt happen often, with home buyers staying put for an average of 12-to-13 years. So intimidated consumers keep turning to agents for help.

Regulations may have slowed the pace of change. Twenty states and the District set minimum levels of service for agents, dissuading brokers willing to do less for lower fees. Ten states also ban agents from rebating a portion of the commission to their clients. But commission rates do not vary wildly among these states, analysts say.

The National Association of Realtors also has worked to reinforce the role of agents through lobbying and advertising, sometimes in unconventional ways. Last year, the group struck a deal with the ABC sitcom Modern Family to work into an episode that character Phil Dunphy is a true real estate expert a licensed Realtor. And national broker Century 21 is running ads with the tagline, Good luck, robots, adding theres no robot for insight or hustle or a handshake.

The efforts appear to be working. The association reports 89percent of home sellers used an agent in 2016 on par with the previous five years. At the same time, for-sale-by-owner transactions fell to their lowest rate 8percent since the association began tracking the data in 1981.

Who is going to write a contract? Fill out a disclosure statement? Anticipate whats coming on the market? asked association president Bill Brown. Theres a human element to buying and selling a home that cant be replaced.

But the Internet is expert at discounting that human element.

That was the worry that greeted Zillow when it was launched in 2006 with executives from Expedia and Hotwire, travel sites that were on their way to pushing out human travel agents.

There was fear in the beginning, Zillow chief marketing officer Jeremy Wacksman said.

Agents fought to keep Zillow from accessing private databases known as the multiple listing service where agents post homes for sale and which many considered an agents ultimate advantage. Zillow eventually tapped those listings. But it decided not to challenge the industry head-on, opting to focus on real estate ads.

The reception was harsher for Redfin, a tech-heavy broker in Seattle that tried to cut agent commissions. It started out selling homes for a flat $3,000 fee and rebated part of the home buyer agents commission.

Competing agents have threatened us with violence, intimidated our customers and tried to block their offers, Redfin chief executive Glenn Kelman said in testimony before Congress in 2006.

Redfin changed course. Today, Redfin more closely resembles a traditional broker. It has its own local agents. It sells homes for a 1 to 1.5 percent commission. Redfin agents are paid a salary and a bonus tied to customer satisfaction.

Redfin remains a small player, with 1-to-2 percent of the U.S. market. But in some big cities such as Chicago, Seattle and the District it holds a 5 percent share. Kelman said he believes Redfin will continue to grow as a new generation of buyers and sellers enters the market.

Kids who grew up buying textbooks on Amazon are now buying houses on Redfin, Kelman said.

Other agents are not standing still. They have adopted technology, too.

A peek at Samina Chowdhurys smartphone shows how.

A veteran agent in Ellicott City, Md., Chowdhury has one app that scans closing documents and one that writes contracts. Another accepts digital signatures. She has an app that allows her to keep tabs on sales leads and another to unlock residential lockboxes. She uses an online video editor for making home tour videos. And while Chowdhury speaks five languages, if she runs into trouble she can call up a translation program.

None of these technologies were here 10 years ago, she said.

Chowdhury has seen other agents struggle with the pace of change. But shes done well. She estimates that she made $300,000 last year.

The push of technology into real estate is what motivated Chris Speicher to leave his job at Microsoft to join his wife, Peggy Lyn Speicher, as a real estate agent. He figured he could help.

Its no longer about going to the real estate agent because they hold the truth they have the data, Chris Speicher said.

They work in a team model, with staff divided among different duties. They target potential home buyers with online ads. They get leads from Zillow. Last year, the Bethesda-based team helped close $100 million in deals.

But Speicher, like many agents, feels the pressures of change, too. He has noticed more pushback from home-buying customers, driving that commission down closer to 2.5 percent.

Murray, of Real Trends, found that commission rates tend to fluctuate with the health of the housing market almost as if the Internet hadnt happened.

In 2005, at the housing markets height, buying and selling were easy. The market was tight. And the national average commission stood at a low 5.02 percent. Four years later, during the housing crash, with almost twice as many houses on the market, commissions rose to 5.38 percent.

