All Power to the Soviets, P1: Context

Previously, as we were moving on from the Matrix series, I said that the way to move forward would be to study Marx’s magnum opus, Capital. The reason I gave was that we had gotten to Marx through a few cherry-picked quotations, but that now we needed to have a systematic understanding of him.

(I also said that posts would be getting shorter, and this doesn’t seem to be the case for now.)

As time has passed, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is an insufficient reason. We should have a concrete reason to study Marx, we should have a problem to propel us through his very dense and complex system of concepts and theories. In my Beginnings post, I hint at why I like Marx and why I’ve decided to dedicate time to this blog, but it stays on the feelings level.

So let’s go to the reasons level.

I’ve recently been going through the history of the Soviet movement in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, and I feel like the story of these “worker parliaments” and their evolution presents a magnificent problem of Marxism and of any revolutionary effort. I want to present the socio-historical evolution of this phenomenon in order to better understand WHY Marx’s Capital is SO important that I want to dedicate 4 weeks for more or less each of its chapters.

In order to fully understand the problem, we have to start with its context: Russia’s socio-economic situation/stratification before its 1905 Revolution. In other words, I want to try to find the main sociological conditions through which Russian society gave birth to the revolutionary institution of the soviet.

A few general points: In the period before 1905, Russian society is undergoing important changes because of industrialization and the implicit modernization it brings; this is significant because even before these modernizing reforms (like the Emancipation of Serfs in 1861), the population of the Russian Empire is very complex and fragmented, especially because of its great geographical extent and the consequences this implies (ethnic diversity, despotic autocracy), and because of its lag in economic and technological dimensions.

The coaxing of serfs.

The big event in pre-revolutionary Russia is the period of “Great Reforms” of 1861. These were propelled by the loss suffered by Russia in the Crimean War, which suddenly made the Tsar conscious of the lagging of his country behind his more modern opponents (France, Britain, Ottoman Empire, Sardinia/Italy). So the Tsar decided to emancipate the serfs, in the sense that they now had the right to marry without permission, to own personal property and even to practice commercial activities. However, the newly emancipated peasants had to buy the land they would live on from the State, who decided on the price: this was a measure by the autocracy to compensate the gentry for the loss of their laborers, to which the State also added some gifts in public lands. Of course it did.

On the other hand, for the peasants, it really wasn’t all hunky-dory. They had to pay the price of their land yearly , and these payments lasted up to a period of 49 years. (Let’s remind ourselves that at the turn of the 20th century, life expectancy in Russia was 32.3 years; granted, this was probably mainly due to high infant mortality, but the absence of a generalized health care system made infectious diseases extremely dangerous, whatever the age.) Those that couldn’t pay did get a quarter of that land for free, but, as this was insufficient to assure their existence, they most often sold this quarter and went to work in the factories. Not only was factory life extremely miserable, the fact that they could not live off the land and had to go work in the factories is a prime example of the objective process of exploitation. Whether in the country or in the city, famine was a constant worry on the minds of the newly proletarianized peasants, and the 1899-1900 economic crisis in Russia made famine more than a worry.

People blocked from leaving their village, 1892. Credits: Wikipedia.

Before the 1861 Reforms, Russia was basically a feudal caste society, like almost all of Europe in the past. This caste system was called soslovie, and it had been legally codified in 1832. Again, we see the State playing a huge role by basically categorizing its population in four groups: gentry, clergy, bourgeoisie, and peasants. Each group was pretty separated from the rest: they each had their own Ministry at the Tsar’s court, individuals in each group married people from the same group, each group had different property rights, each group went to a different kind of school and so on. That being said, even if each group had their own life-style and customs different from the rest, we shouldn’t believe that they simply led separate lives: peasants had duties toward the gentry, the gentry were depended on the clergy collaborating and protected their serfs, the serfs were key passive participants in clergy activities and the bourgeoisie had trade and money relations with all other castes. Further, this whole classification only applied to the Western portion of the empire; throughout the rest of the empire, there were about 500 different social categories, depending on the region and the ethnic background.

Credits: Wikipedia.

The drawing above (from the year 1911) is actually inspired from the Russian drawing below (from the year 1900).

Credits: Wikipedia.

After the Crimean War, with economic reforms (ex. the appearance of new professions like teachers, statisticians, agronomists) these four groups became muddled and difficult to define, especially because the electoral system was a property-based system, where you had to own property and pay a certain amount of taxes in order to gain the right to vote. Ownership of property and cultural practices became the main criteria for class status. In this sense, we already see the way in which the Imperial Court was almost completely cut off from the reality of its people, a huge cause of the unrest that will follow.

Now, on to living conditions for each caste.

Taken from the article cited, book reference at end of post.

We won’t go into the specific distinctions of the sub-estates for reasons of brevity.

Peasants and Proletarians

First up, the peasants working the land: in 1874, they had rates of literacy in the low 20s and led lives so fundamentally different from other castes, that “full-time” positions existed where individuals would play the role of mediator between peasants and the other estates. Here’s a great comparison I found between a Russian peasant and a US peasant in that time-period:

If neighbors had a territorial dispute, the American would call a qualified surveyor who would measure the land and compare his results with the documents of a county office that the peasant had probably never visited and didn’t even know existed; the Russian would have met all of his neighbors in a village assembly where the question would be decided by questions such as ‘Who worked the land in question?’, ‘What reputation do the people have on each side of the dispute?’ and ‘Who provided the vodka for this assembly?’.

Russian Peasant Life. Credits: Pinterest.

As for agricultural production, the Russian system was dismally inefficient. Land was permanently tied to a person (you couldn’t sell it or mortgage it), and it was distributed and redistributed by the village commune so that all may be more or less equal: this was what tradition dictated. But the consequence was that a villager may have three strips of land, one north, another south and the last one west of the village… a lot of time was wasted moving people and tools between each strip. Some reforms after the 1905 Revolution will try to alleviate this and will have partial success (the Stolypin Reforms).

Pre-Stolypin era land distribution. Source: mega-book cited at end.

After the Reforms, all of that was abolished, and proletarianization went on overdrive. Peasants kept familial ties to the village and often returned after the age of 40 when they became too old to work in the factories, but the majority of peasants who were not made rich by the reforms and who had problems feeding their families went to the cities to work in factories. Here, their children were more likely to go to school and they themselves tended to read more as a result of the disintegration of communal ties, their previous source of values and what today we may call class consciousness.

Workers making flax sacks. Credits: Libcom.

But, loyal to Russia’s general social organization, being a proletarian was not a one-size-fits-all experience. There was factory patriotism (most often the source and strength of strikes), shop orientation (mechanized production was correlated with more literacy and more social-democratic political orientations among its workers, while metallurgical production was correlated with new arrivals from the countryside, physically stronger and exemplary recruits of anti-Semite or chauvinistic political groups), and trade consciousness (smallest units of activity where pride of their skill and condescension toward peasants and women was fostered). This particular make-up of the proletariat will be a key factor in the problem of the evolution of soviets and we will return to it.

Gentry

You may ask yourself how the gentry as an estate survived after its main privilege, the ownership of serfs, was abolished. The answer is that, in Russia, the gentry were expected to serve in organs of State (officers in the army, civil service in ministries, positions on local government “zemstvos”): in Russian, the word for the estate of the gentry was “dvorianstvo”, which basically translates as “servicemen”. In the army, Russian officers were expected to drink heavily, to steal materials and resources, to divert salaries to their benefit and to show extreme violence: in one 1910 episode, two officers publicly killed a newspaper editor who had published a “dishonoring” report; they were arrested, tried and ultimately pardoned by the Tsar. In the ministries, civil servants from noble descent were assigned the most prestigious tasks and they were on the promotion fast-track, besides other advantages. In the zemstvos, the “open-to-all” elected positions were occupied entirely by individuals from the gentry.

An interesting thing to note about zemstvo representatives. Depending on their education and background, the nobles would show different political orientations: those on the right end of the spectrum had received a classical education (military academy, law degree) while those on the left end of the spectrum often had a higher-level university education in what were considered “subversive” disciplines like mathematics, engineering, agronomy or medicine.

In time and with the reforms, the center of gravity in the relation between wealth and status will move towards wealth as the cause of status rather than the historically opposite. That being said, this will be a very slow process and a clear “decline of nobility” is pure myth: until the liminary moment, they will exert huge influence in the Tsar’s court and decisions.

Bourgeoisie

The main difference between bourgeois and nobleman is the fact that the bourgeois has to keep paying money so that he may retain more or less the same privileges as the gentry (right to be judged by jury of pairs, no income tax, appeal of sentence up to the Tsar, exemption from forced labor, exemption from mandatory military service, the right to a family crest, the exclusive right to distill alcohol, etc.). As we see from the above table, their estate is in significant growth, but in the events of the future that interest us (the soviets), they will play a surprisingly passive role.

This is because of conflicts of interest within the estate. Merchants and industrialists fought hard for control of the military leather sector (boots, harnesses, saddles) and the regime favored both, alternatively, occupied as it was to conquer by dividing its enemies. Mega-merchants and bankers waged war on the “bazaar merchants” from small cities. Industrialists fought within themselves when one of them was forced by the workers to offer better working conditions because this put additional pressure on them to provide the same betterment for their workers. These were the prosperous ones: others like doctors and teachers were hammered with miserable conditions, doctors on the war front and teachers living on unbearably low wages. The growing bourgeoisie was a growing gunpowder barrel.

Clergy

For a few centuries, members of the clergy enjoyed a stable lifestyle. Born to a priest (yes they could marry), passing through an ecclesiastical school reserved for children of clergy, he would then marry the daughter of a retiring priest and take his place. Predictably, as we have already seen, this seemed OK… until it didn’t because of the internal divisions within the caste.

Priests had to deal with bishops, higher-ups in their respective Churches who enjoyed their higher position and made every effort in maintaining it… by keeping the priests in misery. For Russian priests, there was no salary and no tithe, they had to beg for donations from their flock; they had a small piece of land where they could grow a garden, and that was pretty much it. Even more, living conditions were better if you were Orthodox or Christian than if you were Protestant or, God forbid, Armenian.

