Bitcoin BTC, Ethereum ETH, and the rest of the crypto-market is off to a good start. But the major concern is, what might prevent Bitcoin and Ethereum from surging. Well, the Co-Founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin holds the answer to that question.

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Recently, Buterin was on What Bitcoin Did podcast, where he weighed in some threats to Bitcoin and the rest of the market, may encounter soon. Buterin seemed quite curious while speaking about quantum computing.

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Buterin said:

So the thing that I tend to worry about I mean one is that theres always this kind of black swan risk of technical failure. What if the NSA comes out with a quantum computer out of the blue and just steals a bunch of coins before you can do anything about it?

[Theres also] political failure. So what if governments banned Bitcoin, commandeered the mining pools, and use that to do what I call a 51% spawn camping attack attacking the chain over and over again until it becomes non-viable? And meanwhile, the prices are low because the things banned and theres a crisis of confidence?

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Especially for Bitcoin, he was concerned about the fact that whether Bitcoin will keep attracting investors interest in the long run.

Buterin added:

Bitcoin doesnt have what I call functionality escape velocity. So basically, sufficient functionality to serve as a trustless base layer for a lot of different applications. As a result of this, theres a possibility that over time people will find Bitcoin less and less interesting and other platforms more interesting.

He further addressed the notions about BTC/USD and ETH/USD becoming the norm and being used as the new form of money. Although Bitcoin and Ethereum have outplayed the bashing community and proved its importance, it depends on ones definition of what makes a currency.

Buterin further added:

The word money does combine a lot of different concepts. For example, people talk about the unit of account, a medium of exchange, store of value. For the unit of account, ETH is not that and BTC is not that either. For the medium of exchange, Bitcoin is used like that, and ETH is used as that sometimes ETH has a store of value. That is something that people use ETH for.

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Vitalik Buterin highlights major threats to Bitcoin BTC and Ethereum ETH - Digital Market News

George Bernard Shaw, who once quipped that youth is wasted on the young, couldnt be more wrong when it comes to climate activism. The world young people build today is the world they will inherit tomorrow.

In this episode we talk about climate and sustainability education for young activists and educators. Cassie Xu, the director of the office of education and outreach at the Earth Institute, speaks with high school students Lily Liu from Brooklyn, New York (15:34) and Sophia Kianni from McLean, Virgina (28:00). They talk about their passion for climate change activism in their communities and their hopes for the future.

We also hear from Cassie about the K-12 education program and the upcoming pre-college programs that might interest high school students about how to bring more climate change activism efforts into their schools and communities. In fall 2020, one of the pre-college offerings is Let the Youth Lead, which is an experiential workshop that will invite current and future youth leaders to enhance their existing practices, enthusiasm, motivation, and knowledge to support and further their roles as change agents in local and global community efforts. Jon Lopez, the lead instructor for this workshop and a researcher at AC4 joined us in the podcast to talk about the workshop and his own experiences working with youth leaders all over the world (2:30). The one common thread, he says? Young people are not too happy with the older folks.

You can find Pod of the Planet wherever you listen to podcasts, onApple iTunes,Spotify,Soundcloud, andStitcher.

Please send feedback or questions to podoftheplanet@gmail.com.

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Pod of the Planet Ep. 9: Not Everyone is Greta, and That's OK - Pod of the Planet - State of the Planet

Armed with an arsenal of big words and quotable quotes, I started carpet-bombing. Nobody was plain hungry in my essays, they were always ravenously hungry. George Bernard Shaw and Albert Einstein appeared regularly. And it worked. Teachers loved the writing, my grades improved and I scored the highest marks in English in the Mumbai Board. Buoyed by this validation, I told my parents I wanted to be a writer. In response, they invoked images of Khadi-clad, jhola-swinging people to scare my 16-year-old self. So we settled for commerce and then I opted to become a chartered accountant. I learnt a lot about numerical creativity but literary creativity, if any, was relegated to Notes to Accounts.

