Blog

Reuniting the Masters: European Drawings from West Coast Collections, Bringing Together Works of Art Separated Over Centuries and Continents

Right: François Boucher, Study of a Reclining Nude, 1732-35. Red and white chalk on beige laid paper, The J. Paul Getty Museum

By coincidence or by design, drawings by the same artist, for the same project, and even from the same sketchbook, have made their way separately into galleries and museums on the West Coast. Bringing these long-estranged drawings together again at the Crocker Art Museum illuminates the work and process of specific artists in the rich history of European draftsmanship and brings forward the history of drawings collectors and scholars in the West.

“Through the generosity of our fellow West Coast institutions, we are delighted to unite these drawings, some separated for centuries, in our galleries,” said Crocker Art Museum curator William Breazeale. “They illuminate not only artists’ working process but also a chapter in American patronage and scholarship that should be better known. West Coasters from E.B. Crocker to Vincent Price and Cary Grant have fallen under the spell of master drawings, and distinguished curators here have furthered their study.”

Some works, such as François Boucher’s Study of a Reclining Nude at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and his Birth of Venus at the Crocker Art Museum, relate to the same project, though one made its way to California a century later than the other. Pieter Quast’s A Man in Oriental Dress at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Arts Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University and A Skater at the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts in San Francisco, come from the same sketchbook, where they originally appeared just pages apart. Others, such as Adolph Menzel’s Artist’s Model in Eighteenth-century Costume at the Cantor Center and Study for a Tree at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco illustrate contrasting aspects of the same artist’s work.

Reuniting the Masters is presented in four sections representing the major European schools, showcasing the development of draftsmanship across the continent in a series of comparative pairs. Many of the most appealing artists from the 16th through 19th centuries are highlighted, including Italy’s Fra Bartolommeo and Guercino, the Low Countries’ Adriaen Frans Boudewijns and Anthonie van Waterloo, Germany’s Friedrich Heinrich Füger and Adrian Zingg, and France’s Jean-Baptiste Oudry and Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger. Among the objects are newly acquired and newly attributed drawings, representing the continuing work of patrons and scholars in the West.

Right: Adolph Menzel’s Artist’s Model, Seen in Back View, Putting on an Eighteenth-Century Uniform. Black chalk, heightened with yellow, orange, rose, and white chalk. Iris and B.Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University

Consisting of 52 drawings, Reuniting the Masters will be accompanied by an 150-page, full-color catalogue authored by Breazeale; Cara Denison, curator emerita at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City; and Victoria Sancho Lobis, Prince Trust curator of prints and drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago. Reuniting the Masters: European Drawings from West Coast Collections will be on display at the Crocker until Feb. 5, 2017.

Below: Friedrich Heinrich Fuger, Coriolanus Implored by his Family to Spare Rome, Pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash over black chalk. Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University

January 7, 2017
Yale’s Canine Cognition Center: Dogs Are Smarter Than Humans About Receiving Bad Advice

Dogs are less likely to follow bad advice than children, according to a new study conducted at the Canine Cognition Center at Yale. Yale Prof. Laurie Santos found that, in contrast to children, dogs only copy a human’s actions if they are absolutely necessary for solving the task at hand.

Dogs are less likely to follow bad advice than children, according to a new study conducted at the Canine Cognition Center at Yale. In contrast to children, dogs only copy a human’s actions if they are absolutely necessary for solving the task at hand, according to a recently published study appearing in the journal Developmental Science.

“Humans often fall prey to the bad advice of others” said Laurie Santos, director of the Canine Cognition Center at Yale and senior author on this study. “Children tend to copy all of a teacher’s actions, regardless of whether they are necessary or not.”

For instance, in one study previously conducted at Yale by Dr. Frank Keil and colleagues, children watched a demonstrator solve a puzzle by first moving a lever and then lifting a lid to pull out a prize. Although the lever was completely irrelevant for solving the puzzle, children repeatedly performed both actions, even when they were in a race to solve the puzzle as quickly as possible.

The new study shows that dogs will leave out irrelevant actions when there is a more efficient way to solve a problem, even when a human repeatedly demonstrates these actions.

“Although dogs are highly social animals, they draw the line at copying irrelevant actions,” said Angie Johnston, Yale Ph.D. student and lead author on the study. “Dogs are surprisingly human-like in their ability to learn from social cues, such as pointing, so we were surprised to find that dogs ignored the human demonstrator and learned how to solve the puzzle on their own.”