Paint us unsurprised if in 1905, clergy will be openly revolutionary, and if in 1917, even the bishops will no longer publicly support the monarchy.

Women

Women had a special place in each estate. In the gentry, they were the object of a sexual ethic which tolerated infidelity as long as it was discreet; however, when they asked for the right to vote, it was refused on the ground that the women wanted “a parliament of prostitutes” (yes, those were the words). In the bourgeoisie, and more rarely in the gentry, women practiced fictitious marriage so that they could escape the life of the countryside and go to the city in order to study or meet new people: they married a young man from the city and from there, it could either end well (they really fell in love) or not (the husband would ask for his nuptial rights). In the peasantry, women could not practice seeding or beekeeping, they could not sit on the village council, had no say in the allocation of household resources and had no right to an inheritance; they did practice all other agricultural activities, had to take care of a garden, of the cooking and of the raising of children.

In time, peasant women became working, proletarian women. Their position was untenable: they received 50% to 66% of a man’s salary, where a man’s salary was barely enough to survive, if that; if pregnant, they would have to work until the day they gave birth, and, after birth, they would have to immediately return to their job or they would lose it; newborn children were given to wet nurses, who could raise their profits by feeding the babies less.

Women at the forefront in the February Revolution. Credits: Smithsonian.

That women would be on the front line of the revolution, agitating so that their husbands join the strikes, is, in hindsight, a surprise for no one.

Conclusion

After this overview, we have to admit that the condition of working men and women is of an absolute misery: in this case, the notion that “capitalism is its own gravedigger” is not a metaphor, it’s just a simple description. The Tsar is also digging his and his family’s grave: he is modernizing the socio-economic structures of Russia (the foundations of his power) without modernizing the dynamic of power (which belongs to him).

Russia, the society of estates, is crumbling: within each estate there are overt and significant struggles for power and estates are overtly competing with each other for the right to wield power. Add to that the bare-bones infrastructure (basically no hospitals) and backwards communication technologies and you get isolated islands of existence for the majority of the Empire’s inhabitants. Mix in the fact of being on the losing side of World War I where soldiers lived like literal rats, and you have a recipe for societal collapse, vacuums of power and the explosion of violence.

It is in this context that a new institution will arise to provide the social identities and benchmarks necessary to any society. That institution is the soviet, and in the next post, we will be looking at its short-lived birth in 1905 and its colossal rebirth in early 1917.

I devoured it! It was a magnificent read. Extremely enjoyable. Can’t wait for the next post to come out – this one ended too soon! I also appreciated the attention to detail and the carefully chosen pictures (which applies to all your posts, really). Keep it up! It is a very serious and good work that you are doing.


Reproduction of the estuarine and marine amphipod Corophium volutator (Pallas) in laboratory for toxicity testing.
The acute whole sediment bioassay with the estuarine and marine amphipod Corophium volutator (Pallas) is broadly used within Europe. Hitherto, the test is carried out with field-collected animals. In order to provide a more standardized and continuously available test organism reproduction and growth experiments were performed for a period of one year in laboratory under simulated summer conditions (light/dark 16:8 at 15, 19, and 23 degrees C). C. volutator was the first time reproduced successfully in laboratory for several generations and independent from its natural life cycle also in winter. The females produced two to three broods with a mean number of 96 offspring. A mean growth rate of 0.07 mm per day was determined at 15 degrees C. The reproduction and growth experiments provide consequently the essential base for the development of a chronic toxicity test with C. volutator.


Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Chris Matthews: "My leg stopped tingling!"

Nov 3, 2010. During a discussion with another MSNBC colleague Andrea Mitchell last night, Matthews analyzed the horrible mistakes Obama has made during his time in office.

"Ever since he's been president, he's been elitist and he's come with his teleprompter and he's given his speech," said Matthews. "He hasn't listened. He's talked at us rather than with us."

He mentioned that the president depended on electronic device to deliver most of his speeches, saying "He actually does bring the teleprompter with him."

Matthews compared today's Obama with the Obama during the 2008 race: "When he was a campaigner, he did nothing but talk about what a great country it is, what an exceptional country it is, 'Because a guy like me can make it here, and only in a country like this can I have made it.' He was patriotic, very inclusive and he was also very interactive in an interesting way."

"All the people care about is a 9 to 10 percent unemployment rate that's not going down, middle-aged people are losing their jobs, they're not finding them, and this guy's out doing his pet projects. And they wonder why he isn't their president, why he's only his own president.

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The views in The Spin Cycle are strictly my own, and not of any other person or organization.

The Spin Cycle is intended as political satire, and is provided as entertainment only, even if the content seems shockingly accurate!

The names in all our stories were invented, except in cases when public figures are being satirized. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental.

If you are aware of any copyright infringement or have any other queries or complaints, please contact us at marty4650@yahoo.com as soon as possible so that we can investigate and, where necessary, correct the problem.

Freedom of Speech is still protected by the U.S. Constitution.

At least for now.

Anyone who is offended by this should get a sense of humor, or at least watch CNN, CBS, MTV, PBS, NBC, ABC, CNBC, or MSNBC for an alternative view.

Or, you could listen to NPR or read the NY Times, or you could visit MoveOn.org or the HuffingtonPost.


The Quickest Route To Implementing Web Services

Merrick Stemen looks at the fastest, easiest way to program web services and offers examples implemented in the Water language. This article compares a Water language web server program with the equivalent Java programming.

Like this article? We recommend

Despite having taught programming and computer science for more than 15
years, I'm still amazed sometimes; for example, when I discovered that I
could do NetBIOS programming in FORTH, CGI scripts in FORTRAN, or an SMTP client
in COBOL. (I was even amazed that I could actually
write new games
for the Mattel Intellivision game system.)

For programming web services, the biggest surprise has been the Water
language and the Steam XML IDETM, the Water development environment
and runtime engine by
Clear Methods, Inc. of
Cambridge, Mass.

The Discovery of Water

The thing that first attracted me to Water was a write-up in eWeek
magazine describing Water as an answer to what the founders at Clear Methods
considered to be some serious shortcomings in XML 1.0, and their suggestions for
creating a language that was
specifically written to
deal with XML and web services. I downloaded the demo, and I was hooked.

Because I compulsively explore each new language I run across, I immediately
began to devour every scrap of Water documentation I could find. I joined the
Water language discussion group
at Yahoo! and visited every link from
Waterlanguage.org. I
started writing short demo programs, trying out feature after feature, but my
favorite feature is the ease with which you can turn any Water program into a
web service.

Because Water is a language for web services, giving the programmer the
ability to create a web service with a minimum of code is a priority.
Here's a quick example. Suppose you want to deploy a web service that
provides a random number from 1 to 20 (inclusive) to clients. In Water, the
function might look like this:

<defmethod get_random >
20.<random_number />.<plus 1 />
</>

In other languages, adding the functionality to allow someone to access that
random number from a web browser client would add many lines of code to the
simple random-number generator. In Water, you would simply add this line:

<server get_random port=5656 />

And voilà! Just point your browser at http://localhost:5656/?, and the
random number comes right to the browser. No Apache web server, no Microsoft
IISjust Java and Steam XML.

With the new random-number server application on my machine, anyone who can
access the machine across the network can get a random number. Even other
applications can obtain the random number. Anyone else running Water on their
machine could point at my machine to get random numbers for their programs just
by adding this line:

An equivalent program written in ASP or PHP might be as short as this one,
but try running the ASP or PHP application on a machine that doesn't have a
web server already on it. It just isn't going to work.


Glow-in-the-Dark Vampire Fangs

Take a bite out of Halloween night with these Glow-In-The-Dark Vampire Teeth. Plastic vampire fangs are the perfect accessory to spruce up any Halloween costume. Turn off the lights and watch them glow in the dark as you wear these terrifying vampire teeth with your favorite vampire or monster outfit. You can also hand them out to trick-or-treaters for a truly glowing goody. Add these fangs to your Twilight Eclipse party as a fun favor! (6 dozen per unit) 2 1/2"

fun!
The kids and adults loved these Glow in the Dark fangs! I would recommend these for any Halloween party!
October 20, 2012

Perfect prize
I bought these Glow in the dark fangs as prize giveaways for a childrens holloween party. The children all wanted them since they emitted the cool green colour in the dark and they were very pliable. The adults enjoyed them as well ! :)
November 7, 2011

Fantastic product
Children and adults got quite a "kick" out of these light-weight fangs. Saw children playing and grinning for days after Halloween, displaying their glowing canines!
November 5, 2011

Great Product! Perfect for Halloween Goodie Bags :)
We bought these (along with several other items) to fill about 100 Halloween goodie bags for all of our tenants. This item was high quality, came in professional packaging, and our tenants loved them!! They fit well in your mouth, and the glow in the dark feature is great...
October 24, 2011

An Excellent Halloween Handout!
I bought these to hand out for Halloween this year since they were a non-food option, they were a great value and looked like loads of fun!
The majority of the reviews convinced me to seal the deal and I just received my order in plenty of time before the big night. Some of the reviewers complained that these did not glow in the dark, though other reviewers mentioned they just needed to be exposed to a bright light so they would glow. We exposed a few we pulled out after our order arrived to a bright light and that did the trick. For Halloween night, I am going to put them in a large bowl a few hours before it gets dark and the trick-or-treaters start to show up, so they will be ready to go and glow when we hand them out.
I also think that the teeth showing in the catalog and on the web site were exposed to light to glow, then photographed under a blacklight to make them glow so intensely green. Ours glowed a more muted but eerie green and were sufficiently spooky enough to give me the heebie-jeevies when my husband and 4 year old displayed them in their mouth in our darkened bedroom to test them out.
And anyway, what self-respecting kid wouldn't appreciate a set of glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth for a Halloween treat?!
October 19, 2010

Good for the occasion
Put in my swimmers' goody bags for our annual Halloween party. Most appropriate for the occasion. Kids had a lot of fun with them. Didn't test the glow-in-the-dark part. As always, a great value at the price.
February 1, 2015

1 Pack Was Dirty
We purchased quite a few dozen of these for kids goody bags, very disappointed to find 1 bundle of them were dirty, with spots all through them. The other bundles in the bag were fine. Other than that the kids liked them.
November 20, 2014

Kids loved them
They are your standard plastic vampire teeth and the kids loved them. The price was really good for the amount received.
November 18, 2014


Beto O'Rourke

Robert Francis "Beto" O'Rourke (; born September 26, 1972) is an American politician who represented Texas's 16th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2013 to 2019. O'Rourke is notable for having run for United States Senate in 2018, narrowly losing to Republican incumbent Ted Cruz. He sought the 2020 Democratic nomination for President of the United States.