Once I took up investing as a profession, I was resigned to the fact that my writing dreams were buried, till I discovered some excellent investment writing by the likes of Warren Buffett and Howard Marks. My colleague Amay Hattangadi and I started writing an investor newsletter called Connecting The Dots and the then managing editor of Mint, Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, was kind enough to grant us op-ed space. But that wasnt writing" either. A typical column would have a hypothesis followed by arguments for and against it, weighing their relative merits and a conclusion. One could insert a couple of charts which spoke for themselves and they anchored your piece. It was left-brained and clinical but it wasnt writing".

When I green-lit creative writing as one of the activities to pursue during my year-long sabbatical, I thought it would be a breeze. A mutual friend introduced me to the US-based author Manjula Padmanabhan as a potential writing guru and although I have never met her in person, our wavelengths matched.

Just as hibernating sportspeople go through a training camp before tournaments, we decided to do three weeks of warm-ups and stretches before I plunged into short-story writing. Padmanabhan sent writing assignments that seemed cute but took half a day to complete. Imagine a conversation between two shadows that meet on a wall (500 words)" was one such.

As the camp progressed, I practised writing contemporary Indian adaptations of classic short stories. We started with O. Henrys The Gift Of The Magi and graduated to Somerset Maughams Rain. I started my version of Gift of Magi with Dilshad looked pensively out of the little window". Padmanabhan was brutal with it. When does a character not look pensively out of a window?" she asked. Lose the adverb and the adjective."

It was the time of the year when shop-owners appropriated the footpaths outside their shops for displaying their wares and irate pedestrians and honking cars jostled with each other on the narrow street," my story continued. Why the suspense?" asked Padmanabhan Just say what time of the year it was and let the reader imagine...and shorter sentences please."

Adapting Rain proved harder. Getting the five central characters right and transporting them to contemporary India was difficult for me. I faced two challenges: not to reduce the characters to a caricature and not let my bias as a writer creep in. Even after three days and 2,000 words, I couldnt finish my version of Rain.

Since boyhood, Ruskin Bond has been my favourite writer and thanks to him, I had this romantic notion that creativity abounds in the hills. I headed to the beautiful Taj hotel in Rishikesh for a month of writing, confident that plots and words would flow as freely as the Ganga. I can read 30 pages of fiction in an hour with a variability of 10%. I used a similar input-output approach to conclude that I could write 15,000 words in a month. I estimated that I could also continue my yoga practice and finish reading Ray Dalios Principles. Eventually, I eked out less than 8,000 words, managed to do a few sun salutations and didnt read a single page of Principles.

I realized that no matter how picturesque the setting, creativity cannot be summoned. I stared at the blinking cursor for hours before giving up and scrolling down the rabbit hole of Instagram. There were days when I could not manage even a tweets worth of writing. I had assumed that if you sit for 5 hours in front of a screen, you will produce 2,000 words like clockwork. It doesnt work like that. At least for me it didnt. When it comes to writing or any other creative pursuit, showing up is a necessary but not sufficient condition for output. I struggled to accept that for a while but eventually made peace with it.

The idea for the story which eventually became Khushroos Canteen did come to me in a bathtub. I let my imagination run wild and egged on by fragrant bathing salts, I had a six-part series ready in my head. I wrote a short sketch and shot a breathless mail to Padmanabhan, hoping for her to say that this was going to be better than Sacred Games. On the phone that evening, she said: Theres a lot of masala there but no meat. Where is the story?" I felt deflated and angry but took her advice. I reworked the story, including the point of view from which it was being narrated. If I may say so myself, it made the story smoother. Khushroos Canteen will probably be published as a multi-part series soon.

Writers are frequently told to Kill your darlings". You fall in love with a character, a sentence or just a phrase and force-fit it into the storyline. It does nothing to take the story forward. Most times it actually detracts. In the short story Nostalgia, I had one such darling. Food and sexWhat else does a man live for! And if there is a severe shortage in one department, the other has to compensate." It was a loose end but I had fallen in love with it and persisted till the fourth draft. I could see that it was unnecessary but didnt have the heart to chop it. Thats where an experienced mentor helps. Padmanabhan recognized it was a darling but never said it in as many words. She just kept asking, How are you going to close the loop on that one?" With a heavy heart, I edited it out. I had to eat two dollops of ice cream that night (you can read Nostalgia here).

