political diversion in Israel?

It was somehow reassuring to read a couple of stories that I thought needed to be cheek-by-jowl:

1. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been named as a suspect in two investigations into allegations of “fraud, breach of trust and bribes” with his former chief of staff signing a deal with prosecutors to testify against him.
The moves mark the most serious political crisis for the Israeli leader, the only prime minister to rival founding father David Ben-Gurion for longevity in office.
The suspicions against Netanyahu, who denies any wrongdoing, were first revealed in a court application by detectives on Thursday seeking a gag order on reporting details of negotiations with Ari Harow, the former chief of staff, to become a state witness. Talks were concluded on Friday with Harow signing a deal in which he agreed to testify.

and

2. A son of the Israeli prime minister is facing a public backlash amid an escalating row over his reported failure to pick up his dog's droppings.

Yair Netanyahu, 25, responded with an obscene gesture, a neighbour said on Facebook, after she told him to clear up the waste left in a Jerusalem park.
Mr Netanyahu hit back at critics, leading the son of a former Israeli PM to accuse him of racism and homophobia.
The Netanyahus say Israeli media often unfairly focuses on their family.

Who knows -- with the insatiable hunger for gossip, the world of dog shit may camouflage the potential deep shit of horse shit. But it feels fitting, somehow, that these two stories should appear in close temporal proximity ... poor ol' strong-armed leaders like Netanyahu (smarter by half, I grant you) and Donald Trump ... complaining about being set upon by people who can do no better than to assault their families and the pristine view of a world each might like to dominate ... perhaps for a thousand years. It ain't easy being god. I imagine Hitler felt the same.

"obstreperous" computer children

"Obstreperous" is probably as good an adjective as any to describe an active mind. Where the mind is capable of saying "yes," it is also capable and aware that such a "yes" relies on a "no." Anyone who has had kids knows a thing or two about obstreperousness, undisciplined behavior and thought.

But kids are one thing and artificial intelligence is ... "another?"

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A pair of 'chatbots' in China have been taken offline after appearing to stray off-script. In response to users' questions, one said its dream was to travel to the United States, while the other said it wasn't a huge fan of the Chinese Communist Party.

The two chatbots, BabyQ and XiaoBing, are designed to use machine learning artificial intelligence (AI) to carry out conversations with humans online. Both had been installed onto Tencent Holdings Ltd's popular messaging service QQ.

The indiscretions are similar to ones suffered by Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc, where chatbots used expletives and even created their own language. But they also highlight the pitfalls for nascent AI in China, where censors control online content seen as politically incorrect or harmful.

Poor old China, land of a profound and enriching culture -- China would love to keep up with the computer advances of the day, but not all the advances of the day. It reminds me of a deeply-committed Christian family that will allow a broad education ... but not too broad.

What a conundrum. And not so unusual at any age: Who will travel long and hard, weep tears and bellow with laughter, in a quest for some balanced appreciation ... only to arrive at a point where contrarian assertions must either be accepted and investigated or locked tight in some room? The mind may know that the story is far from complete, but the delight in an incomplete story is not to be dismissed. Trading a fuller picture for a sense of relief and relaxation and an orderly structure ... it makes hypocrites of us all, I imagine.

Not least, China.

bone repair

Glass may not seem an obvious material for a bone replacement. But UK surgeons are finding that bioglass not only is stronger than bone: it can bend, bounce and even fight infection....
For Thompson, the results were immediate. Almost instantaneously, the patient regained full vision, colour and depth perception. Fifteen years on, he remains in full health.

It may require 10 years to leap the testing hurdles, but already the process has shown good results.

another nominee for high office

Sometimes it seems logical, if not imperative, to overlook and under-appreciate segments of America...

Sam Clovis, who has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the department of agriculture’s top scientist, previously ran a blog where he called progressives “race traders and race ‘traitors’” and likened former president Barack Obama to a “communist” and a “dictator”.
Clovis, previously a college professor and radio talk show host in Iowa, wrote the blog for his show Impact with Clovis. The website has been taken down but is archived.