O'Rourke was born into a local political family in El Paso, Texas, and is a graduate of Woodberry Forest School and Columbia University. While studying at Columbia, O'Rourke began a brief music career as bass guitarist in the post-hardcore band Foss. After his college graduation, he returned to El Paso and began a business career. In 2005, he was elected to the El Paso City Council, serving until 2011. O'Rourke was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012 after defeating eight-term incumbent Democrat Silvestre Reyes in the primary.

After being re-elected to the House in 2014 and 2016, O'Rourke declined to seek re-election in 2018. Instead, he sought the U.S. Senate seat held by Cruz, running a competitive campaign that drew national attention. Despite his defeat, O'Rourke set a record for most votes ever cast for a Democrat in Texas history. On March 14, 2019, O'Rourke announced his campaign for President of the United States in the 2020 United States presidential election. He suspended his campaign on November 1, 2019, before the primaries began.

Early life

Childhood and teenage years
O'Rourke was born on September 26, 1972, at Hotel Dieu Hospital in El Paso, Texas, to Pat Francis O'Rourke and Melissa Martha O'Rourke, née Williams.  He is a fourth-generation Irish American and some of his maternal ancestors settled in the American colonies in the 18th century. His parents and paternal grandparents were native El Pasoans, while his maternal grandfather was from Metter, Georgia and his maternal grandmother was from Racine, Wisconsin. He has two younger sisters, the younger of whom was born intellectually impaired. In his infancy, his family gave him the nickname "Beto", a common Spanish-Portuguese nickname for first names ending in "-berto", initially to distinguish him from his namesake grandfather. Melissa O'Rourke owned a high-end furniture store; in 1980, her mother married Fred Korth, former Secretary of the Navy under President John F. Kennedy. Pat O'Rourke served in public office in El Paso as County Commissioner and County Judge; he was an associate of Texas Governor Mark White, served as the state chairman of Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns, switched parties in the early 1990s, and made several failed attempts to win election to public office as a Republican. Jesse Jackson conducted a press conference on December 11, 1984, in the den of O'Rourke's boyhood home in Kern Place.

In eighth grade, O'Rourke was introduced to punk rock through the Clash's London Calling(1979), an album he later called "a revelation". By the time he was 14 or 15 years old, he started going to local punk shows. He soon discovered Dischord Records, a Washington, D.C.-based independent label with a catalog of punk music, and began reading punk zines like Maximumrocknroll and Flipside. O'Rourke felt alienated from the City of El Paso as an adolescent in the 1980s. He told The Texas Observer that, in the El Paso of his youth, "There was nothing dangerous. There was no energy. There was no risk." El Paso's punk scene, though small, helped O'Rourke find a sense of community in the city.

As a teenager, O'Rourke was a member of the computer hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow, named after a shut-down Lubbock slaughterhouse. The group "is notorious for releasing tools that allowed ordinary people to hack computers running Microsoft's Windows". At O'Rourke's insistence the group included female members making it one of the only groups of that era to contain any female hackers. O'Rourke has admitted that he stole long-distance phone service during his teen years in order to use his dial-up modem. O'Rourke wrote numerous poems and other texts for Cult of the Dead Cow under the pseudonym "Psychedelic Warlord", a name taken from a 1974 rock song by the band Hawkwind. O'Rourke has expressed regret over some fictional short stories he wrote as a teenager for the cDc private online forum which included sexual and violent themes.

Education
O'Rourke began his education at Escuela Montessori Del Valle preschool and continued to Rivera Elementary School and Mesita Elementary School. In 1988, after two years at El Paso High School, he enrolled in Woodberry Forest School, an all-male boarding school in Madison County, Virginia. Between graduating from high school and starting college in 1991, he was a summer congressional intern in the Capitol Hill office of U.S. Congressman Ron Coleman. O'Rourke attended Columbia University, where in his junior year he co-captained Columbia's heavyweight rowing crew. He graduated in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature. He is fluent in Spanish.

Legal issues
On May 19, 1995, O'Rourke and his friends jumped over a fence at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) physical plant, and were arrested by the UTEP police for burglary. He was held in jail overnight and posted bail the following day. He was initially charged with burglary, but prosecutors dropped the case against O'Rourke and his friends in February 1996 when UTEP declined to pursue the charges.

O'Rourke was arrested for driving while intoxicated on September 27, 1998, at 3:00 a.m. on Interstate 10 in Anthony, Texas. The charges were dismissed in October 1999 after he completed a court-recommended DWI program. In response to criticism from a political opponent in 2005, O'Rourke said, "I've been open about it since the very beginning. I have owned up to it and I have taken responsibility for it." He apologized and said he was "grateful for the second chance".

Music career

O'Rourke had a brief career in music during his college years. He joined his first band, called Swipe, after he left El Paso to attend Columbia University in New York. Swipe played shows at bars and clubs in New York and once opened for the Olympia, Washington-based punk band Fitz of Depression.

After being introduced to Bad Brains as a teen, O'Rourke became a fan of punk music. O'Rourke and two friends from El Paso, Mike Stevens and Arlo Klahr, learned to play musical instruments; O'Rourke took up the bass. In 1991, while at Columbia University, the trio recruited drummer Cedric Bixler-Zavala (eventual vocalist for At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta), and together they formed the band Foss. In a profile of O'Rourke for The Washington Post, Ben Terris later wrote that the young O'Rourke "wanted nothing more than to get out of town", and that the band Foss was formed "with the hopes of traveling the world".

Bixler-Zavala recalled O'Rourke and Klahr introducing him to a zine called Book Your Own Fucking Life, a primer on how to schedule your own gigs without an agent. During the summer, they toured the United States and Canada, garnering the support of Feist. The group released a self-titled demo and a 7-inch record, "The El Paso Pussycats", on Western Breed Records in 1993.

O'Rourke also played drums in the band Swedes, who released an album called Summer in 1995. Bandmates included Jake Barowsky, Arlo Klahr, Julie Napolin, and Mike Stevens. O'Rourke and ex-members of Foss later started two other bands, a rock group called Fragile Gang and a cover band called The Sheeps.

The DIY ethos O'Rourke had first encountered in the punk scene informed some of his later political decisions, such as his Senate campaign's pledge not to accept financial contributions from PACs (political action committees).  In 2019, O'Rourke set up a hybrid PAC that works like a super PAC and a traditional PAC.

Business career
After graduation, O'Rourke worked as a live-in caretaker and art mover before working for an Internet service provider run by his uncle. He later took a position at H. W. Wilson Company as a proofreader, and wrote short stories and songs in his free time.

O'Rourke returned to El Paso in 1998. At first, he was working with computers as an inventory tracker at his mother's upscale furniture store and living in an apartment building owned by his father. O'Rourke said he wanted to address "brain-drain", or the exodus of youth caused by lack of opportunity. In 2000, he co-founded Stanton Street Technology Group, an Internet services and software company. With O'Rourke himself unable to obtain a loan, his father took out a $20,000 loan on his behalf. The company's first client was O'Rourke's mother's furniture store. O'Rourke's wife, Amy, operated the business until June 2017. For a few years, the company also published an online newspaper, also called Stanton Street; the paper was a mix of arts and entertainment reviews, restaurant reviews and opinion columns that O'Rourke modeled on alternative periodicals like The Village Voice and New York Press. In a 1998 interview with the El Paso Times, O'Rourke stated that his web designs paid "the bills", but his heart was in StantonStreet.com even though it lost money. The company made a co-marketing agreement with local TV station, KTSM-TV, allowing StantonStreet.Com and the station's Internet site to share content and TV ads. KTSM's then news director, Eric Pearson, was O'Rourke's brother-in-law.

O'Rourke was involved with El Paso civic organizations and nonprofit groups, such as the Rotary Club, United Way, and Center Against Sexual and Family Violence. He was a member of the boards of the El Paso Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Institute for Policy and Economic Development at UTEP.

Political career
During his childhood, O'Rourke accompanied his father Pat at campaign stops and other political events. While Pat was charismatic and outgoing, his son was more reserved. Pat would nudge Beto, suggesting he introduce himself to "this person or that person... I was an awkward and shy kid, so it was the last thing I wanted to do, but now I can look back and bless my experience in it." "Interestingly, his father was involved politically in El Paso growing up, and Beto would go to events...but I never saw Beto engaged with that arena," his mother recalled. O'Rourke cites his work on his magazine rather than boyhood exposure to politics, as the reason behind his initial political ideas and ambitions.

As an adult, O'Rourke volunteered for the campaigns of several politicians, including José Rodríguez for his 2002 re-election as El Paso County Attorney and Eliot Shapleigh his 2002 and 2006 reelections as Texas State Senator. O'Rourke was inspired by the successful 2001 mayoral run of Ray Caballero, whose platform promoted the idea that El Paso was great. When Caballero failed to get re-elected, O'Rourke (along with Susie Byrd, attorney Steve Ortega, and former Caballero staffer Veronica Escobar) considered running for office.

Following his 2020 presidential candidacy withdrawal, O'Rourke continued campaigning for other candidates, including advocating door to door for Eliz Markowitz.

El Paso City Council
In mid-2005, O'Rourke ran for the El Paso City Council on a platform of downtown development and border reform.

O'Rourke defeated two-term incumbent City Councilman Anthony Cobos, 57%–43%. Byrd and Ortega were also elected; along with O'Rourke, they came to be referred to as "The Progressives." O'Rourke is one of the youngest representatives ever to have served on the City Council. In 2007, he won re-election to a second term, defeating Trini Acevedo 70%–30%.

