monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

It seems to be thriving and for the people who think this is a generational problem they are mistaken. Islam is nearing a quarter of the earths population, and growing rapidly.

The most major part of the story which ISN'T believable is the thing about sin being involved, that was added into the story by priests in later ages. A reasonable person should give God credit for being brighter than to wipe the entire system over sin only to have sin back in business as if nothing had happened forty years later.

Clown show....

Amazon threatens Philadelphia over plan to ban cashless stores
BY MEGAN CERULLO

UPDATED ON: FEBRUARY 15, 2019 / 7:40 PM / MONEYWATCH

Amazon is threatening to scrap plans to open a brick-and-mortar location in Philadelphia over a proposal that would bar retailers from refusing to accept cash.

The city council on Thursday approved legislation that would require businesses to accept cash. Proponents say cashless stores discriminate against lower-income shoppers, who are less likely to pay for goods with credit or debit cards. The measure now awaits the mayor's signature.

Such a law would hamper Amazon in launching its Go stores in Philadelphia. The outlets have no cashiers and only accept digital payments, relying on sensors and automation software to let consumers make purchases without waiting in checkout lines. The company operates a total of 10 Go stores in Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle, and plans to open as many as 3,000 more by 2021, according to Bloomberg.

Other businesses, including restaurant chains Sweetgreen, Dig Inn and Dos Toros, also have stopped taking cash. Business owners say going cashless speeds checkout lines, lowers costs associated with handling money and reduces the danger of theft.

Amazon declined to comment.

"Legal tender"
But as cashless retailers take root, lawmakers in several states have expressed concern about the potential impact on local residents. Along with in Philadelphia, bills have been introduced in New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., that would require businesses to accept cash.

The only state that explicitly requires retailers to take cash is Massachusetts.

New York City council member Ritchie Torres has proposed legislation that bans cashless retail, citing the "exclusionary effect it will likely have on the most vulnerable New Yorkers" in a hearing on Thursday. Cash serves as an "equalizer" that allows New Yorkers to buy their choice of goods and services, while refusing it would widen the gap between rich and poor, he argued.

"When you open a dollar bill, it reads, 'This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.' Those words remind us that cash is the universal currency," Torres said. "Not everyone has access to debit or credit, but every one of us has access to cash."

Consumer advocates say the trend in cashless retail hurts people who lack checking or savings accounts, as well as those who are forced to rely on pre-paid cards with high fees or interest rates.

Meanwhile, even those who back restrictions on cashless stores say curbing the practice is only a band-aid. They say a more holistic remedy is needed to solve the real problem -- a lack of access to credit -- and to promote financial inclusion.

XPO Logistics stock plunges as pull back by largest customer, weak Europe trump big buybacks
Published: Feb 16, 2019 9:16 a.m. ET

Lost customer business is likely Amazon taking capacity in-house, analyst says

By

TOMIK ILGOREREPORTER AND EDITOR

Shares of XPO Logistics Inc. plummeted in active trade Friday, as the loss of business from its largest customer and weakness in Europe led to a disappointing earnings report, and overwhelmed relatively large share buybacks.

“Well look, there’s no other way to say it, we missed the quarter,” said Chief Executive Bradley Jacobs in a post-earnings conference call with analysts before the open, according to a transcript provided by FactSet.

The stock XPO, -12.73% dropped 15% in afternoon trade, enough to make it the NYSE’s second-biggest loser. Volume swelled to over 14.7 million shares, which was nearly seven times the full-day average.

Late Thursday, the Connecticut-based company reported fourth-quarter net income that fell to $84 million, or 62 cents a share, from $189 million, or $1.42 a share, a year ago. On an adjusted basis, earnings per share rose to 72 cents from 45 cents, but was below the FactSet consensus of 84 cents.

Revenue rose 4.6% $4.39 billion, but was below the FactSet consensus of $4.57 billion, as less-than-expected transportation revenue offset a slight beat in logistics. The company updated its 2019 revenue growth target to 3% to 5%, while the current FactSet revenue consensus of $18.48 billion implies 7% growth.