In one of our sessions, Padmanabhan asked me whether I wanted to be writer. It sounded like a loaded question and I asked her what she meant. Being a writer," she said, is a life-long occupation. You observe all your experiences. Consciously." I wasnt sure I understood. But once I started writing, I realized that I was actually tapping into a reservoir of experiences I didnt even know I had recorded. They came back as I wrote about characters, places and situations. I dont know if it will become instinctive but I look forward to experiences now, knowing that even the bad ones could have an upshot; the germ of a story. Nobody had told me that is the first step to becoming a good writer. I wouldnt have wasted my afternoons underlining editorials.

Swanand Kelkar works in the asset management industry and is currently on a one-year sabbatical.

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Opinion | Why writing is harder than you think - Livemint

Open source makes it possible for the Stellar ecosystem and community to collaborate and build a truly decentralized network, thus innovating diverse solutions, which one will not be able to discover alone.

To fulfill the vision of greater financial inclusion for everyone, SDF understands that monetary support is crucial. Lumens are distributed by grants and funds to teams and projects independently to support developers in their projects.

They have completed five funding rounds and they have worked well and with each time, they are helping tweak and adjust the funding. The New and improved Stellar Community Fund 2.0.

Stellar tweeted: A while back, we launched the Stellar Community Fund so our community could help fund their favorite projects. Today, SCF will re-launch as Stellar Community Fund 2.0, designed to be better and fairer for our community and participants.

Sydney Ifergan, the crypto expert tweeted: Bernard Shaw said those who cannot change their mind cannot change anything. Stellar Development Foundation Knew Change is necessary and so, SCF 2.0.

SCF is undergoing a structural change, because they have learnt that the fund has not been fully optimized to fully benefit the community. They were also able to see that the voting process was straining the community and that there was susceptibility to bad actors. Therefore, several deserving projects were getting pushed out of the final rounds.

The current change is necessary to refine the already existing voting system. Two separate voting rounds caused voter fatigue and irregular participation from voters.

The awards had to be balanced between two developing categories in projects. This is to avoid overpaying one project and underpaying another project. It was necessary to be business ready and to develop smaller and experimental projects.

The new changes are bringing in a nomination panel and quadratic voting. Thus, the burden of participation in voting is reduced. They have built a test voting interface to demonstrate the concept. However, they have given an equation Cost to voter = (number of votes) as to be best demonstrating the concept. The more someone cares about the project, the more willingly they have to invest in voting for it.

SCF 2.0 now has funds to provide for different projects. In the past the participants generally fell in two buckets. One were those who were ready to build their business and those who were experimenting within the ecosystem. To better cater to those audiences, SCF will be split into two funds: a Seed Fund and a Lab Fund.

Good the SCF acknowledges the importance of the Lab Fund, which is that which leads to the process where someone gets ready to build their business.

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Stellar Lumens (XLM) Community Fund 2.0 to be a New and Improved Version - The Cryptocurrency Analytics

The usual suspects ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, and NBC were all ripe and ready to show the Republican National Convention.

Failing them, YouTube was in reserve.

Meandering between them for the Democrats pageant the week before and found too much interruption, too much commentary that was either biased or unnecessary given that I just heard the speaker and, pardon the heresy, could make up my own mind about what they said.

I was reinforced when I heard the pull quotes Lester Holt, Norah ODonnell, or, heaven forbid, George Stephanopoulos, chose. They were often the most bland and vapid.

If I had to give a prize, Id send it CBSs way. ODonnell is the most businesslike and fairest of the bunch, with Holt second, and the cable stations and ABC lagging behind.

To get the purity I wanted, I made the executive decision to skip the cable and network folks and watch RNCs show on C-SPAN.

That decision was a blessing. All I saw were the speakers and the set packages producers put together. Nothing was happening in the background, I didnt have to hope a station would finally focus on a speaker, I didnt have to endure people I disdain more than respect spoonfeeding me what I could glean without them, and had the chance to see and judge what the GOP put together as if I was in the room with the speakers.

Both parties did a good job with their conventions. Each set forth a tone and mood that put its campaign in perspective. Each used television judiciously, if differently, to create the image and message it wanted to convey.