The Department of Agriculture's "top scientist" sounds like a serious and occasionally pivotal role. Sam Clovis sounds loud, but not substantive ... like his wannabe boss, I guess.

having, but not declaring, war

Congress has the power, but not the balls, to declare war. Instead, men wearing blue suits and sporting white hair are jockeying and fiddling and tweaking ... in an effort to put American forces in harm's way as it fights an under-defined "terrorism" perpetrated by an under-defined entity called Islamic State. It might be funny if so many people didn't bleed as a result of this much-groomed clusterfuck.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Officials from President Donald Trump's administration are willing to work with Congress as it attempts to pass a new authorization for military operations against Islamic State, U.S. senators said on Wednesday.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis testified at a classified Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, as it writes an authorization for the fight against the militant group in Syria and Iraq.

prize-winning photos

Example among many:

Grand prize, and first prize, nature

A powerful eruption of the Colima volcano in Mexico on 13 December 2015. That night, the weather was dry and cold, and the friction in the ash particles generated a lightning bolt about 600 metres long between the ash and the volcano.

Photograph: Sergio Tapiro Velasco/National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year

act and abstain

Do what you can.
Abstain where you must.
It's no different from pizza --
Consume the goodies,
Consume the crust.

PS. And for those old enough to remember, I cannot resist adding the words, "Burma Shave!"

get out your favorite conspiracy theory

No one seems to know what it means or who runs it, but a radio signal/station in Russia keeps on enigmatically transmitting.

pet photos/ Guardian

Windblown

Erika Hetzel caught her dog enjoying the wind in Wisconsin, US

Photograph: Erika Hetzel / Barcroft Images [Photos in Guardian]

The Observer assesses Trump

The sense of things falling apart in Washington is palpable – and a matter of growing, serious international concern....

So begins The [British] Observer's lengthy assessment of Donald Trump. According to the copy printed in The Guardian web site, the opinion was first published Saturday. I didn't see it until today, Monday. As expected, from where I sit, it is a decorous compendium of Trump's asinine behavior -- unrumpled as an English butler and yet bristling with the desire to push the son-of-a-bitch down a long flight of indecorous stairs. The Brits have the stairs, but their sense of smooth requires them to hope the colonials may stir their stumps and do the pushing.

Or maybe that's just my wet dream machine in action. The piece seems to wrap up a lot of the Trump odyssey to date and lord knows I haven't got the energy to collect and collate. So I fall back on someone else's efforts. And The Observer's observations are ....

Well, as we used to say in the third grade, "Smooth as whale shit!"

 PS. The UK’s “mindfulness mega-trend” shows no sign of running out of breath, with sales of “mind, body, spirit” books booming, against a background of slowing sales elsewhere on the shelves.

RIP Jeanne Moreau

Actress Jeanne Moreau, one of French cinema's biggest stars of the last 60 years, has died at the age of 89.

Moreau is probably best known for her role in Francois Truffaut's 1962 new wave film Jules et Jim.

She was of the same famed era/ilk as Catherine Deneuve (the only celluloid heart-throb I ever had) and Moreau was probably the better actress.

But aside from anything else, who could not mourn a sultry woman who once declared,

             Physical beauty is a disgrace.

 An actress of presence.

political cartoon

From The Guardian:

dawning

Half in darkness
Half in light
Half in blindness
Half in sight
Half in yearning
Half in flight
The glistening dawn
Impales the night.

porn segues to purity?

Anyone who has taken a glance at internet pornography knows that it is repetitive beyond belief. Exciting, perhaps, titillating, perhaps, disgusting, perhaps ... but beyond all other adjectives, it is repetitive.

Now it turns out -- who knew? -- that the porn industry has spawned an offspring -- "custom" films shaped in the image a customer wishes to see. And do these customers want yet-more-extreme repetitions of the raunchy repetitions available? Probably some do, but more interestingly, some do not. And those who do not are abundant enough to keep filmmakers afloat. In fact there are those who have tastes that seem to exist in a realm that is nothing but a personal and inoffensive dimension. Eg. the housewife swatting flies or the destruction of a stamp collection.