Together with Yale’s Paul Holden, Johnston and Santos designed a dog-friendly puzzle box in which the only relevant action for getting the treat was lifting a lid on top of the box. However, just as in the previous experiment with children, when researchers showed dogs how to use the box, they first demonstrated a lever on the side of the box before lifting the lid to get the treat. Once dogs learned how to open the box, they stopped using the irrelevant lever. In fact, the researchers found that dogs were just as likely to stop using the lever as undomesticated canines, wild Australian dingoes.

“One reason we’re so excited about these results is that they highlight a unique aspect of human learning,” said Johnston. “Although the tendency to copy irrelevant actions may seem silly at first, it becomes less silly when you consider all the important, but seemingly irrelevant, actions that children are successfully able to learn, such as washing their hands and brushing their teeth.”

This study is the first published paper coming out of Yale’s new Canine Cognition Center, which is still seeking dogs to participate in ongoing research.

Editor’s Note: This is what Yale Announced this past September: We’re excited to announce the first CCC@Yale published paper! YaleNews posted a press release today summarizing our findings. If you’d like to read the paper published in the journal Developmental Science, click the attached pdf below to see a copy. Exploring the evolutionary origins of overimitation: a comparison across domesticated and non-domesticated canids

File:

application/pdf

johnston_holden_santos_2016.pdf

January 7, 2017
From Computers to Leaders: The Story of the Women Portrayed in Hidden Figures, a New Movie

*After growing up with a father who was an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center and a mother who was a professor of English at Hampton University, Margot Lee Shetterly figured there was at least one thing she was pretty much destined to do.

NASA research mathematician Katherine Johnson is photographed at her desk at NASA Langley Research Center with a globe, or “Celestial Training Device.”

“I guess it’s inevitable that I would become somebody who would write about scientists,” she said.

Katherine Johnson came to NASA Langley in 1953 as a human computer. She eventually joined NASA’s Space Task Force and calculated trajectories for the agency’s space missions. Credits: NASA/David C. Bowman

In fact, Hidden Figures, a book Margot Lee Shetterly [has written] about the history of the African-American women who came to work at NASA Langley starting during World War II, [landed] on bookstore shelves in 2016. (Editor’s Note: This talk was given in 2014.)

But on a visit to NASA Langley, Shetterly’s focus wasn’t on her book. She was at the center to give a talk on the female mathematicians — or human computers — who worked behind the scenes at NASA Langley to support the men so often credited with making major advances to America’s aeronautics and space programs.

Much of what Shetterly discovered about the human computers came to light as she was researching her book. She was intrigued enough by her findings to begin working on an entirely new project. Along with Duchess Harris, a professor of American Studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., Shetterly is collecting oral histories, photos, research reports and other artifacts from human computers and compiling them into something called The Human Computer Project.

“Really, the importance of what I’m doing, I think, is to put the stories of these women on the historical record so that we can all celebrate the foundational work that they did,” she said.

January 5, 2017
CFPB Orders TransUnion and Equifax to Pay for Deceiving Consumers in Marketing Credit Scores and Credit Products
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) today took action against Equifax, Inc., TransUnion, and their subsidiaries for deceiving consumers about the usefulness and actual cost of credit scores they sold to consumers. The companies also lured consumers into costly recurring payments for credit-related products with false promises. The CFPB ordered TransUnion and Equifax to truthfully represent the value of the credit scores they provide and the cost of obtaining those credit scores and other services. Between them, TransUnion and Equifax must pay a total of more than $17.6 million in restitution to consumers, and fines totaling $5.5 million to the CFPB.
“TransUnion and Equifax deceived consumers about the usefulness of the credit scores they marketed, and lured consumers into expensive recurring payments with false promises,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Credit scores are central to a consumer’s financial life and people deserve honest and accurate information about them.”

Chicago-based TransUnion and Atlanta-based Equifax are two of the nation’s three largest credit reporting agencies. TransUnion and Equifax collect credit information, including a borrower’s payment history, debt load, maximum credit limits, names and addresses of current creditors, and other elements of their credit relationships. These generate credit reports and scores that are provided to businesses. Through their subsidiaries, TransUnion Interactive and Equifax Consumer Services, the companies also market, sell, or provide credit-related products directly to consumers, such as credit scores, credit reports, and credit monitoring.