“We miscalculated the weakness in France and the U.K.,” Jacobs said. “And in December, our largest customer pulled back their postal injection business which is part of last mile.”

Although the company declined to comment on who the customer might be, JPMorgan analyst Brian Ossenbeck said the pullback is likely Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -0.91% taking capacity in-house.

“Reading between the lines, we believe the shipper that is paring down its parcel injection, brokerage, last mile and logistics activity with XPO is Amazon,” Ossenbeck wrote in a note to clients.

See related: FedEx and UPS stocks sink, after analyst says Amazon taking business in-house could weigh.

XPO said the customer’s pullback will reduce 2019 revenue expectations by about $600 million, or about “two-thirds” of the customer’s revenue that the business generated in 2018. That implies the customer’s business represented about 5.2% of 2018 revenue of $17.28 billion.

Meanwhile, revenue from France represented 12.5% of 2018 total revenue of $17.28 billion and the U.K. represented 12.0%.

Another disappointment for XPO investors, the stock is now trading about 14% below where the company spent $1 billion to buy back and retire a large chunk of its common stock.

On Dec. 14, XPO announced a $1 billion stock repurchase program. That came a day after the stock suffered its biggest-ever one-day selloff to close at a near 2-year low, after short seller Spruce Capital Management said it believed financial irregularities were covering up growth problems at the company. At that time, the company said the short seller’s report was “intentionally misleading,” and contained “significant inaccuracies.”

Late Thursday, XPO said that program was completed on Feb. 4, as the company repurchased 18 million shares, or roughly 14% of the shares outstanding, at an average price of $56.09. From Dec. 13 to Feb. 4, the stock had run up 36%, with an average closing price of $58.45.

Separately, the company announced a new $1.5 billion repurchase program, which would allow it to buyback up to about 27% of its outstanding shares.

XPO’s stock has tumbled 35% over the past three months, while the Dow Jones Transportation Average DJT, +0.29% has slipped 0.6% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.74% has tacked on 1.3%.

South Bend logistics sector booming as potential Amazon center highlights larger trend

By Caleb Bauer South Bend Tribune Feb 8, 2019

This Great Lakes Capital-owned distribution center on the northwest side of South Bend is the likely location of a future Amazon Delivery Center, according to documents filed with the state and city. The revelations of the e-commerce giant’s potential local hub highlights the ongoing boom in the local logistics sector.

SOUTH BEND — Plans for a new Amazon Delivery Center in South Bend aren’t the first major growth in the region’s logistics sector, and won’t be the last according to local developers and industry experts.

The focus of that growth has come in areas immediately adjacent to the intersection of the Indiana Toll Road and U.S. 31, a confluence of traffic arteries that connect directly to larger metro areas including Chicago, Detroit and Indianapolis, as companies focus on the logistics of getting products to customers quickly and efficiently, particularly in the internet era.

The revelation Wednesday that Amazon may locate a distribution facility here could come with new services for consumers in the area, but it also represents a continuing boom in logistics growth locally. Much of that growth has been spurred by developers Holladay Properties and Great Lakes Capital at the business park called AmeriPlex at Interstate 80/90.

In an interview Thursday, Great Lakes Capital managing partner Ryan Rans declined comment on documents suggesting Amazon will locate a delivery facility at one of GLC’s recently built distribution centers.

But Rans did speak more broadly about the firm’s focus on expanding development near the hub of transportation activity on the city’s northwest side, outlining a new distribution center that is expected to break ground by spring.

“We’re going to break ground in the next month or two on a 165,000-square-foot spec (speculative) building there,” Rans said. “There remains demand for space that’s immediately available for tenants.”

Distribution Graphic
And in the field just south of the Indiana-Michigan state line where that new building will rise, Rans said, Great Lakes Capital has plans to eventually build “between 1 and 1.5 million more square feet there.”