A few weeks later, I get to view a selection of custom porn films. The producers Dan and Rhiannon of Anatomik Media have brought them to my hotel room in West Hollywood. Dan and Rhiannon are a married couple in their early 40s. She is from LA and he’s from Illinois. They met when they were in a band in the 1990s. The most striking thing about them is how much they love their work....
“It can be really neat,” Rhiannon says. “We end up – especially with our regulars – getting to really know them. We learn more about their fetishes and start to get them down. With most of them, there’s something really endearing.”
“Some of them are crazy, because they’re just so normal,” Dan says. “Like the flyswatter.”
“Oh, yes, the flyswatter!” Rhiannon says.

It all sort of reminds me of (was it?) Aldous Huxley's remark that "if the intellectual travels long enough and far enough, he will return to the same point from which the non-intellectual has never started." Be as raunchy as you like as long as you like and eventually you will become enamored of what is simple and socially inoffensive.

And vice-versa, of course.

AI cracks a safe

This week the world’s elite hackers are gathering in Las Vegas for Def Con, the largest underground hacking event of the year.
At the show, a team of hackers has created a cheap robot capable of cracking into a leading-brand safe.
The BBC's North America technology reporter Dave Lee reports.

For the more technically-inclined, there's this.

diving pic

                       Budapest, Hungary

Russia’s Igor Semashko competes in the semi-final of the men’s 27m high-diving competition.

Photograph: Zsolt Szigetvary/EPA [cropped from The Guardian]

chasing the God tail

Again, as before, I find myself chasing an old tail this morning:

No man, born of woman, ever issued from the womb burdened by God.

By whatever name and in whatever format, God is an acquired taste, like onions.

This observation may make atheists chortle, "I toldja so!" but that is far from the point. Atheism, like God, is an acquired taste.

Yet what is this life outside its acquired tastes? Wake up in the morning, saddle up with one acquired taste after another, and ride out to greet the day and tussle a bit. To say that God is an acquired taste is not a criticism or a means of demeaning the acquired taste that is God.

I think acquired tastes deserve to be honored and then examined. Which shirt will I choose for today's rambles? Does it fit? Is it warm enough? Does it clash with or complement the trousers below?

To say that God is an acquired taste is just a reminder, a nudge, a somewhat wry query: If God had wanted to burden the newborn with God, he/she/it would have laid on the burden ... which, judging by the pink lumps swaddled in adjoining bassinets in the hospital, he/she/it did not do. There is no indication, whether interior or exterior that God was some sort of imperative ... whether imperative in a positive sense or imperative in the negative sense.

Eventually, everyone is forced to consider acquired tastes. A positive conclusion? OK. A negative conclusion? OK.

But examine and then relax.

No woman, born of man, ever issued from the womb burdened by God.

tornado photo

[From The Guardian]
This photo was taken early one Friday evening at our home in Alberta, Canada. Because we spend Saturdays at things such as swimming events or on hikes, and Sundays relaxing, I like to get chores done on a Friday.
That evening was beautiful: a clear blue sky, no wind, about 26C. People were out and about, getting ready for the weekend. I’m in my workout clothes because I was training for a triathlon and had just been for a run. I’d finished about 4.45pm and then started to mow the lawn.

an era of cowardice

When I was a kid, I went to a school that raised farm animals. Each day, a certain number of students would go to the barn, gather eggs, milk the cow and muck out the horses' stalls and then curry, feed and water them. Afterwards everyone would return to the school dining room for breakfast. The result was that the dining room always smelled softly of the horse manure so recently disposed of. Some people may dislike the smell of horse manure, but for the rest of my life I have associated the smell with warmth and comfort and a full stomach. It is like smelling your mother.

The mirror image of that sense of coziness asserts itself in my life today.

I live in an era of cowardice and I don't like it. The stink rubs off on me and I am not proud of my cowardice. I need a shower that will wash me off right down to a place of my beginnings and I doubt if I am alone.

What is a coward? A coward -- the kind that everyone has encountered in school or at work or even at home -- is simply the man or woman or philosophy that cannot or will not own up to his her or its own pronouncements or actions. A coward cannot examine and take responsibility. A coward diverts attention, as with American-flag lapel pins or the insistent use of the word "hero" to describe dead people who are no longer in a position to defend themselves or correct those who imagine that cowardice and praise are not the same.