On June 14, 2005, at his first city council meeting, O'Rourke was chosen as mayor pro tem by unanimous vote. The mayor pro tem represents the city at meetings and ceremonial occasions when the mayor is unavailable, presides over City Council in the mayor's absence, appoints council members to legislative review committees and generally works in concert with the mayor in a leadership capacity. On June 20, 2006, he relinquished the position saying, "I said I would take it on condition that someone else would it in a year... I hope it becomes a new tradition that every year, a new mayor pro tem is elected."

He was a supporter of a redevelopment plan for a depressed area of El Paso's business district with a high vacancy rate, which was also supported by Mayor John Cook and fellow City Councilwoman Susie Byrd. The initiative faced opposition from a small group of small businesses and Chicano activists who did not want the part of the El Segundo Barrio neighborhood to be, in their words, "gentrified", as well as potential use of eminent domain to override reluctant property owners. Eminent domain remained a moot issue, for it was never adopted. Despite the redevelopment plan predating O'Rourke's joining the city council, and despite many city council members having supported it (including O'Rourke's predecessor Anthony Cobos), the opponents focused on O'Rourke's support for it, due to Mayor Cook requesting advice and investment from a successful local real-estate developer who was also O'Rourke's father-in-law. O'Rourke responded with an on-foot campaign to residents of the neighborhood and was met with support as well as some cynicism. An activist initiated a recall campaign against O'Rourke (which O'Rourke won) and a few downtown property owners filed two ethics complaints against him; these were determined to be unfounded and dismissed. O'Rourke and others contend that the recall and ethics complaints were simply intimidation and bad faith stalling tactics. Ultimately the redevelopment plans were only partially realized, owing to the start of the Great Recession in the United States.

In January 2009, O'Rourke sponsored a resolution calling for "comprehensive examination" of the War on Drugs and "the repeal of ineffective marijuana laws". The resolution, unanimously supported by his colleagues on the El Paso City Council, was vetoed by Mayor John Cook. O'Rourke told reporters the reason he spoke up about the War on Drugs was the thousands of people who had been killed in the nearby city of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. He said, "I hope it has all had its intended effect of starting the national discussion of the wisdom of the War on Drugs...and probably more importantly, helping to bring about a better solution than the status quo, which has led to the terror and tragedy in Juarez."

U.S. House of Representatives

2012

In 2012, O'Rourke filed for the Democratic primary against the eight-term Silvestre Reyes to represent Texas's 16th congressional district. The primary was seen as the real contest in the Democratic, Latino-majority district. Byrd ran O'Rourke's field operation and Escobar was head of communication. O'Rourke won 50.5 percent of the vote, just a few hundred votes above the threshold required to avoid a runoff against Reyes. He was contrasted with Reyes in his support for LGBT rights and drug liberalization. His campaign was largely on foot, and he reportedly knocked on 16,000 doors. He defeated his Republican opponent, Barbara Carrasco, in the general election with 65 percent of the vote. Upon O'Rourke's election, the district was no longer represented in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a 26-member group established in 1976, because he lacks Hispanic heritage. As the district was 80 percent Hispanic, with 77.6 percent of Hispanics being of voting-age, some officials, including David Austin, the El Paso-based border representative for the U.S./Mexico Border Counties Coalition, argued that he should be permitted to join. For his part, O'Rourke said he respected the caucus's bylaws.

As a Congressman, he held at least one town hall meeting every month. In March 2013, O'Rourke and Republican Steve Pearce of New Mexico introduced the Border Enforcement Accountability, Oversight, and Community Engagement Act, legislation proposed to establish an ombudsman within the Department of Homeland Security that would investigate allegations of violence and civil-rights violations by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, create a commission that would overview the agency's policies and provide insight on how to spend its $18 billion annual budget, increase the training required for officers and agents, and establish protocols under which the CBP would be required to report deaths at the border or agents' use of force. He co-sponsored the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, which was enacted in 2014. Notably, Section 506 allowed the CBP to enter into public-private partnerships with local entities to help fund overtime pay to customs officers at ports of entry, which helped fund the personnel to lower wait times at the border. El Paso was one of five cities chosen to participate in the program.

2014
During his bid for re-election in the fall of 2014, O'Rourke donated at least $28,000 from his own campaign funds to fellow Democratic candidates for House seats. O'Rourke was re-elected in 2014 with 67 percent of the vote.

In November 2014, O'Rourke opposed Obama's deferred action policy that used an executive action to bypass Congress in order to spare approximately 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, saying "the motive is noble, but the means are really hard to stomach."

O'Rourke was one of six members of Congress who took a six-day trip to Israel that included meetings with Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators, political leaders and residents. O'Rourke's previous decisions to vote against U.S. funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system and not attend Israel's prime minister's address to Congress had been controversial; the bill was easily passed in the House, with a 395–8 vote. While saying he was not against funding the project, he was reluctant to support sending $225 million to Israel without any debate or discussion, and said that the US's policy of "unequivocal support at times has been damaging to Israel."

2016
In June 2016, O'Rourke endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, being one of the last Democratic congressmen to support her during the primary. As a sitting member of Congress, O'Rourke was a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention. In October 2015, O'Rourke announced his bid for a third term in 2016. He won the Democratic primary and defeated his Green and Libertarian opponents in the general election. When Nancy Pelosi faced a leadership challenge from Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio, O'Rourke backed Ryan. O'Rourke said that he believed in term limits, and therefore that it was time for new leadership. He had given himself a term limit in the House, and promised not to serve any more than 12 years in the Senate if elected.

In 2017, the congressman, along with Steve Pearce of New Mexico and Eric Swalwell of California, sponsored the American Families United Act, which promoted the idea that US citizens have the right to sponsor their spouses for legal immigration.

O'Rourke gave up his congressional seat to run for Senate in 2018. Former El Paso County judge Veronica Escobar, also a Democrat, was elected to succeed him.

Committee assignments
 Committee on Armed Services
 Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities
 Subcommittee on Strategic Forces
 Committee on Veterans' Affairs
 Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs
 Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
Caucus memberships
 New Democrat Coalition
 Congressional Arts Caucus

2018 U.S. Senate campaign

As O'Rourke was considering entering the 2018 Texas Senate race, political experts considered him a "longshot" candidate. Ben Terris of The Washington Post said he was suffering from a "bug" causing "mass delusions that the old rules of politics no longer apply." He asked, "Can a Democrat really win in this deeply red state—against Cruz, who will be running one of the best-financed campaigns in the country? And can he do so on a positive message about Mexicans in an era when calling them rapists helped make a man president?"

No Democrat had been elected to statewide office in Texas since 1994. On March 31, 2017, O'Rourke formally announced his candidacy for the United States Senate seat held by incumbent Republican Ted Cruz. In March 2018, O'Rourke became the Democratic Party nominee, winning 61.8 percent of the primary vote. O'Rourke campaigned in all of Texas's 254 counties. He said he planned to run a positive campaign, not focused on Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.

O'Rourke's campaign received significant national attention for its ability to draw large crowds and extensive use of social media. He ran his campaign without professional pollsters or consultants, and relied on volunteers with no experience running a political campaign. His campaign employed the use of mass text messages. According to the 2018 third-quarter report from the FEC, his campaign spent 7.3 million on digital advertising alone (in contrast with Cruz's $251,000). His first ad was filmed on an iPhone.

O'Rourke often highlighted his days as a rock musician with Foss in interviews. By March 2018, Dan Solomon of Texas Monthly remarked that O'Rourke "seemingly can't escape a single profile without the words 'punk rock Democrat' appearing in the headline". Political observers and journalists felt that O'Rourke's punk past became an important element of his image and political outlook. In an op-ed for The New York Times, Mimi Swartz expressed her belief that O'Rourke's former membership in a punk band had likely boosted his appeal with millennials.

O'Rourke posted to social media daily, including Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and livestreamed his activities traveling the state, such as skateboarding in a Whataburger parking lot, washing clothes at a laundromat, and "blockwalking" in his constituents' neighborhoods. He encouraged supporters to post selfies they had taken with him to social media. Some of his videos went viral, including his position on NFL players "taking a knee" and police brutality against unarmed black men. Supporters said O'Rourke's "promise of compassion", more than any specific policy position, drew their support.

Funding
O'Rourke pledged not to accept PAC contributions for his Senate campaign. He raised $2 million within the first three months, mostly from small donations. During the campaign, PolitiFact rated his claim of not taking PAC money as "true". He received his first major organizational endorsement from End Citizens United in June 2017, which found that he had raised triple the funds of Cruz without accepting corporate special interest money. In the second quarter of 2018, he raised $10.4 million to Cruz's $4.6 million, with each candidate having raised $23 million by September 1. O'Rourke raised more than $38 million in the third quarter, three times Cruz's totals for the same period. It is the most raised in a U.S. Senate race in history. According to his campaign, the donations came from 802,836 individual contributions, mostly from Texas. When asked if he would share the funds with Democrats in other races, he declined, saying that he wanted to honor "the commitment that those who've contributed to this campaign have made to me." O'Rourke raised $80 million for the campaign, which was the highest amount ever raised by a U.S. Senate candidate.

Debates

The first of three scheduled debates between O'Rourke and Ted Cruz took place on September 21, 2018. The candidates disagreed on gun rights, immigration, marijuana, the "take a knee" controversy, and the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. At the end of the debate, the moderator asked the candidates to "say something nice about each other". O'Rourke praised Cruz's parenting. Cruz compared O'Rourke to Bernie Sanders, saying he "admired [his] willingness to stand up for socialist beliefs and high taxes." O'Rourke replied, "True to form." Analysts described Cruz as more experienced and aggressive, but said O'Rourke won over the crowd.

Cruz declined to participate in the third, town hall-style debate for CNN held on October 18, 2018, in McAllen, Texas. O'Rourke agreed to attend the town hall meeting alone. During the meeting, O'Rourke said he did not see himself running for President because he has young children. He said he regretted calling Ted Cruz "Lyin' Ted", a nickname given by Donald Trump. He confirmed that he would vote to impeach and indict Trump. He defended his Spanish nickname against accusations of cultural appropriation.