For Rans and Great Lakes Capital, providing space for the attraction of new businesses, or expansion of existing ones, helps boost business in the company’s portfolio of retail, residential and office properties.

“People are looking for a realistic solution more than anything else,” Rans said. “Our intention is to continue to build ahead of having a tenant in hand, so the South Bend market can capture all the opportunities.”

The development of the AmeriPlex park began in 2007, when Holladay Properties started construction of the Huron Building on the south end of the business park.

“The timing was not excellent; it was finished in 2008 and of course the recession hit,” said Paul Phair, partner and senior vice president at Holladay. “We were able to fill it, kind of hodge-podge in the beginning.”

But after the recession, in 2012 and 2013, the “light switch seemed to turn on,” Phair said, “and the dominoes just kind of seemed to fall after that.”

Since then, AmeriPlex has become home to FedEx, Pepsi, AM General, ThyssenKrupp and more companies that sought locations with easy access to major roadways.

And like Great Lakes Capital, Holladay Properties is also floating potential speculative construction this year.

“We control a couple of sites that we plan to build on in the near future out in that area, in the northwest quadrant … We hope to do it within the year,” Phair said. “Plans are still in the works on that.”

Meanwhile, there are ongoing studies looking at the possibility of adding air and rail freight hubs at the South Bend International Airport, just south of the AmeriPlex hub.

The boom itself is part of a state- and region-wide trend to rekindle the moniker for Indiana as “Crossroads of America.”

“Every town that has an interstate that runs through it thinks they’re perfect for logistics,” said Jeff Rea, president of the South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce. “But for us, it’s partly the markets we serve. If you think about moving product, I think the federal limitation is a 10-hour drive, and when you start drawing a 10-hour circle from South Bend you hit Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus.”

Bryce Carpenter, director of industry engagement for logistics and manufacturing nonprofit advocate Conexus Indiana, said the state has the most pass-through interstates in the country, and 68 percent of the country’s population can be reached in a six-day drive.

Amazon’s entrance
The ongoing growth in South Bend has received new attention with the potential location of an Amazon Delivery Center, as the e-commerce giant pursues new ways to deliver millions of online products to customer’s doors.

Late last year, the company inked a deal to purchase 20,000 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter vans, prompting the German auto manufacturer to open a new factory in Charleston, S.C., and vaulting Amazon into the spot as the world’s top Sprinter customer.

That purchase was part of a plan to expand into delivery itself, as Amazon plans to use the vans to hire contract drivers to help with the company’s new offerings in delivery options, ranging from photos of packages on a customer’s front porch to the possibility of same-day delivery.

That’s what Amazon’s new delivery centers, including the one to potentially be sited here, will help streamline, as the company’s delivery expenses jumped last year according to quarterly earnings reports. So the 103 jobs listed on the documents filed with the state of Indiana might not completely illustrate all the potential contractor jobs that could be created by a delivery center here.

Jeff Berman, editor of trade publication Logistics Management, said the expansion is part of the e-commerce new focus on developing regional hubs to speed delivery and reduce costs.

“They’re all hyper-focused on the trend of regionalization,” Berman said Thursday. “Being closer to the customer helps ensure those shorter delivery times and being able to get that same-day, next-day or two-day order out.”

That “last-mile” logistics race is just another symptom of consumer trends shifting away from traditional retail and toward e-commerce.

“Fewer people are going to shopping malls, more people are buying stuff online,” Berman said. “And it’s growing by the day.”

I looked Pellikan up. It seems that he self-tought Hebrew thanks to some Hebrew alphabet published in the late 15th century by a certain Peter Nigri/Niger/Schwarz in appendixes to some antisemitic writings, which were the first such writings to be printed.

Nigri had studied in Salamanca and Montpellier where he had learnt Hebrew reportedly from Jewish kids... This is because there are prohibitions from teaching Hebrew to gentiles in the Talmud.