The viewing public seemed more interesting in what the Democrats had to say. Once the tallies of people watching each station were made, the Dems drew about two million people more per night that the Republicans did. Interestingly, the great equalizer for the GOP was not President Trump, who spoke for more than an hour, but the First Lady, Melania Trump, who garnered an audience as big as the Democrats received.

As in the Emmys, and in peoples esteem these days, the cable news teams attracted more audience than the traditional networks did. Unsurprisingly, MSNBC topped the polls during the Democrats affair while Fox News Channel had the most viewers for the GOP fete.

I prefer to ponder the differences between the two parties approaches and what happened on camera as the conventions unfolded.

The most striking difference to me was how much the Democrats seemed like a political party while the Republicans concentrated on one person, Donald Trump, and his administration.

Something I mentioned last week was quite apparent as speakers headed towards microphones at Washingtons Constitution Hall, Fort McHenry, or the White House. The Democrats had their top guns of the last 30, or more, years on site while the Republicans stayed in present tense and had few, if any, of the leading lights one associates with that party.

Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama, John Kerry, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, Andrew Yang, Elizabeth Warren, and even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez all spoke the Democrats audience, not to mention the nominees, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and Jill Biden. They spoke passionately and stressed a return to normality and stewardship while hinting at big policies to come, policies its interesting to note Joe Biden has not completely endorsed or signed off on.

George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Jon Huntsman, and others who could be regarded as the GOP celebrities were conspicuously absent from the convention broadcasts. Some were not invited. Some chose not to come.

The question is whether they were missed.

Id say no. The Democrats gained firepower from the performances of the Obamas, Mrs. Clinton, and Mrs. Biden, but not having their cognates, except for Melania Trump, didnt seem odd or negative. The GOP stars were unneeded.

Some who filled in, such as the Trump children, their spouses, and partners, did not provide much. Except they all exuded a love for their father and an endorsement for the work he was doing.

Sure. What else would they say?

Then, again, sincerity lets say genuine sincerity - is not the hallmark of your average politician. All of them play an angle, even when they do it as elegantly as Michelle Obama and as eloquently as Barack Obama.

Yet while, the Democrats cast came out as passionate, committed, and on a mission to restore dignity and probity to the Oval Office, it was, ironically, the GOP speakers who exuded warmth and conveyed sincerity.

Forget the Trump children. They spoke well and had gorgeous clothes, but their touting their Dad was as consequential and unsurprising as it is when Nancy Pelosi criticizes him.

Thats when you see politics on naked display.

The part the GOP got right and did better than the Democrats was the testimonials and endorsements of the rank and file, the people who came before the camera and spoke about how the Trump Administration saved their job, realized the unfairness of a long prison sentence, cut red tape, and took action to handle matters and solve problems the speakers say others had neglected or put aide after lip service.

The impression was that the President and his team was strong in constituent services, that people who were disappointed by other, more traditional politicians, were heard and responded to by Donald Trump.

The message was amazing positive, and I wonder if it would have been as clear and noticeable if I had been watching a news network rather than C-SPAN.

Unadorned by commentary, and able to be viewed at all considering even Fox would not give air time to all the factory workers, mourning parents, ex-convicts, and people restored to jobs who came to speak on behalf of Mr. Trump.

Nothing offspring, bound to loyalty and praise by virtue of their relationship and the benefits they derive from it, could compare with the legions of folks, of all kinds and creeds, who came to tell how Donald Trump did for them what no one else seemed able to do.

An administration that is usually ridiculed and derided for being all fanfare, smoke, and mirrors, suddenly had substance. Concrete, admirable substance.

The GOP did a fine job in expression it was doing a job. Who cares if its recognized by mainstream media, people who regard the President as a punch line? These speakers had something new and unexpected to say and they provided sincerity and good fellow feeling beyond the hoopla and braggadocio that is part and parcel of any political event, in particular a convention.

If not for C-SPAN, I might have missed the human core of the GOPs convention message, one that made it seem effective, down-to-earth, and geared on work on behalf of the common man.

Im talking about an image, not historic or factual accuracy. At both conventions, at any political gathering, its best to take your feet off the floor lest your shoes get fouled with the crap being unloaded. I laughed when I heard GOP speakers talk about harnessing the coronavirus. I could spot a lie or two.