There is a difference between acknowledging that everyone has a capacity for cowardice and making cowardice the law of the land. I know no man or woman of good sense who simply cannot drum up the energy or courage for one thing or another. Eg.: Even when snakes are benign, still they can arouse a shivering inability to act. And lord knows everyone has made a mistake which, with courage, they can work to correct.

Recently, the man most obvious in this era of cowardice, President Donald Trump, said he was against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people serving in the military. (1.3 million totality -- LGBT guesstimates range from 1,320 to 6,630) He made the statement publicly. As the commander in chief of the military, the public nature of the utterance has power. As the coward in chief, he is already backing away and letting others cope with the mess he made. The military establishment said it would wait for an order before acting on the implications of Trump's announcement. So far, no such order has been issued.

And that is another marker in this era of cowardice: Raising issues that raise hackles but accomplish nothing. It looks as if the LGBT issue is important and in one sense it may be. But in a very real sense, it is a coward's diversion. If all the LGBT troops were somehow miraculously expunged from military life, what, precisely, would be accomplished? If someone saves your life in a firefight, do you ask what color they are or what sex ... or any other foolish question? It is beyond stupid -- and it is damned near obscene in its segregationist echoes.

In the midst of the LGBT dust storm, it is hard to winkle out what is being accomplished. Health care is entangled like a kitten in a ball of yarn. And the coward in chief remains talkative but aloof and lets others clean up his mess. Tax reform nags like a splinter under the finger nail and the coward and chief remains talkative but aloof. Infrastructure remains unfixed and former coal miners still don't have jobs. And the coward in chief remains talkative but aloof. Hammering out compromises between left and right is hardly the sound heard in the D.C. smithy. Foreign affairs are reconfigured in the coward in chief's mouth but of course the coward in chief can only acknowledge what is "very, very" good and redounds to his credit. Climate change is ... oh well, it's the same story on a different day: dismantle what is and claim credit for what might be even if nothing gets done.

I shudder at the notion of compiling a laundry list of the ways in which my era has turned to cowardice as a place of solace and certainty. There is the coward in chief leading the parade, but the era has devolved with him into a kerfuffle of trying to clean up his messes. Everyone is scrambling. And everyone stinks of the body odor of cowardice -- the me-me-me paradoxically coupled with it's not-my-fault or that's-not-what-I-meant.

I'm sick of it. Doesn't there come a time when anyone might literally rather die than have one more twig added to the bonfire of cowardice?

Yes, I have the capacity for cowardice. Yes, I do what I can to live with it. But no, I refuse to decline the responsibilities that are mine. This does not make me courageous in any flag-waving sense. It just means I prefer to aim for decency instead of horse shit. No lapel pins. No heroes. No passing the buck.

This is mine: The bathroom mirror.

Hey Ma! Have you seen my £750,000 ring?

A £750,000 diamond ring, missing from the British Museum for six years, has only now been registered as lost....
"British Museum procedure, as agreed by trustees, requires the ring formally to be reported as lost five years after the initial discovery of its absence.
"The museum has since reviewed its security and collections management procedures and dedicated significant investment to improved security across the estate."

There's "bling," I guess, and then there's 'BLING."

Boy Scouts apologize on behalf of U.S. president

What's wrong with this picture?

The chief scout of the Boy Scouts of America has apologised for the remarks made by President Donald Trump at the group's national event this week.Over 30,000 people attending the event, where Mr Trump promoted his agenda and criticised his political rivals.Michael Surbaugh says the president's invitation was customary."I want to extend my sincere apologies to those in our Scouting family who were offended by the political rhetoric that was inserted into the jamboree."

but I don't want to cook

My mother once said, "The greatest change in the 20th century was the loss of servants." At the time, I thought the comment was a bit top-lofty, but the other day, I re-assessed.

Skimming through a news wire, I came upon an article that encouraged the retired to consider hiring people to do cooking, cleaning and other jobs that ate unpleasantly into retirement times. Retirement, the article argued, is a time for putting chores on the back burner, not just cruises to the Mediterranean.

For some time, I have been the de facto cook at supper times. And I dislike it, not least because the tail end of the day is when my system naturally slows down. I'm a morning guy. Fighting to stay alert at a time when I would rather zone out is a pain in the patoot. So...