Endorsements

O'Rourke's Senate bid was endorsed by the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Singer and activist Willie Nelson endorsed O'Rourke and held a rally for him on September 29 in Austin, Texas; Nelson said, "Beto embodies what is special about Texas, an energy and an integrity that is completely genuine". At the end of the rally, Nelson debuted his new election-inspired song "Vote 'Em Out". Other celebrity endorsements included Beyonce, Khalid, Aaron Jones, Eva Longoria, LeBron James, Jim Carrey, Travis Scott, Ellen DeGeneres, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Kelly Rowland.

Polls and news coverage
On September 18, 2018, a Quinnipiac poll based on phone interviews put Cruz nine points ahead of O'Rourke among likely voters, but a September 19 Ipsos online poll done in conjunction with Reuters and the University of Virginia showed O'Rourke leading Cruz by two points. Going into the third debate on October 18, 2018, a CNN poll, conducted by SSRS, showed Cruz leading the campaign 52 percent to 45 percent among likely voters.

The media made comparisons between O'Rourke's Senate campaign and Obama's 2008 campaign for President, drawing parallels between their charismatic speaking styles, optimistic tones, and the nationwide attention their campaigns generated. Peter Hamby of Vanity Fair compared the energy at O'Rourke's rallies to the energy at Barack Obama's rallies in 2007.

Results
On November 6, 2018, Cruz defeated O'Rourke, 50.9%–48.3%. Despite his loss, O'Rourke took credit for the election of several down-ticket candidates of the Democratic Party, which some called the "Beto Effect". For example, Republicans lost control of the Texas Third Court of Appeals and Fifth Court of Appeals in the 2018 elections. Of 150 state House seats, 12 formerly Republican seats were taken by Democrats, as well as two of the state's 31 state Senate seats. O'Rourke received over four million votes, compared to Hillary Clinton, who received only 3.9 million votes in the 2016 presidential election in Texas, and David Alameel, the Democratic nominee in the 2014 Texas Senate race, who received only 1.6 million votes. He set a record for most votes ever cast for a Democrat in Texas history.

2020 presidential campaign

In late 2018, speculation began that O'Rourke might run in the United States presidential election in 2020. Prior to the midterm elections, The New Republic said O'Rourke's Senate campaign was the beginning of a bid for the presidency, despite calling it "journalistic hedging", or a justification for the media extensively covering a candidate who was expected to lose his race.

Democratic strategist Maria Cardona said he has "name recognition, a widely successful fundraising operation, a young fresh face with a sprinkling of woke, a cool persona, a new perspective, he speaks Spanish and would be an exciting and upbeat candidate." The possibility of an O'Rourke candidacy made some Democratic party donors hesitant to commit to other candidates.

On March 13, El Paso TV station KTSM-TV reported that O'Rourke had decided to run for President in 2020. O'Rourke confirmed speculation the following day by announcing that he was entering the presidential race. According to Politico, during his presidential race, O'Rourke presented his 2018 loss to Cruz as a prominent selling point.

O'Rourke announced the end of his campaign for president on November 1, 2019.

Political positions
Political analysts classify O'Rourke as a progressive, liberal, neoliberal, or centrist. During his time in Congress, O'Rourke was a member of the New Democrat Coalition, a pro-business member organization. National Journal gave O'Rourke a composite ideology of 85 percent liberal and 15 percent conservative in 2013. Describing himself, O'Rourke has said that he does not know where he falls on the political spectrum. He has sponsored bipartisan bills as well as broken with his party on issues like trade.

GovTrack placed O'Rourke near the ideological center of the Democratic Party; the American Civil Liberties Union gave him an 88 percent rating, while the United States Chamber of Commerce, a more conservative group, gave him a 47 percent rating. According to FiveThirtyEight, which tracks Congressional voting records, O'Rourke voted in line with Donald Trump 30.1 percent of the time during the 115th Congress.

Bipartisanship
Allegheny College bestowed the 2018 Prize for Civility in Public Life to O'Rourke together with Will Hurd, a Texas Republican. In March 2017, facing snowstorm-induced flight cancellations, O'Rourke and Hurd, both stuck in San Antonio, needed to get back to Washington for a House vote. They rented a car and embarked on a  drive that they captured on Facebook Live. O'Rourke and Hurd have worked collaboratively on legislation since the road trip.

Business
O'Rourke supports stronger antitrust laws to break up monopolies which he believes "stifle competition and innovation." He promotes industry and business regulations meant to promote competition, help the economy to grow, and protect consumers. He believes, "We must connect those out of work with the high value jobs being created right here in Texas by investing in the training, certification and apprenticeship programs that make it possible." He has received high scores from labor unions with lifetime and yearly position scores of 90–100 percent from the AFL-CIO and a 95 percent lifetime score from AFSCME.

Crime
In an essay he wrote for Houston Chronicle he repeated a common refrain of his campaign, that "Harris County Jail is the largest provider of mental health services in our state," and quoted the statistic that "the jail has more people receiving psychiatric treatment every day than the nine state mental hospitals in Texas combined." He proposed that politicians work to eliminate private, for-profit prisons, end the "war on drugs", stop using mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent drug offenses, end cash bail that disproportionately affects those unable to pay bail with longer jail sentences, and provide reentry programs to reduce recidivism for non-violent criminals.

Drugs
O'Rourke favors the legalization of cannabis. In 2011, O'Rourke co-authored a book, Dealing Death and Drugs: The Big Business of Dope in the U.S. and Mexico, which in part argues for an end to the prohibition on marijuana to reduce drug-related violence and undermine the finances of the Mexican drug cartels. He has called for the arrest records of individuals sentenced for possession of small amounts of cannabis to be expunged. During the 2018 Senate campaign, O'Rourke's opponent, Ted Cruz, claimed that O'Rourke sought to legalize heroin; in 2009 when O'Rourke was an El Paso city council member he called for "honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition on narcotics".

Education
O'Rourke is in favor of increasing federal aid to public schools in low-income communities. He believes that teachers and local education officials should have more autonomy in setting classroom standards with a reduction of emphasis on "arbitrary, high-stakes tests".

Environment
While attending Woodberry Forest School, O'Rourke along with a circle of friend founded an environmental group called the Terra Interest Society. Before he was elected to city council, he joined neighborhood and community efforts to stop the re-permitting of the local ASARCO copper smelter, and once he was on the city council, he made several efforts to ensure that the copper smelter did not re-open.

O'Rourke supports efforts to combat global warming. He has advocated putting a price on carbon emissions and wants to substantially increase the use of renewable energy. He has been a vocal critic of the Trump Administration's elimination of greenhouse gas regulations and the shrinking of the budget for environmental projects.

In 2012, O'Rourke stated: "I believe that in tackling climate change and the greatest environmental threat we have ever faced, we need to take unprecedented action in building a foundation for a clean energy economy. Harmful emissions that contribute to climate change also pollute our air and water. Climate change threatens our food supply, our security and the complex ecosystem that sustains humanity. I will work with other members of the House of Representatives, the Senate and our President in helping our country put together a plan that will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the point where they match levels that can be absorbed by Earth's ecosystems. Educating our fellow Americans about this threat to our quality of life is important to our success, and I will do all I can to make this issue a top priority in Congress."

O'Rourke has introduced legislation to establish a national monument at Castner Range, near El Paso, and successfully included a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act to protect the area, which includes a historic military training facility.

O'Rourke's holds a lifetime voting record of 95 percent and a 2017 score of 100 percent with the League of Conservation Voters' national environmental ranking.

Foreign policy

O'Rourke criticized Israel's actions during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict and voted against funding Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. O'Rourke denounced the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem as "provocative." He supports a two-state solution and believes that the U.S. could best support a peaceful settlement by urging Israel to discontinue Israeli settlements in the West Bank and assist the Palestinian Authority to negotiate in good faith and recognize Israel's right to exist. O'Rourke criticized Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu following his comments about annexing the settlements in the occupied West Bank after the 2019 Israeli election, calling him a "racist". In April 2019, he called the U.S.-Israel relationship "one of the most important relationships that we have on the planet."

O'Rourke criticized Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses and the intervention it leads in support of the government of Yemen against the Houthis. In 2016, O'Rourke voted against the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which allows relatives of victims of the September 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for its government's alleged role in the attacks. In October 2018, after President Trump indicated the U.S. would not sanction Saudi Arabia over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, O'Rourke stated: "Saudi Arabia must be held accountable. We must stop rewarding their bad behavior, whether it's what they've just done in the murder of a journalist or their export of those who are spreading a hateful ideology or their indiscriminately bombing civilians in Yemen."

O'Rourke supported the Iran nuclear deal regarding Iran's development of weapons of mass destruction. In August 2017, O'Rourke criticized Trump's hard-line stance towards North Korea, saying that "We must not allow this president to sleepwalk this country, or tweet this country, into war with North Korea." In March 2019, O'Rourke called for ending the U.S.–led Iraq War and War in Afghanistan. O'Rourke opposed the U.S. involvement in the Syrian Civil War and providing arms to the rebel fighters in Syria. He also criticized the NATO-led military intervention in Libya a "factor in the destabilization of the Middle East and the rise of ISIS." O'Rourke supported legislation to curtail NSA's broad and unwarranted surveillance of U.S. and foreign citizens.

In July 2018, O'Rourke said that Trump's performance while attending the 2018 Russia–United States summit in Helsinki warranted impeachment. Addressing the Trump–Putin joint press conference of July 16, he said standing "on stage in another country with the leader of another country who wants to and has sought to undermine this country, and to side with him over the United States—if I were asked to vote on this I would vote to impeach the president." On March 23, 2019, O'Rourke accused President Trump of collusion with Russia to "undermine and influence" U.S. elections.

In March 2019, O'Rourke said regarding the China–United States trade war that President Trump had a "legitimate" cause and "We want him to be successful in this, but as I was reminded by a fellow Iowan, when have we ever gone to war, including a trade war without allies?"

In an interview with ABC, O'Rourke suggested that the United States address the migrant caravan by investing in stability in countries where the migrants originate, countries in the Northern Triangle of Central America. O'Rourke said that U.S. involvement in Central America "has not been a very positive one over the last 60 years. You can go back to the coup [in Guatemala] that overthrew Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, fully backed by the Eisenhower administration and the Dulles brothers, who had an interest in the United Fruit company, whose fight with the government really precipitated the crisis that led to the coup."