Credit scores are numerical summaries designed to predict consumer payment behavior in using credit. Many lenders and other commercial users rely in part on these scores when deciding whether to extend credit. No single credit score or credit score model is used by every lender. Lenders use an array of credit scores, which vary by score provider and scoring model. The scores that TransUnion sells to consumers are based on a model from VantageScore Solutions, LLC. Although TransUnion has marketed VantageScores to lenders and other commercial users, VantageScores are not typically used for credit decisions. Scores Equifax sold to consumers were based on Equifax’s proprietary model, the Equifax Credit Score, which is an “educational” credit score that also is typically not used by lenders to make credit decisions.

TransUnion, since at least July 2011, and Equifax, between July 2011 and March 2014, violated the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Financial Protection Act by:

Deceiving consumers about the value of the credit scores they sold: In their advertising, TransUnion and Equifax falsely represented that the credit scores they marketed and provided to consumers were the same scores lenders typically use to make credit decisions. In fact, the scores sold by TransUnion and Equifax were not typically used by lenders to make those decisions.

Deceiving consumers into enrolling in subscription programs: In their advertising, TransUnion and Equifax falsely claimed that their credit scores and credit-related products were free or, in the case of TransUnion, cost only “$1.” In reality, consumers who signed up received a free trial of seven or 30 days, after which they were automatically enrolled in a subscription program. Unless they cancelled during the trial period, consumers were charged a recurring fee – usually $16 or more per month. This billing structure, known as a “negative option,” was not clearly and conspicuously disclosed to consumers.

Equifax also violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which requires a credit reporting agency to provide a free credit report once every 12 months and to operate a central source – AnnualCreditReport.com – where consumers can get their report. Until January 2014, consumers getting their report through Equifax first had to view Equifax advertisements. This violates the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which prohibits such advertising until after consumers receive their report.

Enforcement Action

Under the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB is authorized to take action against institutions engaged in unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices, or that otherwise violate federal consumer financial laws. Under the consent orders, TransUnion and Equifax must:

Pay more than $17.6 million in total restitution to harmed consumers: TransUnion must provide more than $13.9 million in restitution to affected consumers. Equifax must provide almost $3.8 million in restitution to affected consumers. The companies must send notification letters about the restitution to affected consumers.

Truthfully represent the usefulness of credit scores it sells: TransUnion and Equifax must clearly inform consumers about the nature of the scores they are selling to consumers.

Obtain the express informed consent of consumers: Before enrolling a consumer in any credit-related product with a negative option feature, TransUnion and Equifax must obtain the consumer’s consent.

Provide an easy way to cancel products and services: TransUnion and Equifax must give consumers a simple, easy-to-understand way to cancel the purchase of any credit-related product, and stop billing and collecting payments for any recurring charge when a consumer cancels.

Pay $5.5 million in total penalties: TransUnion must pay $3 million to the Bureau’s civil penalty fund. Equifax must pay $2.5 million to the Bureau’s civil penalty fund.

The full text of the CFPB’s Consent Order against Equifax is here:http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/201701_cfpb_Equifax-consent-order.pdf

The full text of the CFPB’s Consent Order against TransUnion is here:http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/201701_cfpb_Transunion-consent-order.pdf

More information about credit scores can be found here: http://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/what-you-need-know-understanding-why-offers-your-credit-score-are-not-all-same/

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a 21st century agency that helps consumer finance markets work by making rules more effective, by consistently and fairly enforcing those rules, and by empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives. For more information, visit consumerfinance.gov .
January 3, 2017
Why the ‘Skills Gap’ Doesn’t Explain Slow Hiring

By Sophie Quinton

Best of Stateline 2016

Mankato, Minnesota’s historic downtown. Communities across America want to better connect workers looking for jobs and employers looking to hire. © The Pew Charitable Trusts

This is the first part of the Stateline* series Help Wanted: Why Willing Workers Aren’t Filling Open Jobs, which was originally published earlier this year.

Le Sueur, Minn. — Customers can’t get enough of Cambria’s quartz countertops, and the million-square-foot production facility here is racing to keep up. Under bright lights and high ceilings, churning machinery fuses quartz crystals into heavy slabs and polishes them until they shine.