Now the commission rate is falling as the housing market heats up again, Murray said.

He noted the rate has drifted down 16 percent over the last 25years, but surprisingly, all of that decline happened before 2004.

Murray does see one way the Internet could attack commissions: It could consolidate the highly fragmented market for agents. Today, two-thirds of consumers still find their agents through knowing them or by a personal referral. But if the Internet weakens that bond, popular agents could win more market share.

And theyre going to cut rates, Murray said. They can be more productive now, so theyll do volume instead. Theyll be more prone to discounting.

It will be agents doing what the Internet hasnt.

More here:
The real estate industry has something the Internet can't offer: The human element - Washington Post

President Donald Trump is shaping up as a disaster for human rights. From his immigration ban to his support for torture, he has jettisoned what has long been, in theory if not always in practice, a bipartisan American commitment: the promotion of democratic values and human rights abroad.

He has lavished praise on autocrats and expressed disdain for international institutions. He described Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as a "fantastic guy" and brushed off reports of repression by the likes of Russia's Vladimir Putin, Syria's Bashar Assad, and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

As Trump put it in his bitter inauguration address, "It is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone." Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, has written that Trump's election has brought the world to "the verge of darkness" and threatens to "reverse the accomplishments of the modern human rights movement."

This threat is not new. The rise of Trump has only underlined the existential challenges already facing the global rights project. Over the past decade the international order has seen a structural shift in the direction of assertive new powers, including Xi Jinping's China and Putin's Russia, that have openly challenged rights norms while crushing dissent in contested territories like Chechnya and Tibet. These rising powers have clamped down on dissent at home

and given cover to rights-abusing governments from Manila to Damascus. Dictators facing Western criticism can now turn to the likes of China for political backing and no-strings financial and diplomatic support.

This trend has been strengthened by the Western nationalist-populist revolt that has targeted human rights institutions and the global economic system in which they are embedded. With populism sweeping the world and new super-powers in the ascendant, post-Westphalian visions of a shared global order are giving way to an era of resurgent sovereignty. Globalization and internationalism are giving way to a post-human rights world.

This amounts to an existential challenge to the global human rights norms that have proliferated since the end of World War II. In that time, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, has been supplemented by treaties and conventions

guaranteeing civil and political rights, social and economic rights, and the rights of refugees, women, and children. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War served to further entrench human rights within the international system.

Despite the world's failure to prevent mass slaughter in places like Rwanda and Bosnia, the 1990s would see the emergence of a global human rights imperium: a cross-border, trans-national realm anchored in global bodies like the UN and the European Union and supervised by international nongovernmental organizations and a new class of professional activists and international legal experts.

The professionalization of human rights was paralleled by the advance of international criminal justice. The decade saw the creation of ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia and the signing in 1998 of the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court, an achievement that then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan hailed as a "giant step forward in the march towards universal human rights and the rule of law." On paper, citizens in most countries now enjoy around 400 distinct rights.

This expansion was underpinned by an unprecedented period of growth and economic integration in which national borders appeared to disappear. Like the economic system in which it was embedded, the global human rights project attained a sheen of inevitability; it became, alongside democratic politics and free market capitalism, part of the triumphant neoliberal package that Francis Fukuyama identified in 1989 as "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution."

In 2013 one of America's foremost experts on international law, Peter J. Spiro, predicted that legal advances and economic globalization had brought on "sovereigntism's twilight." Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the ICC, has argued similarly that the creation of the court inaugurated a new era in which rulers would now be held accountable for serious abuses committed against their own people. (So far, no sitting government leader has.)

But in 2017, at a time of increasing instability in which the promised fruits of globalization have failed for many to materialize, these old certainties have collapsed. In the current "age of anger," as Pankaj Mishra has termed it, human rights have become both a direct target of surging right-wing populism and the collateral damage of its broader attack on globalization, international institutions, and "unaccountable" global elites.

Governments routinely ignore their obligations under global human rights treaties with little fear of meaningful sanction. For six years, grave atrocities in Syria have gone unanswered despite the legal innovations of the "responsibility to protect" doctrine. Meanwhile, many European governments are reluctant to honor their legal obligations to offer asylum to the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing its brutal civil war.