Yet I was grateful to hear speakers excoriate the violence in American streets that are too often accepted under the rosier name of protest. Both parties were going for the support of the people. The Democrats reached for the soul. The Republicans, including a rambling President Trump, touched the heart. How? I dont know. But he did it.

Also, while the GOP lacked its stars of pre-Trump years, it displayed a few new stars, the most impressive being Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who matched any Democrat in eloquence and substance. Former Ambassador to the United Nations and one-time governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, also made an impression, even when she declared America is not racist.

Another who scored big was Kentuckys Attorney General, David Cameron, who made a cogent case for the diversity within the Black population and why no vote of any group should be taken for granted.

As I said, both sides did well, but the Republicans had the advantage Shakespeare gave Marc Antony in Julius Caesar, the advantage of being the last to speak. Brutus has the crowd on his side, but all changes when Antony talks to them. Joe Biden, and the Democrats, had right to expect momentum from their convention. Yet, in the last week, with President Trump getting the last word, betting odds that were double digits apart now favor Mr. Biden by five points and are trending in Mr. Trumps favor. The gap between those predicted to vote for Mr. Biden and those for Mr. Trump has also narrowed considerably.

Conventions are done. The campaign is here. It will be interesting to see those polls veer one way or the other. Election Day is November 3. I predict the next two months will be fascinating.

Brian Cox has been in the news a lot lately.

Last years Emmy winner as Best Actor in a Drama for Succession is up for the same award this year, and could easily score a second consecutive win (as much as I would like to see the prize go to Jason Bateman for Ozark.

Cox also spoke recently about his bout with COVID-19.

Now the actor is joining with another major star, Marsha Mason, to help New Hopes Bucks County Playhouse and bring a delightful theater piece, Dear Liar, to TV audiences via streaming.

Dear Liar is a play by Jerome Kilty that uses the 40-year correspondence between the great mind of his age, George Bernard Shaw, and the lauded actress, Mrs. Patrick Campbell.

It streams tomorrow at 7 p.m. and can be accessed via http://www.bcptheater.org. Tickets are $35, which goes to the Playhouse, another of the arts venues getting creative to keep alive in this era when its doors are ordered to be shut.

Having Brian Cox and Marsha Mason anywhere is a pleasure beyond description. To have them in your living room, or on your wrist, is perfect.

Neal Zoren's television column appears every Monday.

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Television: C-SPAN offered some of the best convention coverage - The Delaware County Daily Times

August 31 is the birthday ofgreat American Armenian writer William Saroyan.

William Saroyan was born on August 31, 1908 inFresno, Californiato Armenak and Takoohi Saroyan,Armenianimmigrants from Bitlis,Ottoman Empire. His father came to New York in 1905 and started preaching in Armenian Apostolic Churches.

At the age of three, after his fathers death, Saroyan, along with his brother and sister, was placed in an orphanage inOakland, California. Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno.

Saroyan decided to become a writer after his mother showed him some of his fathers writings. A few of his early short articles were published inOverland Monthly. His first stories appeared in the 1930s.

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness. William Saroyan,My Hearts in the Highlands

Among these was The Broken Wheel, written under the name Sirak Goryan and published in the Armenian journalHairenikin 1933. Many of Saroyans stories were based on his childhood experiences among the Armenian-American fruit growers of theSan Joaquin Valleyor dealt with the rootlessness of the immigrant. The short story collectionMy Name is Aram(1940), an international bestseller, was about a young boy and the colorful characters of his immigrant family. It has been translated into many languages.

As a writer, Saroyan made his breakthrough inStorymagazine withThe Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze(1934), the title taken from the nineteenth centurysong of the same title. The protagonist is a young, starving writer who tries to survive in a Depression-ridden society.

It is simply in the nature of Armenian to study, to learn, to question, to speculate, to discover, to invent, to revise, to restore, to preserve, to make, and to give. William Saroyan

Saroyan published essays and memoirs, in which he depicted the people he had met on travels in the Soviet Union and Europe, such as the playwrightGeorge Bernard Shaw, the Finnish composerJean Sibelius, andCharlie Chaplin. In 1952, Saroyan publishedThe Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills, the first of several volumes ofmemoirs.