Guns
On the evening of June 22, 2016, O'Rourke participated in the sit-in in the House of Representatives that attempted to force a vote on gun control legislation. When the Republicans ordered C-SPAN to turn off its normal coverage of the chamber, O'Rourke and Representative Scott Peters transmitted images by cell phone to social media for C-SPAN to broadcast.

On March 7, 2018, O'Rourke told Alisyn Camerota of CNN: "We have a great tradition and culture of gun ownership and gun safety for hunting, for sport, for self-defense... I think that can allow Texas to take the lead on a really tough issue, which the country is waiting for leadership and action on."

He supports universal background checks for all firearm purchases.

After the 2019 El Paso shooting, he called for a complete ban on the sale and possession of assault rifles and high capacity magazines and a buy back program to remove existing weapons and magazines.

On September 2, 2019, O’Rourke tweeted: "I was asked how I'd address people's fears that we will take away their assault rifles. I want to be clear: That's exactly what we're going to do. Americans who own AR-15s and AK-47s will have to sell their assault weapons [to the government]. All of them." During a live televised interview on October 16, 2019, MSNBC cable news-show host Joe Scarborough asked O’Rourke how he, as president, would respond to non-compliance from those gun owners who regard such a mandatory program as "an unjust law and unconstitutional." O'Rourke replied: "There have to be consequences, or else there is no respect for the law… In that case, I think there would be a visit by law enforcement to recover [sic] that firearm and to make sure that it is purchased."

In a September 19, 2019 Democratic presidential debate, O'Rourke again called for a mandatory buyback of assault weapons; he said: "'Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47'". O'Rourke acknowledged that his position had shifted from the stance he had taken on assault weapons during his 2018 U.S. Senate bid. Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware "lamented on CNN that O'Rourke's stance could haunt Democrats, because 'that clip will be played for years at Second Amendment rallies with organizations that try to scare people by saying, "Democrats are coming for your guns"'".

Immigration
O'Rourke favors comprehensive immigration reform. As early as 2012, he asserted that his experience living on the border gave him "a strong understanding of immigration's impact on our community", calling El Paso "an Ellis Island to Latin America for more than 150 years", and spoke against 'militarizing' the border. O'Rourke opposed Trump's decision to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which granted temporary stay to some undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as minors. O'Rourke said it is a "top priority" to protect DREAMers. In October 2016, he gave a TEDx talk, titled The Border Makes America Great, about his views on immigration. In an interview in February 2019, O'Rourke indicated he would tear down the wall between El Paso and the southern US border, since he feels that the fencing has forced migrants to the most inhospitable areas of the southern border, "ensuring their suffering and death".

He has criticized President Donald Trump's rhetoric on immigration, saying: "[Trump is] constantly stoking anxiety and fear about Mexicans, immigrants and the border with Mexico. Unfortunately this President takes another step into a dark world of fear, isolation and separation." In June 2018, O'Rourke led protests in Tornillo, Texas, against the Trump administration family separation policy which involved the separation of children of immigrant families. The city is located just miles from the Rio Grande, the river that creates the border of the United States and Mexico in the state of Texas. The Trump administration had created a "tent-city" in Tornillo, where separated children were being held without their parents. O'Rourke called this practice "Un-American" and the responsibility of all Americans. O'Rourke stated that leading the march "was a religious experience... I happen to have been raised Catholic, and what I take away from my religion is you do your best to love everyone, to be good to everyone." In April 2019, O'Rourke publicly compared rhetoric used by Trump to describe immigrants to language from Nazi Germany.

Ted Cruz asserted in 2018 that O'Rourke wanted "open borders and wants to take our guns." PolitiFact found that Cruz's claims were "false", noting that O'Rourke had "not called for opening the borders or for government agents to take guns from law-abiding residents". Subsequently, in a televised September 2019 presidential debate, O'Rourke expressed support for mandatory government gun-buyback programs.

Religious liberty
In October 2019, during his presidential campaign, O'Rourke proposed to remove the tax-exempt status of religious organizations that oppose same-sex marriage. At CNN's Equality Town Hall, O'Rourke asserted that "'there can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone or any institution, any organization in America that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us'". O'Rourke's press secretary later clarified that he "'was referring to religious institutions who take discriminatory action'". O'Rourke's comment "infuriated a swath of religious and conservative leaders".

Social issues
O'Rourke voted against the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2017, which would have permanently banned the use of federal funds for abortions and reformed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to prohibit qualified health plans from including coverage for abortions.

O'Rourke told the Dallas Voice that "he called marriage equality a core civil rights issue" during his House primary campaign. While on the El Paso City Council, O'Rourke led a successful fight to overturn the domestic partnership ban. He was a co-sponsor of the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act of 2013 (H.R. 3135).

Whilst previously having supported 'Medicare for All', O'Rourke quickly became the most important proponent of an alternative, called 'Medicare for America'. This alternative would allow all citizens on an employment-based health insurance to keep that insurance if they wanted to, but it would move all uninsured, Medicaid-covered, and newborn citizens to Medicare immediately. He supports stabilization of the insurance markets to improve the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He also supports the expansion of Medicaid and is a co-sponsor of the Medicare-X Choice Act of 2017.

O'Rourke has spoken out against racial inequality. He supports the football players who have taken part in the "Take a knee" protests. Speaking in a video that went viral, O'Rourke said he believes there is "nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee, for your rights, anytime, anywhere or any place." He has also asserted that while he was given second chances after being arrested twice in his younger years, those chances are often "denied to too many of our fellow Texans, particularly those who don't look like me or have access to the same opportunities that I did." In September 2018, Cruz posted to Twitter a video of O'Rourke in a Dallas church, largely attended by African-Americans, speaking out against the killing of Bothem Shem Jean, an unarmed black man in his own home, by an off-duty police officer. In the video, the crowd gave the speech a standing ovation, and the video served to bolster O'Rourke's standing nationally, going viral and receiving wide praise.

Veterans
O'Rourke has held monthly veterans town hall meetings since he was elected in 2013. After hearing about long wait times, especially regarding mental health, he carried out his own local survey of veterans, which showed wait times far exceeding what the VA was reporting. In an attempt to better meet veterans' needs, O'Rourke and others worked to establish a new program at the El Paso VA designed to care for military related health issues within the hospital while using community clinics or medical facilities in the area for more standard medical needs.

O'Rourke co-sponsored the bipartisan bill H.R. 1604, the Veterans' Mental Health Care Access Act, with Republican Congressmen Tom MacArthur, which expanded options for veterans seeking mental health care to non-VA facilities. O'Rourke serves on both the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, and the House Armed Services Committee, which oversees military installations such as Fort Bliss, headquartered in El Paso.

In September 2016, three bills that were attached as amendments to H.R. 5620 (or the VA Accountability First and Appeals Modernization Act of 2016) were approved unanimously with bipartisan support in the House. The first, the Vet Connect Act of 2016 (H.R. 5162), would allow a veteran's entire medical record to be shared with a community provider, without explicit written consent, with a pilot of the program then being tried in El Paso. The Ask Veterans Act (H.R. 1319) would have a non-government contractor conduct an annual survey on behalf of the secretary of Veterans Affairs in order to determine veterans' experiences with hospital care and medical services at VA facilities, the results of which would be publicly accessible. O'Rourke developed this idea from feedback from veterans at town hall meetings. The Get Vets a Doc Now Act (H.R. 5501) would allow the VA to provide conditional job offers to resident doctors two years before the completion of their programs, in an effort to recruit doctors to fill the shortage of 43,000 clinicians.

Personal life

On July 3, 2001, O'Rourke's father, a longtime cycling enthusiast, died while riding his bicycle along the shoulder of Pete Domenici Highway, just outside the city limits of El Paso and across the New Mexico state line, when he was struck from behind by a 1999 Pontiac Grand Am, throwing him  and causing severe head injuries; he was pronounced dead at the scene. O'Rourke delivered the eulogy during the funeral service at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

O'Rourke married Amy Hoover Sanders, the daughter of Louann and Bill Sanders, at her parents' ranch in Lamy, New Mexico, near Santa Fe, on September 24, 2005. Bill Sanders is a real estate developer who previously dated O'Rourke's mother and introduced her to O'Rourke's father. The couple and their three children live in El Paso's Sunset Heights in the Henry Trost-designed mission-style house where General Hugh Scott and Pancho Villa reportedly met in 1915.

O'Rourke is a lifelong Roman Catholic but has publicly expressed disagreement with Church doctrine, including its refusal to solemnize same-sex marriages.

Works
 O'Rourke, Beto and Byrd, Susie (2011). Dealing Death and Drugs: The Big Business of Dope in the U.S. and Mexico. Cinco Puntos Press. .

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading
 Melissa del Bosque, "Lights, Camera, Mayhem!", Texas Observer, April 17, 2009.
 Matt Flegenheimer, "Beto O'Rourke Was Once Adrift in New York City. Now He's Searching Again". The New York Times, February 6, 2019.

External links

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Category:Columbia College (New York) alumni
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Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Texas
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The New Orleans Saints improved to 7-2 with a Sunday Night Football victory over the Dallas Cowboys, but suffered a loss as well, as rookie safety Kenny Vaccaro will be out for Week 11 after suffering a concussion, according to Ian Rapoport of NFL.com.

Vaccaro, 22, has started all nine games for the Saints as a rookie after he was selected in the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft. He has managed one sack and one interception for the team, while racking up 45 tackles and five passes defended. Vacarro left Sunday's game after taking a knee to the helmet.

After finishing the 2012 season with one of the worst defenses in NFL history, the Saints have made tremendous strides and have allowed the fifth-fewest points per game in 2013. The Saints are also one of only three defenses that have allowed fewer than 200 passing yards per game since the addition of Vaccaro.

In Vaccaro's absence, the Saints will likely start Rafael Bush, who played in relief of the injured rookie on Sunday night. An undrafted free agent in 2010, Bush has appeared in 31 career games and has started five times for the Saints in 2013.

The Saints are set to host the visiting San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.