International rights treaties have always represented an aspirational baseline to which many nations have fallen short. But the human rights age was one in which the world seemed to be trending in the direction of more adherence, rather than less. It was a time in which human rights advocates and supportive leaders spoke confidently of standing on the right side of history and even autocrats were forced to pay lip service to the idea of rights.

It is no longer obvious that history has any such grand design. According to the latest Freedom in the World report, released in January by Freedom House, 2016 marked the 11th consecutive year of decline in global freedom.

Keystone international institutions are also under siege. In October, three African states--South Africa, Burundi, and Gambia--announced their withdrawal from the ICC, perhaps the crowning achievement of the human rights age. (Gambia has since reversed its decision following the January resignation of autocratic President Yahya Jammeh.) Angry that the ICC unfairly targets African defendants, leaders on the continent are now mulling a collective withdrawal from the court.

African criticism reflects governments' increasing confidence in rejecting human rights as Western values and painting any local organization advocating these principles as a pawn of external forces. China and India have both introduced restrictive new laws that constrain the work of foreign NGOs and local groups that receive foreign funding, including organizations advocating human rights. In Russia, a foreign agent law passed in 2012 has been used to tightly restrict the operation of human rights NGOs and paint any criticism of government policies as disloyal, foreign-sponsored, and "un-Russian."

In the West, support for human rights is wavering. In his successful campaign in favor of Brexit, Nigel Farage, then-leader of the UK Independence Party, attacked the European Convention on Human Rights, claiming that it had compromised British security by preventing London from barring the return of British Islamic State fighters from the Middle East. During the U.S. election campaign, Donald Trump demonized minorities, advocated torture, expressed admiration for dictators and still won the White House.

In the post-human rights world, global rights norms and institutions will continue to exist but only in an increasingly ineffective form. This will be an era of renewed superpower competition, in what Robert Kaplan has described as a "more crowded, nervous, anxious world." The post-human rights world will not be devoid of grass-roots political struggles, however. On the contrary, these could well intensify as governments tighten the space for dissenting visions and opinions. Indeed, the wave of domestic opposition to Trump's policies is an early sign that political activism may be entering a period of renewed power and relevance.

In December, RightsStart, a new human rights consultancy hub, launched by suggesting five strategies that international rights NGOs can use to adapt to the "existential crisis" of the current moment. Among them was the need for these groups to "communicate more effectively" the importance of human rights and use international advocacy more often as a platform for local voices.

Philip Alston, a human rights veteran and law professor at New York University, has argued that the human rights movement will also have to confront the fact that it has never offered a satisfactory solution to the key driver of the current populist surge: global economic inequality.

In a broader sense, the global human rights project will have to shed its pretensions of historical inevitability and get down to the business of making its case to ordinary people. With authoritarian politics on the rise, now is the time to re-engage in politics and to adopt more pragmatic and flexible tactics for the advancement of human betterment. Global legal advocacy will continue to be important, but efforts should predominantly be directed downward, to national courts and legislatures.

It is here that right-wing populism has won its shattering victories. It is here, too, that the coming struggle against Trumpism and its avatars will ultimately be lost or won.

Editorial on 03/19/2017

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Post-human rights world - Arkansas Online

New York Post

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The terrifying DNA discoveries that are making science-fiction fact - New York Post

How Long Must This Go On?

This months news that Beauty and the Beast would include a gay character was both surprising and exciting. Many in the LGBTQ+ community have long been waiting for a Someday-My-Prince(ss)-Will-Come moment.

This anticipation is part of the reason that concepts like Joey Graceffas Dont Wait video play so well with the queer community. They tap into the desires of generations of the LGBTQ+ community to see characters like themselves find their Happily Ever After.

Apparently, the community will have to wait a bit longer for that.

Like Rachel Maddows release of Trumps tax returns this week, the queerness of Beauty and the Beast does not live up to the hype surrounding it. And, as I left the theater, I realized that the defining of LeFou as gay had undermined my experience of the movie as a whole. The movie was an enchanting and dazzling spectacle, but due to the discussion surrounding it, the exclusively gay moment was underwhelming, and it distracted from the beauty of Bill Condons creation.