Saroyan died in Fresno, ofcancerat age 71. Half of his ashes were buried in California and the remainder in Armenia atKomitas Pantheonnear film directorSergei Parajanov.

The Fresno home where the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright lived out his final years opened to the public as an interactive museum in 2018.

On that occasion the Fresno City Council issued a proclamation declaring Friday August 31st, 2018 as William Saroyan Day in the City of Fresno.

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My Heart's in the Highlands: Today is William Saroyan's 112th birth anniversary - Public Radio of Armenia

William G. Bill McMinn, an architect and educator who served as dean of three architecture schools, died August 21 in Asheville, North Carolina, of complications from a stroke. He was 89.

In 1974, McMinn was named the founding dean of the School of Architecture at Mississippi State University (MSU), part of the College of Architecture, Art and Design, and stayed there until 1984. In 1997, he was named founding dean of the School of Architecture at Florida International University (FIU) now part of its College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts.

In between, from 1984 to 1996, he served as dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP) at Cornell University. While at Cornell, he founded the Cornell in Rome Program for students, taking advantage of the expertise of Professor Colin Rowe and others, and was instrumental in establishing an undergraduate program in the colleges Department of City and Regional Planning. He also helped raise funds to improve the colleges facilities and served on the board of the I. M. Pei-designed Herbert F. Johnson Museum on campus.

Bill McMinns contributions to the stature of the college cannot be overstated, write Meejin Yoon, Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of AAP, in an article posted on the schools website.

As a founder of the Cornell in Rome program, he enriched the lives of so many as the program has grown into a vital component of many architecture, art, and planning students education. He was a practitioner as well as an educator, and his influence will continue to be felt beyond scholarship to the underpinnings of the culture at AAP and well beyond.

According to the Cornell article by Patti Witten, McMinn was modest about his accomplishments as an educator, insisting that colleges cant really teach architecture. At best, he would say, we provide a place for students to discover it, Witten wrote.

Bill was the right person to start a program in Mississippi, said Robert V. M. Harrison, an early faculty member and founder of the schools advisory board, in an article on the MSU website.

He was a people person and brought in the right people. He had the knack to communicate with everyone. Architects,accreditation teams and legislators respected him. He got a full accreditation for the school at the earliest possible date, which is miraculous. A miracle worker.

As part of his effort to give the new Mississippi school a national presence and broaden the students perspective, former students and faculty members say that McMinn established a lecture series that brought big-name architects and critics to campus in the 1970s and 1980s, including Stanley Tigerman, Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, Rem Koolhaas, Charles Moore, and writers Ada Louise Huxtable and Paul Goldberger.

One story that has made the rounds for years is that McMinn was so eager to bring luminaries to campus that he would play one architect off the other, calling Michael Graves and telling him that Peter Eisenman was coming to campus and then calling Eisenman and telling him that Graves was coming.

McMinn was a strong supporter of architects who wanted to use their education to influence other fields, said alumnus Janet Marie Smith. She used her MSU degree to carve out an unconventional career in sports architecture, building or renovating stadiums including Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, Fenway Park in Boston, and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.

After 12 winters in upstate New York, McMinn moved to Florida in 1996 to become director of FIUs program in architecture, then part of its School of Design.

A year later he was named founding dean of the FIU School of Architecture. Under his leadership, the school earned full accreditation from the National Architectural Accrediting Board, changing its status from a department to a school. McMinn initiated a competition that led to the construction of the Bernard Tschumi-designed Paul L. Cejas School of Architecture Building on the FIU Modesto Maidique campus.

According to FIU, the curriculum under McMinn incorporated pre-professional undergraduate programs in architecture and interior design, graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture and environment and urban systems, and study-abroad programs. McMinn stepped down as dean in 2000 to return to teaching. He retired in 2004 and moved to North Carolina.

Born in Abilene, Texas, McMinn earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1953 from Rice University and a Master of Architecture degree in 1954 from the University of TexasAustin. He began teaching in 1956 at Texas Tech University and then held teaching or department leadership positions at Clemson University, Auburn University, and Louisiana State University.

In 2006, he received the Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), the highest award for outstanding contribution to architectural education in the U.S.