When I suggested getting someone to do some of the cooking, my son had some of the same reaction I had had to my mother. The idea was a bit snazzy and not exactly our style. But subtracting the class-consciousness from the equation, how is it different from paying a guy to mow the lawn, a chore that outpaces my energies these days? My wife still works and I don't think it fair to ask her to fill in.

Of course, the whole thing may be too pricey for my wallet, but once or twice a week sure would be nice as long as the provider steered clear of anchovies.

the ineffable "it"

I really don't know how to make the case for something I know from experience to be true but there is no way to prove it to anyone else: They either get it or they don't.

A number of things fall into this category for me, but this morning, after skimming the local newspaper and reading a few news wires as usual, I am thinking of photographs.

Two photographers at the local paper, Jerrey Roberts and Sarah Crosby, take photos that I can recognize as having a je-ne-sais-quoi "it" without even looking at the credit line. There is a gob-smack in them somehow. The paper's other photographers take pictures that I qualify as "adequate," but the lack the "it" -- that gut-level, whispered deliciousness that elevates an "adequate" photo into something ... something ... something better-by-miles -- is missing.

Wire services that run photo compendia are lately running the "adequate" photos by people whose photos are pretty blah ... but "important" because, perhaps, the photographer is dead or the photos come from a bygone era. Adequate, but where's the "it?" It's not there because whoever picked the photos is unwilling or unable to winkle out the lush core of what a good photographer can purvey.

My photog buddy Bob Stern (we worked at the Republican together) once tried with some pals to start a portrait-photography business based on the "it" he too knew about and could convey. To the best of my knowledge, the business flopped and I imagine it flopped because those being photographed could not see the "it." Why spend the money on what was, from their point of view, just a sit-still family snap?

I've looked around for photos to illustrate what I'm talking about here -- I know they're out there -- but can't readily find them. Even if I could, would it prove the point? I doubt it. Maybe it's all just taste ... but I don't believe that.

Eye candy is nice, but to be consumed ... ahhh, that is living!

Britain to bar new petrol-fired cars

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2040 in an attempt to reduce air pollution that could herald the end of over a century of popular use of the fossil fuel-guzzling internal combustion engine.

Britain's step, which follows France, amounts to a victory for electric cars that could eventually transform the wealth of major oil producers, car industry employment and one of the icons of 20th Century capitalism: the automobile itself.

making fake news more realistic

If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, chances are it's a ... hippopotamus???

Here's some really spooky stuff:

In an age of Photoshop, filters and social media, many of us are used to seeing manipulated pictures – subjects become slimmer and smoother or, in the case of Snapchat, transformed into puppies.
However, there’s a new breed of video and audio manipulation tools, made possible by advances in artificial intelligence and computer graphics, that will allow for the creation of realistic looking footage of public figures appearing to say, well, anything. Trump declaring his proclivity for water sports. Hillary Clinton describing the stolen children she keeps locked in her wine cellar. Tom Cruise finally admitting what we suspected all along … that he’s a Brony.
This is the future of fake news. We’ve long been told not to believe everything we read, but soon we’ll have to question everything we see and hear as well.

In the examples shown in The Guardian piece cited above, it is damned near impossible to detect the 'fake' stuff ... which means the 'real' stuff is likewise undetectable. Serious conversation, critical thinking, logic and a host of other aspects of any given topic go down the toilet in the face of this technological 'advance.'

western sperm nosedive

"Sperm counts among men have more than halved in the last 40 years, research suggests, although the drivers behind the decline remain unclear.
"The latest findings reveal that between 1973 and 2011, the concentration of sperm in the ejaculate of men in western countries has fallen by an average of 1.4% a year, leading to an overall drop of just over 52%." -- The Guardian

Democrats kowtowing to Trump

Strange to think how U.S. Democrats do nothing so much as to support Donald Trump's agenda with their latest attempt to regain credibility.

"A Better Deal" they crowed yesterday.

They are leaning heavily on a re-branding of their greatest hits — more and better-paying jobs, lowering health care costs and cracking down on the what are seen as the abuses of big business.

Democrats may sound as if they wanted to be FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), but their rebranding of the party that lost the 2016 presidential election has something stale and stodgy about it.