For those familiar with the discussion, two points will strike you about the films queerness.

If you blink, you will miss it.

Second, the so-called exclusively gay moment is not inherently gay. It consists of two men dancing together and smiling at one another. Only under a fragile Gaston-esque definition of masculinity does such an act even read as queer. In fact, in some Western traditions, like ultraorthodox Judaism, dancing with your own sex is preferable in certain settings to dancing with members of the opposite sex.

Additionally, examining Christian traditions, you will be hard put to find a biblical text which would condemn this gay moment. In fact, you will find the opposite. Early Christianity was more comfortable with displays of affection between members of the same sex than modern Christianity. Thus, Paul told his followers to greet one another with a holy kiss (Rom. 16:16) and one of the disciples is depicted as reclining against Jesus on a kline (dining couch, John 13:23).

If the movie carries nothing inherently gay or sinful, why are people like Franklin Graham raising hullabaloo?

The central issue is one of labels.

Ironically, those involved with the movie seem to have missed one of the central points of the film: the effect of labels. The film questions the legitimacy of labels, from the opening query, For who could learn to love a beast? to the Princes roar, I am not a beast! It shows the power of labels through Gastons manipulation of the villagers to attack the castle, and it shows the problem of labels by flipping the idea of what constitutes a beast.

Unfortunately, in the discourse around the film, gay has proven to have the same powers as beast. This point is shown in the timing of the boycott movement: it preceded the release of the movie. Graham posted concerning the queering of the film two weeks prior to its release with no real idea of the films actual content. His and others actions were reactionary to a label. For social conservatives, in reinterpreting LeFou as gay, the character became something menacing. Thus, they sallied forth with their torches and pitchforks, urged by conservative leaders to protect their children from their unfounded fears.

The labeling of LeFou also requires the LGBTQ+ community and their allies to reasses him, and he does not fare too well under such scrutiny.

In retrospect, nothing is inherently wrong with Josh Gads performance. The character is similar to his other well-known characters such as Olaf in Frozen or Elder Cunningham in The Book of Mormon, and his performance of Beauty and the Beasts classic songs are, at times, delightful. In many ways, his is a charming tribute to the animated version of the character and would have been satisfactory as such.

However, rereading LeFou as gay necessarily changes his reception. What were adorable antics in Gads asexual talking snowman do not play quite as well when they are translated into Disneys first gay main character. Instead, they are transformed into gay stereotypes performed for a laugh by a heterosexual man for a largely heterosexual audience. Despite Condons own gayness, the queerness of LeFou does not feel like it was written for the LGBTQ+ community. Instead, it was encoded for a heterosexual gaze.

This fact is no more apparent than in LeFous own queer visibility. By even the most generous readings of the performance, LeFou is in the closet. A queer character written for a queer audience should have no need to hide his identity. Likewise, as Condon has interpreted the character, he plays into the tragic caricature of queer individuals pining away after the unattainable straight object of their affections. This idea not only recapitulates heterosexual preconceptions of queerness but also ties into and confirms their fears about homosexuality.

Reprise: How Long Must This Go On

Dont get me wrong. In a Disney-verse where the true magic of the Magic Kingdom is how everyone is neatly cisgendered and heteronormative (and, until recently, white), even caricatured tokenism is welcomed as visibility. We should celebrate the fact that the next generation has a queer character to look to and thank those who made this possible.

At the same time, the character deserves to be critiqued. What is the impact of the fact that the only character that queer children have to look to is a character named The Fool? What does this tell them about themselves and their queerness?

Although I adored the movie overall, part of my frustration with it is that I had hoped for more out of Condons exclusively gay moment. Instead, I found myself left wondering how long the LGBTQ+ community must wait to see a truly authentic performance of queerness by a main character in a Disney film.

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HUMAN AGAIN? THE EXCLUSIVELY GAY MOMENT IN BEAUTY AND THE BEAST - Huffington Post

New York Post

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Uber's self-driving cars need more than a little human help: study - New York Post