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• Watch A.J. Green's last-second Hail Mary TD | Ravens still win in OT

• Terrell Pryor reaches JaMarcus-level low point


Diosgenin

Diosgenin, a phytosteroid sapogenin, is the product of hydrolysis by acids, strong bases, or enzymes  of saponins, extracted from the  tubers of Dioscorea wild yam, such as the Kokoro. The sugar-free (aglycone) product of such hydrolysis, diosgenin is used for the commercial synthesis of cortisone, pregnenolone, progesterone, and other steroid products.

Sources
It is present in detectable amounts in Costus speciosus, Smilax menispermoidea, species of Paris, Aletris, Trigonella, and Trillium, and in extractable amounts many species of Dioscorea – D. althaeoides, colletti, composita, floribunda, futschauensis, gracillima, hispida, hypoglauca, mexicana, nipponica, panthaica, parviflora, septemloba,Helicteres isora and zingiberensis.

Industrial uses
Diosgenin is a precursor for several hormones, starting with the Marker degradation process, which includes synthesis of progesterone. The process was used in the early manufacturing of combined oral contraceptive pills.

References

External links

Category:Estrogens
Category:Hormonal contraception
Category:Progestogens

Category:Spiro compounds
Category:Steroids
Category:Tetrahydrofurans
Category:Tetrahydropyrans


PFAdamantPro Light Font

Copyright (c) 2009 by Vedran Erakovic. All rights reserved. Published by Parachute Worldwide for the Parachute Font Library.

Price

$59.00

Description

The Adamant family is a serif typeface that comes in six weights, from Light to ExtraBold, each with italic and small caps versions. Every font includes ligatures, lining and oldstyle figures in proportional and tabular widths, fractions, alternate characters, and other typographic features. The weights are finely balanced so that they can be easily combined, depending on type of paper and print conditions. ts proportions, sturdy serifs, high x-height and wide apertures make it very readable at small sizes. It is suitable for setting books, magazines and newspapers, but is also appropriate for use in large sizes like in poster design. It supports Latin and Cyrillic.


Q:

Подсчет ширины контрола, по длине строки

Собственно есть старый и мохнатый уже легаси код, контролы реализованы на WinForms, а времени и денег на переписывание на WPF нету. Его используем как можем, каждый раз когда внедряем какой нибудь контрол в WPF, вылезают баги.
Сейчас баг немного специфичный. Есть контрол, внутри контрола Label, ширина которого рассчитывается так :
return (int) LabelControl.CreateGraphics().MeasureString(TextLabel, TextLabel.Font).Width + 40;

Если смотреть на WinForms тестовом приложении, все отлично. Если вбить контрол внутрь WPF, он берет текст и если там есть пробелы, то переносит текст, врапит.
Есть вариант хардкода, подменять строку на модифицированную, и заменить пробелы на любой другой символ, но это еще пока предположение, есть какие либо более уместные и гибкие пути?

A:

Ответ прост. Переписал просто расчет, добавил пикселей 10. Почему такое поведение, и почему именно надо добавить 10 пикселей не могу предположить, скорее всего, в других приложениях, кстати винформовских, на этот контрол вешается Margin.


Vascular hospitalization rates and costs in patients with peripheral artery disease in the United States.
Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is common and imposes a high risk of major systemic and limb ischemic events. The REduction of Atherothrombosis for Continued Health (REACH) Registry is an international prospective registry of patients at risk of atherothrombosis caused by established arterial disease or the presence of ≥3 atherothrombotic risk factors. We compared the 2-year rates of vascular-related hospitalizations and associated costs in US patients with established PAD across patient subgroups. Symptomatic PAD at enrollment was identified on the basis of current intermittent claudication with an ankle-brachial index (ABI) <0.90 or a history of lower-limb revascularization or amputation. Asymptomatic PAD was diagnosed on the basis of an enrollment ABI <0.90 in the absence of symptoms. Overall, 25 763 of the total 68 236-patient REACH cohort were enrolled from US sites; 2396 (9.3%) had symptomatic and 213 (0.8%) had asymptomatic PAD at baseline. One- and cumulative 2-year follow-up data were available for 2137 (82%) and 1677 (64%) of US REACH patients with either symptomatic or asymptomatic PAD, respectively. At 2 years, mean cumulative hospitalization costs, per patient, were $7445, $7000, $10 430, and $11 693 for patients with asymptomatic PAD, a history of claudication, lower-limb amputation, and revascularization, respectively (P=0.007). A history of peripheral intervention (lower-limb revascularization or amputation) was associated with higher rates of subsequent procedures at both 1 and 2 years. The economic burden of PAD is high. Recurring hospitalizations and repeat revascularization procedures suggest that neither patients, physicians, nor healthcare systems should assume that a first admission for a lower-extremity PAD procedure serves as a permanent resolution of this costly and debilitating condition.


Manchester United hope to formally announce the signing of Angel di Maria on Tuesday after agreeing terms on a British record transfer fee of £59.7million plus add ons with Real Madrid.

United officials held meetings with their Real Madrid counterparts on Sunday evening and resumed talks on Monday as they bartered down the £75m asking price.

The scale of the extra fees due from United will depend on performances and the prospect of Di Maria winning the Ballon D'Or.

VIDEO: Scroll down to watch Angel di Maria's career highlights

Spotted: Di Maria is on the left hand side of the back seat on his way into United's training ground

On the look out: Di Maria peers out of his United car as he arrives for the completion of his transfer

World class: Di Maria has been a key figure for both Real Madrid and Argentina over the past few years

The Argentina midfielder posed with fans at Madrid airport on Monday afternoon prior to flying into Manchester on a private plane to meet up with United manager Louis van Gaal late on Monday night.

Van Gaal had been at Carrington overseeing the first team squad's 4pm warm-down session and training ahead of Tuesday night's Capital One Cup second round tie at MK Dons.

Di Maria's arrival will give the club a welcome lift following a disappointing start to the season that has delivered just one point from their opening two Premier League games but there is concern that his signing, as stellar as it is, fails to address United's real needs and Van Gaal is pressing the club to deliver two more players over the coming days.

Ajax utility player Daley Blind and Juventus midfielder Arturo Vidal are among those being considered.

Creative: The winger should bring a new spark to Louis van Gaal's side, which has been lacking this season

UNITED STORE'S 'R' SHORTAGE AS FANS SNAP UP SHIRTS The Manchester United megastore at Old Trafford ran out of the letter 'R' as supporters clambered to buy Angel Di Maria shirts. A sign was put outside the shop on Monday night informing fans that there were no 'R' letters left in black print. CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL STORY Advertisement

Madrid are also agreeing terms over United right back Guillermo Varela. The 21-year-old Uruguayan only joined United a year ago from Penarol but will move to Real's B team Castilla to play under Zinedine Zidane. The deal is likely to be a loan with a view to a permanent £3m transfer.

Di Maria will join up with his new United team-mates at training on Thursday and the club hope to formalise his work permit and registration by noon on Friday if he is to figure against Burnley on Saturday.

A work permit, however, has yet to be arranged for his compatriot Marcos Rojo with the Bank Holiday helping to delay the process.

Di Maria, hailed as the best player in Spain, 'surpassing even Lionel Messi' according to former Argentina coach Cesar Luis Menotti, has at least got United supporters excited.

Pedigree: Di Maria was a crucial member of Real's Champions League-winning side last season

A need for more such names is underlined by the fact United face MK Dons on Tuesday night in the Capital One second round without seven first-team players.

Chris Smalling has joined Luke Shaw, Ander Herrera, Michael Carrick, Marouane Fellaini, Jesse Lingard and Rafael on the sidelines.

Danny Welbeck, Javier Hernandez and Shinji Kagawa are set to be involved from the start, with youngsters Reece James and James Wilson also in contention to play. Juventus have made an enquiry about the availability of Hernandez after Arsenal stalled on the proposed loan of Lukas Podolski.

Welbeck remains a target for other clubs with Everton, Tottenham, Newcastle and Sunderland rivalled by Turkish club Galatasaray.


Thursday, March 04, 2010

Let's Do More With Mâché

Why is it that paper (or papier, as the French so sillily refer to it) is the only thing that gets mâchéd? Scientific fact has it that any object saturated in Plaster of Paris will harden into an tough shell impregnable to anything other than the furious swipe of a 5-year-old swinging a pinata bat.

What if we really pushed physics and engineering to the max and made steel mâché? Could you imagine how tough that material would be? You could make it into Cylon armor and conquer entire continents with only a few robots.

There are other uses for mâché that don't involve enslaving innocent populaces. What's say we built airplanes out of, say, airplane mâché. Planes wouldn't crash, they'd just bounce on the ground and begin to fly again, dropping candy canes and sunshine on the happy people below. Furthermore, we could also build houses out of stucco mâché and windows out of glass mâché . There would be no more home invasions, nor house fires, because think about it -- have you ever seen a mâché'd object catch fire? Of course not, because not only is mâché invulnerable to bullets, nuclear warfare and steel-toed boots, but it's also flame retardant.

I think I'm sort of in love with mâché. I wonder if I can get its number. I know it's weird because I'm married and have 2 kids and all but the heart wants what it wants. Mâché, I will pine for you until you're mine and our relationship status is made of commitment mâché.


Intrauterine surgery in myelomeningocele.
Intrauterine surgery for repair of fetal myelomeningocele has been performed since 1994. Open repair through a hysterotomy has been performed since 1997. Although much has been published about diagnosis, counseling, case selection, pre-, intra-, and postoperative management, delivery and long-term sequelae for both mother and baby, and associated ethical issues, several questions have yet to be openly discussed in a public forum.