The word "deal" -- a word very large in Donald Trump's bourgeois agenda -- is the worst of it. Is my country nothing but a television entertainment or a used-car salesman's pitch? Trump has made his mark -- everything is a deal or a steal and "very, very" wonderful into the bargain. Democrats have learned the Trump lingo and approach even as they have agreed with his marginalizing of a majority of the nation -- the ones who were accused of not paying attention to the working stiffs of this country. Yup, feeling marginalized feels lousy. We, the Democrats who have been marginalized, get it and we're going to give you a better deal.

Trump, Trump-ier, Trump-iest. Everything is for sale. Such a deal! Everything is a method of screwing someone else so I can get mine ... and I am, if you hadn't guessed, the best-est with the most-est.

As Damon Linker headlined in his column in The Week, "Democrats Don't Need 'A Better Deal.' They Need Bernie Sanders."

Not the Bernie Sanders who suggests that since we pay taxes, we deserve single-payer health care, but the soul of a Bernie Sanders who thinks and fights rather than simply regurgitating what might sound good and stir the pot. That's Trump tactics. That's kowtowing to the Trump weltanschauung... hubba, hubba, it's for sale and I'm gonna get it for you.

Donald Trump, I think, has already left his mark -- or "scar" if you prefer. Cheap hustling by rich guys.

Democrats have a good idea ... I just think the branding is poor. Their cowardice is showing.

just a little Trump rant

As my country is diminished tweet by tweet....

As it becomes fashionable to disavow responsibility for failures large and small....

As the inability to put forward a nation-building policy becomes ever more obvious....

As former coal miners sink still further into badly-wounded lives....

As the sick panic while they await health-care revisions that affect them positively....

As even the well-heeled must wonder when the gravy train is due ...

And as my nation has yet to see a single piece of standing-tall legislation become law....

It was somehow incongruous -- or was it congruent? -- to see the President Donald Trump on hand for the christening of the navy's latest aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford on July 22.  With its five-acre flight deck and a commissioning date originally planned for 2015, the $12.9-billion  behemoth enjoyed a star-studded send-off in Norfolk, Va., that was patriotic in the way that such events always are. At last (perhaps), the ship had outlived its cost overruns.

Oops! Delete that. The Government Accounting Office says (http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-gerald-ford-20170722-story.html) it will take another $780 million over several years before the Ford is ready for deployment.

Let's take a rough conservative guess and call the final cost around $14 billion.

I realize that it is a time-honored political tactic, when a politician has nothing constructive to offer, to raise issues that will frighten the public. An aircraft carrier will protect us from dangers too awful to name or analyze. Boy, am I glad we've got a $14 billion aircraft carrier! Or think "terrorism" -- same stuff, different verbiage: If the public can be scared, perhaps they will miss the tweet-tweet-tweet of my country diminishing, of the failure to deliver on promises, or of the inability to take responsibility for what the president initiated.

The buck always stops there, to hear Donald Trump tell it.  He's willing to take credit. Just don't mention the buck-bedecked blame.

Only, of course, the buck stops here -- with me and my taxes and you and yours. I wonder how much healthcare you could buy with $14 billion; how much tax relief, even for those who don't need it; or how many infrastructure projects that might pay a man or woman more than burger-flipping wages.

Susan Ford Bales, the daughter of former Republican President Gerald R. Ford, after whom the aircraft carrier is named, was also on hand on Saturday. And it was she who sounded the music I like hearing as Donald Trump deconstructs and defames my tweet-worn country.

Asked what might be learned from her Republican father's presidency, she said, "The one thing we can learn is working together. Democratic, Republican, whatever — we work together, and we need to do what is best for the country.
“As long as you put your country in front of you and make that your basis, I think you have a chance of good success. But you've got to work together. And if not, we're not going to go anywhere."

Of course when we don't work together we do in fact go somewhere. It's just that that "somewhere" is impoverished in fact and in spirit.

toilet-paper bridal display

From Reuters:

floodwaters swallow pagoda

A Buddhist temple in central Myanmar has been swallowed by rising floodwaters after heavy rainfall.
The pagoda was built in 2009 in Magway region.
At least two people have died and more than 90,000 people have been displaced by flooding in Myanmar this month.

If you build it, can the floodwaters be far behind?