This facility is short 40 production workers. It took months to find all the workers for a new assembly line added earlier this year — even after Cambria boosted entry-level wages from $16.66 to $18 an hour. The labor shortage is costing the company some $3.8 million per month, said Marty Davis, the company’s president and CEO.

Employers across the country, from manufacturers in rural Minnesota to hospitals in New York City, are having trouble filling jobs. It now takes about 28 workdays to fill the average job vacancy, compared to about 24 days, on average, in 2007. The declining unemployment rate has made it more difficult for employers to find workers, but it’s still tougher than it should be given the current jobless rate. Since the recession ended, the number of job openings has increased faster than the number of new hires.

The usual explanation offered by business and education groups is that too few Americans have the right skills for the openings. The way to close this “skills gap,” they say, is to improve job training and more closely align higher education to employment.

But this solution, promoted by politicians as the way to help workers left behind by globalization and automation — both major challenges for the country in the 21st century — is too simplistic.

Throwing more public dollars at education and training won’t be enough to connect willing workers to open jobs. In many places, employers are also setting wages too low, defining qualifications too narrowly, or not recruiting widely enough. Many people who are eager to work can’t because they lack transportation, or don’t have anybody to watch their children during the workday.

Besides, a lot of the open jobs that employers are struggling to fill right now don’t require any education or training beyond high school.

“I think [the] ‘skills gap’ has run its course. It’s overhyped and overrated,” said Janice Urbanik of Partners for a Competitive Workforce, the umbrella organization for workforce efforts in the Cincinnati area. “I don’t think it’s the only factor, and to some extent it’s not even the primary factor.”

President-elect Donald Trump made restoring lost manufacturing jobs a centerpiece of his campaign. He says he will bring back jobs by cutting taxes, rolling back regulations and renegotiating trade deals. His position on education and training for displaced workers is unknown.

‘A Profound Social Challenge’

It’s true that over the past 30 years, education and skill requirements for jobs have been rising, as a Pew Research Center study recently found. (The Pew Charitable Trusts funds both the Pew Research Center and Stateline.) But that long-term shift doesn’t totally explain why jobs have been sitting open since the Great Recession ended. The US hasn’t experienced the massive wage growth you’d expect from a shortage of workers, although wages did start rising last year. Many economists say that if there were a shortage of workers, wages would be going up more.

They say the lack of wage growth proves the US has a demand problem — not enough good jobs — rather than a supply problem — not enough skilled workers. The idea that all we need to do is train workers is “fundamentally an evasion of a profound social challenge,” former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said during a panel discussion hosted by the Brookings Institution last year in Washington, D.C.

“Training is very important and indeed necessary,” Summers told Stateline. “But it is not sufficient to meet either the near-term challenge of assuring demand and preventing recession or the longer-term challenge of the structural loss of jobs for less-skilled workers.”

January 3, 2017
Napkin Rings and Saving Ways: Initials Engraved in Silver, Rings That Were Clearly Ours, Each One Different From Anyone Else’s

Family heirloom silver napkin rings; Wikipedia

by Julia Sneden

A few years ago as I was strolling through the china department of a local department store, I came across a dining table display that set me to giggling. The linens, china, crystal and silver were all quite elegant and carefully coordinated. The flower arrangement was a stunner. What set me off was the sight of twelve perfectly matched napkin rings, each correctly placed on the napkin to the left of the forks.

The fad for matched napkin rings has grown since then, and nowadays even the catalogues feature such sets. Excuse me, but doesn’t anybody in this modern generation realize why we had napkin rings in the old days? They weren’t meant for decor, and they certainly weren’t meant to match. They were simply a means of identification that allowed us to reuse our napkins, usually for a week at a time. In the days before miracle laundry machines, before detergents with or without bleach, (never mind cold-water soaps or power boosters) people didn’t toss napkins into the laundry after every meal.

Anyone who has ever hand-scrubbed a damask napkin across a washboard, rinsed it, set it in the sun to bleach, hung it on the line to dry, dampened it before ironing, and then ironed and folded it and placed it back in the drawer, is not about to take on the task more often than necessary. Unless there had been an utter disaster like a spill of grape juice, or an emergency napkin thrown on spilled gravy to keep it from flowing over the edge of the table, or an uncle who had had a bit too much Scotch and thoughtlessly blew his nose on the best double damask, we refolded our napkins at meal’s end and placed them neatly in napkin rings that were clearly ours, each one different from anyone else’s. If they weren’t of different design, at least they sported one’s initials engraved in the silver. Those who couldn’t afford silver often crocheted the rings in a different color or pattern for each family member, so that from meal to meal you used the same napkin and contended with your own germs only.