Now, given what Niger did with his Hebrew, it's not hard to understand the reason behind this halakhic prohibition to teach Hebrew to gentiles: Peter Niger relentlessly preached Jews to convert and recognise JC as the messiah, and kept arguing, in speech and in writing, that Jewish doctors could not understand their own Tanakh (Jewish Bible), full as it 'was' of prophecies about Jesus that these thick Jüden didn't want to accept... <sarcasm> So he used his knowledge of Hebrew to attack Jews. And we know that Luther will soon follow suit.

Here's a very interesting picture of Niger arguing philology with Jewish doctors. Note the golden ring and the sulken faces of the Jews (supposedly they are losing the debate):

I think the modern Jewish canon can be dated to the creation of the Second Temple. After the fall of the Second Temple they simply tried to recreate their already-existing canon.

Modern Catholic translations rely on the Masoretic Text too, and only use other sources for sections of text that are not found within the Masoretic Text.

That's why I think that the best Christian Old Testaments are the translations published by the Orthodox faith.

I think the Masoretic Text is the best source for a Jewish Bible. Not so much for a Christian Bible.

Trium linguarum peritus (knowledgeable in three languages) - for a long time this was regarded (at least in Germany) as an honourable designation, indeed as an educational ideal and meant nothing other than the three old languages Latin, Greek and Hebrew.

Same in Italy at the same time, but the point is that some renaissance humanists tended to learn Hebrew not to embrace and value Jewish culture, but primarily to argue against Jewish scholars on the correct interpretation of their scriptures. I don't think it is specific to German humanists.

The Reformation, premissed by the invention of printing, saw an evolution from a closed system of religious knowledge where one had to go through years of ecclesiastic training to be able to read scripture and lay people could not access the bible directly, to a more open system where each individual with a minimum of money could buy a printed bible in lay language and read the text for himself, and damn the Church hierarchy's attempt to mediate.

Learning Hebrew was part of this idea: go directly to the source, and damn the intermediaries, who in this case were the Rabbis.

This opening was surely a positive thing over the long term. Over the short term, it led to many disputes and even wars. I suppose one cannot move from a closed, highly regulated system of knowledge to a more open and free flowing one withput certain amout of cacophony, confusion and dispute.

Maybe that's where we are now after the invention of the Internet: in the initial cacophonic phase.

In other words, the renaissance humanists were obviously not without prejudice. Pico della Mirandole studied the Kabalah only to conclude that... it proved Jesus was the messiah! See also Erasmus.

Bishop Stephan Bodecker wrote in his "Tractus contra Iudaeos" already earlier about that.

Interesting. All these guys argued at some point or another against persecutions of Jews, eg in Spain. They loathed forced converstions, but they were also irritated that the Rabbis would dare to stick to their position and disagree with them on their interpretation of scripture.

I suppose we should go back to the subject of the thread though.

It's been an interesting digression, and the thread has wandered before.

The subject of the thread is "whining about Trump". That's actually kind of boring.

Besides, if anyone wants to stop in and whine for a bit, a bit of side conversation from some of the other posters won't impede their whining.

I had a bit of a Hiroshima argument break out on a different website. It was easy pickings though. My opponent was some kind of Japanese nationalist who wanted to whine about how Japan was treated unfairly in WWII. Needless to say he (or she) had little grasp of history or reality, so it wasn't much of a challenge.

Glad you liked it.

Maybe we need a bible interpretation thread, but then it would attract all the loonies...

Found this interesting pdf on the subject. It focusses on Germany but that is not to say the same kinda didn't happen elsewhere.

http://ebooks.bharathuniv.ac.in/gdlc1/gdlc4/Arts_and_Science_Books/arts/philosophy/Theology Philosophy and The History of Ideas/Books/Jews Judaism and the Reformation in Germany.pdf

I fixed your link (I hope).

Sometimes putting "url" tags around a link will break a link that actually works without them, so they should only be used when needed.

But now and then they are needed.