A Fellow of the AIA and the American Academy in Rome, McMinn received the ACSAs Distinguished Professor Award in 1991 and the Educational Leadership Award in Architecture from the AIA Miami chapter.

According to the AIA, he helped establish a School of Design at King Fahd University in Saudi Arabia, was a U.S.-appointed consultant to the School of Architecture at the University of Jordan, and helped improve the curriculum at Mimar Sinan University in Istanbul.

Bill McMinn has, throughout his career, served as a strong bridge between practice and education. His vision has always been to provide a seamless transition between the two realms, said John McRae, then-dean of the University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design, in nominating McMinn for the Topaz Medallion.

I have known dozens of deans, said FIU president Modesto Maidique in his nomination letter. Seldom have I found one with the passion, dedication and sophistication that Bill exhibited during his tenure.

In addition to his teaching career, McMinn practiced architecture professionally from 1968 to 1971 as director of design at Six Associates in Asheville, North Carolina. In 1980, he was appointed to the National Architectural Accreditation Board and was elected NAAB President in 1983. He chaired NAAB reviews of 24 architecture programs, including those at Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Following his retirement to North Carolina in 2004, McMinn continued to advise on architectural design competitions and projects. He served as the professional advisor for a national competition to design a Performing and Visual Arts Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina, a contest that drew 58 entries. In 2004, he helped select the dean of the architectural school at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Of all his achievements, one that made him especially proud was the Cornell in Rome program and the creation of the Cornell Center in Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, dedicated in 1997. In addition to Colin Rowe, early faculty members included architecture professor John Shaw and sculptor and fine arts professor Jack Squier. Roberto Einaudi was Cornell in Romes first director.

Bill was firmly convinced that Rome, this most ancient and complicated of cities, is the ideal laboratory for the disciplines of architecture, art, and planning, said Jeffrey Blanchard, the current academic director for Cornell in Rome, according to the AAP article. While Bills distinguished career as an educator unfolded in a number of institutions and was marked by many achievements and awards. I believe he always considered the creation of Cornells Rome program to be one of his most important and enduring accomplishments.

McMinn is survived by his wife of 64 years, Joan; his son Kevin, and his daughter Tracey.

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Noted educator and architect William Bill McMinn passes away at 89 - The Architect's Newspaper

Peter Scott-Morgan is blessed with a rare abundance of positive mental attitude. Receiving a devastating diagnosis of motor neurone disease in 2017, he decided not to give into fate but to set about subverting it. His plan: to use his background in robotics to become a pioneer, part-human, part-machine.

That none of the necessary technology existed didnt deter him. For two years Peter: The Human Cyborg (Channel 4) followed his quest inspired by everything from Doctor Who to fellow MND sufferer Stephen Hawking to source new technology to replace body parts and bodily functions that the disease would steal from him, gradually locking him intoa body unable to move or even speak.

The ambition was huge: a rigid, self-propelled exoskeleton, new plumbing to cater for nutrition and waste disposal, synthetic speech via a computer hardwired to his brain, a responsive screen avatar to replace immobile facial features. The journey took him, and us, to places where technology really was beginning to look capable of fundamentally changing humanitys relationship with disease and physical frailty. Maybe even mortality, eventually.

But for now, the science stubbornly lagged behind the rapid progress of the disease, unable to do everything Scott-Morgan hoped of it. Even so, what he achieved in two years was phenomenal. By the time we left him, in March this year, the disease had locked him in almost totally. For six months hed been voiceless, breathing through a tube, wholly dependent on his partner of 40 years, Francis. Still, hed just had delivered his cutting edge new wheelchair, complete with built-in life support, a comms computer and on-screen avatar.

It feels like Ive woken up on another planet, Scott-Morgan said. Or rather his new synthetic voice did his first utterance since losing speech to a laryngectomy. Now is not the end of anything, he added. This is where the fun begins.

Disappointingly, though, that was the end of something: the film. And while it closed on this powerful note of uplift and optimism, as a viewer it left us hanging. What happened next? How did he cope during the pandemic? How did he get on with his new kit?

It is a rare compliment these days to complain of a documentary being too brief. But this was an exception.