The idea of mistakenly using someone else’s napkin would have caused us as much disgust as the younger generations now feel at the idea of actually reusing a napkin for seven days in a row. I can still in my mind’s eye see the napkin rings that belonged to each of the seven members of my family, perhaps because setting the table was my job from the age of about four, as was polishing the silver rings every couple of months.

Daddy had inherited his Grandpa Barnhart’s napkin ring, a very heavy, masculine circle of silver edged with parallel, raised silver bands. Mother’s was a flat clip, silver in a triangular floral design with her name, “Mary,” engraved in the center. My grandmother Kelsey had a wide silver band, chased with pretty curlicues, flowers, and stars, and a raised, fluted edge. Great Aunt Martha’s was a narrow one that had belonged to her mother, with the initials APB (Abigail Pomeroy Burleson) in script on it. Grandmother Brown had one that had a scalloped edge. My brother’s resembled a drum. Mine was an absolutely plain band about an inch and a half wide that my grandmother Kelsey gave me with the promise that she would one day have it engraved with “Whatever your initials will be,” meaning that I was expected to grow up and get married and have a new last name. I never got around to taking her up on that, and after my first marriage went awry, was glad that I hadn’t, or I’d have had to wait for a second husband whose surname began with a “C”! I use that ring to this day. It is still perfectly plain, and it suits me fine.

Library of Congress image: Poster for the Philadelphia Salvage Committee encouraging scrap drives to aid the war effort. Prints and Photographs Division.

January 3, 2017
From the Scotus Blog: Lord and Lady Montague, Lord and Lady Capulet v. Friar Laurence Who Wanted to “Make Verona Great Again”

The line for the Jingle Ball, which took place (December 12, 2016) at the Verizon Center in downtown Washington, stretched down 7th Street and around the corner onto F Street. Groups of huddled teenagers and young couples, arm in arm, waited in the cold for the annual holiday concert, featuring artists who were “established, but not Stevie Nicks established,” according to one (older) line-waiter.

Title page of the first edition of Romeo and Juliet; Wikipedia

A different crowd, dressed more soberly and warmly, was headed to another nearby destination — the Shakespeare Theatre Company — to fulfill their civic duty as jurors at the theatre group’s 25th mock trial. Echoing Romeo and Juliet, ancient grudge had again broken to new mutiny, and a wrongful death suit filed by the Montagues and the Capulets against Friar Laurence found itself before a panel of distinguished judges: Justice Samuel Alito of the US Supreme Court, Judges Thomas Griffith, Brett Kavanaugh and Robert Wilkins of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

In the role of chief justice, Alito seemed quite comfortable with his opening declaration, as if he might enjoy one day being the real one: “We will hear argument in the case of Lord and Lady Montague, Lord and Lady Capulet v. Friar Laurence. Counsel.”

Representing Friar Laurence, Elizabeth Prelogar, an assistant to the solicitor general, began by arguing that her client could not be legally considered a proximate cause in the deaths of the star-cross’d lovers because it was not foreseeable that his plan would fail. Although Friar Laurence’s advice that Juliet fake her death with a sleeping potion seemed questionable, Prelogar insisted, “all the polling uniformly showed the plan would succeed.” Indeed, she maintained, “52% of Verona was still smarting” from the plan’s failure.

Taylor Swift’s song Love Story, Prelogar continued, clearly indicates that the lovers’ parents, especially Juliet’s ‘daddy,’ Lord Capulet, were to blame. Kavanaugh pushed back against this line of reasoning, pointing out that Swift’s song has a happy ending. “We can’t re-write history, we aren’t the 9th Circuit,” he said, taking a jab at the oft-reversed court of appeals; Alito seemed to particularly enjoy this remark.

The judges questioned Friar Laurence’s motives, suggesting that the friar’s primary interest was in glorifying himself, not providing spiritual counsel to the two children. Prelogar presented a much more humble portrait of her client: The friar only wanted to return Verona to a peaceful place in which people didn’t bite their thumbs at one another in the street — to “make Verona great again.”