Q:

$x^2 \frac{\partial^2{z} }{{\partial{x^2}}}+2xy \frac{\partial^2{z} }{{\partial{x}\partial{y}}}+y^2 \frac{\partial^2{z} }{{\partial{y^2}}}=0$

I want to solve this PDE. I seems like a classic problem but I don't know what to do when in second order PDE coefficients are polynomial themselves.
$$x^2 \frac{\partial^2{z} }{{\partial{x^2}}}+2xy \frac{\partial^2{z} }{{\partial{x}\partial{y}}}+y^2 \frac{\partial^2{z} }{{\partial{y^2}}}=0$$

A:

Let us translate the given PDE into polar coordinates.  Using $x = r \cos \theta$ and $y = r \sin \theta$, we get:
$$ \frac{\partial z}{\partial r} = \frac{\partial z}{\partial x} \cdot \frac{\partial x}{\partial r} + \frac{\partial z}{\partial y} \cdot \frac{\partial y}{\partial r} = \cos \theta \frac{\partial z}{\partial x} + \sin \theta \frac{\partial z}{\partial y}.$$
Iterating this,
$$ \frac{\partial^2 z}{\partial r^2} = \cos \theta \left( \cos \theta \frac{\partial^2 z} {\partial x^2} + \sin \theta \frac{\partial^2 z} {\partial y \partial x}\right) + \sin \theta \left( \cos\theta \frac{\partial^2 z}{\partial x \partial y} + \sin\theta \frac{\partial^2 z}{\partial y^2}\right) = \\
\cos^2 \theta \frac{\partial^2 z}{\partial x^2} + 2 \cos \theta \sin \theta \frac{\partial^2 z}{\partial x \partial y} + \sin^2 \theta \frac{\partial^2 z}{\partial y^2} = \\
\frac{1}{r^2} \left( x^2 \frac{\partial^2 z}{\partial x^2} + 2xy \frac{\partial^2 z}{\partial x \partial y} + y^2 \frac{\partial^2 z}{\partial y^2} \right).$$
Therefore, the given PDE is equivalent to $r^2 \frac{\partial^2 z}{\partial r^2} = 0$ which has general solution of $z = f(\theta) + r g(\theta)$ (on any domain which is an annular sector not including the origin).

To relate this to the general solution from rafa11111's answer; or, to get a nice expression in terms of $x,y$: suppose our domain is contained either within the right half-plane or within the left half-plane.  Then $\theta = \tan^{-1}(y/x)$, so we have:
$$f(\theta) + r g(\theta) = f(\theta) + (r \cos \theta) (\sec \theta g(\theta)) = f(\tan^{-1}(y/x)) + x \left(\pm\sqrt{1 + (y/x)^2} g(\tan^{-1}(y/x)) \right)$$
(with the sign depending on the specific half-plane).
Therefore, if $F(m) = f(\tan^{-1}(m))$ and $G(m) = \pm \sqrt{1+m^2} g(\tan^{-1}(m))$ (with the chosen branch of $\tan^{-1}$ also depending on the half-plane) then $z = F(y/x) + x G(y/x)$.

As for how I came up with this approach: I first observed that the given PDE looks like an analogue of an Euler equation from ordinary differential equations.  This suggested that some solution of the form $z = x^\alpha y^\beta$ might work.  Plugging in this trial solution, we get:
$$\alpha (\alpha-1) x^\alpha y^\beta + 2 \alpha \beta x^\alpha y^\beta + \beta (\beta-1) x^\alpha y^\beta = [(\alpha + \beta)^2 - (\alpha + \beta)] x^\alpha y^\beta = 0.$$
Therefore, this does indeed give a solution whenever $\alpha + \beta \in \{ 0, 1 \}$.  Thus, we find particular solutions of the form $z = x^{-\beta} y^\beta = (y/x)^\beta$ and $z = x^{1-\beta} y^\beta = x (y/x)^\beta$.
Once we see this, it is reasonable to conjecture that in general, $f(y/x)$ and $x g(y/x)$ might be solutions - which is then straightforward to check.  Furthermore, by linearity of the equation, $z = f(y/x) + x g(y/x)$ is also a solution.  At this point, we heuristically have "enough degrees of freedom" that we think it could possibly be the general solution.  Also, from the appearance of $y/x$ in the solution, this suggests that the approach of converting the PDE into polar coordinates could be fruitful.  (Another approach would be to observe that the hypothesized general solution is linear on any ray from the origin, which would suggest examining the behavior of a solution on such curves $x = t \cos \alpha$, $y = t \sin \alpha$ for fixed $\alpha$.  The calculation for this approach would end up looking much the same.)


The monument has stood in San Francisco for a year. It depicts young women from Korea, China and the Philippines standing on a pedestal holding hands, while a statue of Kim Hak-sun, a Korean activist, gazes up at them.

But the view from Osaka, Japan, of the memorial, which commemorates the tens of thousands of “comfort women” who were detained and raped by Japanese soldiers before and during World War II, has been critical. This week, the controversy boiled over as Osaka officially severed its sister-city partnership with San Francisco.

In a letter dated Tuesday, Osaka’s mayor, Hirofumi Yoshimura, followed through on a threat issued a year ago to end his city’s longstanding relationship with San Francisco in protest of the monument, saying it presented a one-sided message.

“I earnestly request that you promptly remove” the memorial and an accompanying plaque “without further delay,” Mr. Yoshimura wrote, according to an emailed copy of the letter. He added that he would revive ties with San Francisco if they were removed from city property.


Q:

How to make SMTPHandler not block

I installed a local SMTP server and used logging.handlers.SMTPHandler to log an exception using this code:
import logging
import logging.handlers
import time
gm = logging.handlers.SMTPHandler(("localhost", 25), 'info@somewhere.com', ['my_email@gmail.com'], 'Hello Exception!',)
gm.setLevel(logging.ERROR)
logger.addHandler(gm)
t0 = time.clock()
try:
    1/0
except:
    logger.exception('testest')
print time.clock()-t0

It took more than 1sec to complete, blocking the python script for this whole time. How come? How can I make it not block the script?

A:

Here's the implementation I'm using, which I based on this Gmail adapted SMTPHandler.
I took the part that sends to SMTP and placed it in a different thread.
import logging.handlers
import smtplib
from threading import Thread

def smtp_at_your_own_leasure(mailhost, port, username, password, fromaddr, toaddrs, msg):
    smtp = smtplib.SMTP(mailhost, port)
    if username:
        smtp.ehlo() # for tls add this line
        smtp.starttls() # for tls add this line
        smtp.ehlo() # for tls add this line
        smtp.login(username, password)
    smtp.sendmail(fromaddr, toaddrs, msg)
    smtp.quit()

class ThreadedTlsSMTPHandler(logging.handlers.SMTPHandler):
    def emit(self, record):
        try:
            import string # for tls add this line
            try:
                from email.utils import formatdate
            except ImportError:
                formatdate = self.date_time
            port = self.mailport
            if not port:
                port = smtplib.SMTP_PORT
            msg = self.format(record)
            msg = "From: %s\r\nTo: %s\r\nSubject: %s\r\nDate: %s\r\n\r\n%s" % (
                            self.fromaddr,
                            string.join(self.toaddrs, ","),
                            self.getSubject(record),
                            formatdate(), msg)
            thread = Thread(target=smtp_at_your_own_leasure, args=(self.mailhost, port, self.username, self.password, self.fromaddr, self.toaddrs, msg))
            thread.start()
        except (KeyboardInterrupt, SystemExit):
            raise
        except:
            self.handleError(record)

Usage example:
logger = logging.getLogger()

gm = ThreadedTlsSMTPHandler(("smtp.gmail.com", 587), 'bugs@my_company.com', ['admin@my_company.com'], 'Error found!', ('my_company_account@gmail.com', 'top_secret_gmail_password'))
gm.setLevel(logging.ERROR)

logger.addHandler(gm)

try:
    1/0
except:
    logger.exception('FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-')

A:

You could use QueueHandler and QueueListener. Taken from the docs:

Along with the QueueListener class, QueueHandler can be used to let
  handlers do their work on a separate thread from the one which does
  the logging. This is important in Web applications and also other
  service applications where threads servicing clients need to respond
  as quickly as possible, while any potentially slow operations (such as
  sending an email via SMTPHandler) are done on a separate thread.

Alas they are only available from Python 3.2 onward.

A:

The simplest form of asynchronous smtp handler for me is just to override emit method and use the original method in a new thread. GIL is not a problem in this case because there is an I/O call to SMTP server which releases GIL. The code is as follows
class ThreadedSMTPHandler(SMTPHandler):
    def emit(self, record):
        thread = Thread(target=SMTPHandler.emit, args=(self, record))
        thread.start()


Nike launch their FA14 Tech Pack Collection, with emphasise on movement and environmental protection… Fleece is the fundamental material of sport. By re-examining the textile and fabrication, Nike has evolved the timeless basic into a modern staple. With Nike Tech […]


This invention relates to apparatus for removing particles from a gas stream and more particularly to apparatus for charging and collecting submicron particles entrained in a gas stream.
Gas streams, particularly in industrial settings, often contain particulates which must be removed therefrom for environmental or other reasons. Large particles, i.e. above 1-3 microns in size, are relatively easy to separate from the gas stream and conventional apparatus can remove them with high efficiency. Submicron particles, on the other hand, are more difficult to remove and the collection efficiencies of conventional apparatus with respect to them are lower.
Various types of apparatus are used to collect submicron particles, some with relatively high efficiency, but they do have disadvantages. These apparatus typically use an ionizer to charge the particles and then provide a large surface area at a different potential to collect them. However, high charges on submicron particles are difficult to achieve in conventional ionizers. The voltage gradient and current densities of these ionizers are not generally sufficient to quickly and highly charge submicron particles. In many cases this charging can be increased only at the expense of undesirably increased power consumption. Consequently, these apparatus either have a relatively long transit time (e.g., seconds) for particles in the ionizer, which is obtained by flowing the gas stream through the apparatus at a low velocity, or they have a large amount of collection area to collect the less highly charged particles, or both. These alternatives are all undesirable since they require a larger apparatus to handle a given amount of gas than would be required if the particles were more highly and rapidly charged (e.g., in milliseconds).
Some apparatus have electrodes for generating a precipitating field downstream of the ionizer to increase the rate at which charged particles move toward the collecting surface. But these electrodes create another problem, viz., arcing and sparking between the electrodes and the collecting surfaces. During arcing the precipitating fields decrease and particles go uncollected.
High efficiency collection of submicron particles is achieved in some apparatus at the expense of large pressure drops along the gas stream. For example, fiber beds do a credible job of removing submicron particles, but the pressure drop across the bed is undesirably high.