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Peter: the Human Cyborg, review: the only problem with this inspiring film was that it ended too soon - Telegraph.co.uk

THE record of this newspaper on campaigning for mental health is second to none.

Our Mind The Future campaign pressed for action to help Scotlands young people. And the Scottish Government has undoubtedly sharpened its focus on the issue.

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But the problem hasnt gone away and it extends much more widely than our young people alone, especially in light of the effects of the pandemic on the nations mental health.

Scotland remains addicted to drink, addicted to drugs and, sadly, prone to suicide and self-harm. All of those things are signs and symptoms of a serious mental health crisis.

And though the SNP came to power on a promise of cutting anti-depressant use by 10 per cent, the number of people using drugs to combat their mood has continued to rise.

With thousands of people facing something like imprisonment during lockdown, the mental health crisis has only deepened.

The Scottish Government responded rightly with a dozen emergency mental health assessment centres, nine operating non-stop, in the first month of the pandemic.

But there are fears those services could be withdrawn as life returns to something like normal.

Ministers says they are exploring how best to develop the mental health hubs which sounds encouraging.

But money remains tight, the pandemic has left a huge backlog of postponed and delayed treatments and mental health has always been the ugly sister of the healthcare system.

Once and for all we have to change our attitudes and acknowledge that a broken mind is as serious as a broken limb. It requires treatment with all the urgency of any other wound or illness.

These mental health hubs have been a success. They almost certainly saved lives. We cannot afford to lose them.

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AS part of total Scottish Government spending, 3,000 doesnt even add up to a drop in the bucket.

But thats how much it cost to translate the FACTS campaign on Covid hygiene into three dozen languages.

For a nurse earning 28,000, the bill for translation adds up to six months worth of income tax.

Someone inside the Scottish Government seriously thought it was a good idea to make someone else work for six months in order to translate basic information into languages that virtually no one speaks.

Live Blog

Live Blog

Last week we learned that there is a black hole in Scotlands public finances worth 15billion and thats before we start paying for the pandemic.

These posters explain why.

The posters add up to almost nothing in themselves but they point to an attitude towards public spending which has led us inescapably to this massive national overdraft.

And that attitude needs to change.

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Coronavirus Scotland: Mental health hubs saved lives during lockdown and we cannot afford to lose them - The Scottish Sun

By Leah Asmelash, CNN

(CNN) -- "Afro-Latinx." "Deadname." "Janky." These are just some of the many terms now on Dictionary.com.

The dictionary website announced an update of more than 15,000 entries, refining and adding terms specifically related to race, identity, sexual orientation, and mental health.

"The work of a dictionary is more than just adding new words. It's an ongoing effort to ensure that how we define words reflects changes in languageand life," said John Kelly, a senior editor at Dictionary.com, in a news release.

"Among our many new entries are thousands of deeper, dictionary-wide revisions that touch us on our most personal levels: how we talk about ourselves and our identities, from race to sexual orientation to mental health. Our revisions are putting people, in all their rich humanity, first, and we're extremely proud of that."

The update includes the capitalization of Black, an increasingly popular move by many websites and news organizations as White America begins to reckon with race.

The website called the move "a mark of respect and recognition that's in line with capitalizing other cultures and ethnicities." It also added terms like Afro-Latina, Afro-Latino, Afro-Latinx, brownface, Filipina, Filipinx, Pinay, Pinoy and Pinxy.

In the update, the word "gay" replaced "homosexual," and "gay sexual orientation" replaced "homosexuality." The decision was made to remove "the implication of a medical diagnosis, sickness, or pathology when describing normal human behaviors and ways of being," Dictionary.com said in its release.

The website added other LGBTQ terms as well, including "ace," "asexual," "deadname" and "gender-inclusive."

Dictionary.com also updated its language around suicide -- replacing its previous wording of "commit suicide" with "die by suicide" or "end one's life."

There were some fun additions, too, like the acronym "GOAT," or greatest of all time, and "amirite" (the website used it in a sentence for convenience: "College admissions essays are exercises in creative writing, amirite?!")

Here's a look at more of the added terms:

The-CNN-Wire & 2018 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

Read more from the original source:
Dictionary.com adds Black, as it refers to a person, in massive update around definitions that reflect culture, identity, and race - WDJT