The judges also wondered whether Friar Laurence had incurred liability through his decision to entrust his message to Friar John to a private email server. Prelogar pithily responded, “he really regrets that choice.” “But when they go low,” she continued, “the friar goes high, as in, really, really high; he’s with Him.”

December 31, 2016
Firearms and Domestic Violence: The Intersections; Identifying and Preventing Gender Bias in Law Enforcement Response to Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence
US Department of Justice

Courtesy of Principal Deputy Director Bea Hanson, Ph.D., of the Office on Violence Against Women

Domestic abusers and firearms are a deadly combination. Research published in the American Journal of Public Health found that the presence of a gun in domestic violence situations significantly increases the risk of homicide, endangering victims, other family members, bystanders and coworkers. Professionals who work in law enforcement and advocacy have found that to reduce domestic violence homicide, the criminal justice system must consistently enforce existing laws and coordinate closely with community organizations.

On October 7, 2016, the Justice Department hosted a panel of experts, including scholars and practitioners, to discuss this potentially deadly intersection. Watch a video of the discussion. Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates opened the discussion — which took place during Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Community Policing Week — by emphasizing the Justice Department’s commitment to building a country where nobody suffers from the horrors of domestic violence. She noted that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) works: in the past 18 years, NICS has enforced the law by preventing thousands of convicted domestic abusers from purchasing a firearm from federally licensed dealers. But, she also noted, NICS is only as good as the data entered into the system, which is why the Attorney General reached out to all US Attorneys to intensify their efforts to submit information to NICS so would-be gun owners cannot purchase a weapon if they fall into a restricted category, such as being under a restraining order or convicted of domestic abuse.

Panelist Jacquelyne Campbell, Ph.D., R.N., from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, noted that in the United States, when women are murdered, 40 to 50 percent are killed by their husband, boyfriend or ex-partner. That’s nine times the rate killed by strangers. In comparison, 5 to 8 percent of men are killed by their partner.

Panelist April Zeoli, Ph.D., Michigan State University, presented data from four longitudinal studies showing that when laws are in place that restrict abusers from purchasing guns, there is an associated decrease in intimate partner murders. Depending on the source of the data (whether the data come from the state or from large cities within the state), the decrease ranges from 7 to 19 percent.

The data refute the hypothesis that abusers who want to kill will simply use another weapon if they don’t have a gun. In fact, guns make it more likely that a death will result.

Other panelists included Ruth Glenn, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence; Dave Keck, Winnebago County Court Commissioner; Elizabeth Avore, Legal Director of Everytown for Gun Safety; David Thomas, Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention Response Office; and Rob Valente, Vice President of Policy of the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

In addition to the panel discussion, Kristine Lizdas, Legal Policy Director at the Battered Women’s Justice Project, presented the new website from the National Domestic Violence and Firearms Resource Center: www.PreventDVGunViolence.org. The site’s mission is to help attorneys, court personnel, law enforcement and communities at large prevent domestic violence homicides through comprehensive implementation and enforcement of domestic violence related firearms prohibitions at all levels of government.
Posted in:
Office on Violence Against Women

Identifying and Preventing Gender Bias in Law Enforcement Response to Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence

RESOURCES

Technical Assistance Resources

Police Executive Research Forum [external link]

Improving the Police Response to Sexual Assault[external link] (2012)

Civil Rights Investigations of Local Police: Lessons Learned[external link] (2013)

December 30, 2016
Department of Homeland Security: Staying Safe Online While On-the-Go this Holiday Season
Public Affairs
Originally posted on The TSA Blog

For most Americans, the holidays are a time for traveling to see friends and family near and far. Whether you are traveling by plane, train, or automobile, chances are you will have at least one connected device in tow. Mobile devices have become an almost essential tool for us all as we travel. We use them to help us navigate a new city, to board a plane with mobile boarding passes, and to share photos of our trip on social media.

Woman with mobile device in hotel lobby, Flickr

However, for as often as Americans rely on their mobile devices, most are not thinking about the risks associated with connected devices nearly enough. This holiday season, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is urging everyone to keep their cybersecurity at the top of their list as they use their phones, tablets, and other connected devices while on the go. Below are simple ways to better protect yourself online and avoid cybercrime while you are traveling.

Avoid free Wi-Fi networks. Though convenient, free Wi-Fi networks – like in some airports, hotels, train stations or cafés – are often used by cybercriminals to access your online accounts and personal information. Before connecting, confirm the name of the network and exact login procedures with appropriate staff to ensure that the network is legitimate. Never conduct sensitive activities, such as online shopping, banking, or sensitive work, using a public wireless network.

Lock down your login. Always opt to enable strong authentication when available, especially for accounts with sensitive information including your email or bank accounts. A strong authentication helps verify a user has authorized access to an online account. For example, it could be a one-time PIN texted to a mobile device, providing an added layer of security beyond the password. The White House recently launched the Lock Down Your Login campaign to encourage all Americans to enable stronger authentication. Visit www.lockdownyourlogin.com for more information.

Guard your mobile device. To prevent theft and unauthorized access or loss of sensitive information, never leave your mobile devices unattended in a public place. Keep your devices secured in taxis, at airports, on airplanes, and in your hotel room.

DHS is committed to helping Americans secure their online lives. Please visit the Stop.Think.Connect. Toolkit for more online safety resources including the Cybersecurity While Traveling Tip Card, Mobile Security Tip Card, and Best Practices for Using Public Wi-F- Tip Card. For more information, please visit the Stop.Think.Connect. webpage.

Executive Order — Taking Additional Steps to Address the National Emergency with Respect to Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities

Annex to Executive Order — Taking Additional Steps to Address the National Emergency with Respect to Significant Malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities

US SLAPS SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA, EXPELS 35 DIPLOMATS

Joint DHS, ODNI, FBI Statement on Russian Malicious Cyber Activity
December 29, 2016
New Year’s Peeve! Forgetting Self-improvement Vows

by Rose Madeline Mula

Am I glad I didn’t live in Babylonia four thousand years ago. There the New Year celebration lasted eleven days. One is bad enough. By the eleventh day, the Babylonians must have had prodigious hangovers. They probably weren’t even fully conscious for the first month of the new year. That’s not for me. It would mean missing all those great post-holiday sales.

When I was young, I hated New Year’s — the whole shebang, beginning with New Year’s Eve. The forced gaiety. The pressure to be happy! It was all so depressing.

The worst part was that if I didn’t have a date for New Year’s Eve, it cast a pall on the next twelve months. One year, to avoid the social ignominy of being dateless on the Big Night, a girl friend and I fled to Manhattan to mingle with the throngs in Times Square so no one could tell that we were unescorted. No one, that is, except a couple of sleazy characters who latched onto us and tried to entice us back to their pad to “start the new year off with a bang.” Did we really look that desperate? When we adamantly refused, a drunk who had been eavesdropping berated us for “spoiling the boys’ New Year.” Give me a break! That was even more disheartening than being home with the old folks watching Guy Lombardo on TV.

Now that I’m an “old folk,” I miss Guy Lombardo; and I don’t hate New Year’s Eve any more because I no longer feel pressured to party. Instead, I can go to bed early and sleep through the countdown. It’s wonderful!

But when I wake up, it’s New Year’s Day, which is not so wonderful, because I feel compelled to make those cursed resolutions that I know are doomed to failure. If I didn’t lose those stubborn ten pounds last year, why will turning a page on the calendar help me shed them this year? (Could you hand me that last brownie, please? And don’t be stingy with the ice cream.)

And why would I think that taking a new pledge to hike three miles a day is going to work when it never did before? It’s too cold to go out and walk anyway. It’s January in New England, for heaven’s sake! I’ll start in April when it warms up a bit. Or maybe not. What would be the point? I would have already blown three months.

Don’t look at me like that. I know I really must cut down on sweets and ramp up my exercise. And I will. But making a resolution on January 1 and then giving up completely the first time I weaken isn’t going to do it. Eating a hunk of cheesecake and foregoing the mall walk on January 2 should not give me an excuse to stuff myself and flop on the couch every day for the rest of the year.

On the bright side, I have stuck to at least one of my last year’s resolutions: I’ve stopped wasting time playing computer Free Cell solitaire. Instead, however, I’m now addicted to Spider solitaire.Whenever I sit down at the computer to work, that insidious game draws me into its web and traps me there for at least an hour. I’d resolve to give it up, but I’m afraid something even more obsessive will replace it.

At least I’m not smoking. But then I never smoked. So I suppose that can’t be counted as a victory.

December 28, 2016