Drunk Driving Poll Shows Mixed Results

The death toll from alcohol-impaired driving in the United States dropped for the second year in a row, from 10,996 fatalities in 2016 to 10,908 in 2017 and 10,511 in 2018. That translates into hundreds of lives saved in the past two years.

And there is more good news: there has been an increase in the number of drivers who said that they relied on safe rides as an alternative strategy to avoid getting behind the wheel while under the influence of alcohol.

Those are a few highlights from a new survey released on Friday, developed and conducted by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation USA (TIRF USA), in partnership with Traffic Injury Research Foundation in Canada.

"The number of drivers indicating they had been a designated driver, used a designated driver, used a taxi or public transportation or ride sharing rose from 177 million drivers in 2017 to 187 million in 2019," Carl Wicklund, senior adviser for TIRF USA, said in a statement. "Understanding who is at risk for alcohol-impaired driving, and the conditions leading to this behavior, is important to ensure people have access to safe rides."

However, the survey results also showed that the percentage of respondents who reported driving when they thought they were over the legal limit in the last 12 months significantly increased from 11.6% in 2018 to 20% in 2019, the highest prevalence reported during the past five years of data collection, according to the nonprofit road safety groups. In addition, the percentage of respondents who reported driving impaired often or very often was also the highest reported during the past five years, with a significant increase from 3.4% in 2018 to 11.1% in 2019.

"While more data are needed to monitor trends, the significant increase in self-reported alcohol-impaired driving is a concern," Ward Vanlaar, the chief operating officer of TIRF Canada, said in a statement. "It is an early warning that the number of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities in 2019 may increase without continued and increased efforts."

Global Fashion Collective Shines At Paris Fashion Week

I met with Sandeep Dalal at The Spur to talk about his new business venture called Choltry, a company helping women of all income levels to uplevel their wardrobe. Sandeep is creating a compassionate lane in the $117B fashion sector.

If you’re a woman looking to dress to impress at work without spending beyond your means, Sandeep has you covered.  His platform, Choltry is an online retail service that rents premium office wear at $9.95 per week, including free shipping and dry cleaning. (Yes, you read that correctly!) For less than $10 a week women now have the opportunity to revamp their professional wardrobe in a way that’s sustainable and fashionable.

Sandeep grew up in New Delhi where he received his MBA and began working in IT.  He then moved to Seattle where his idea for Choltry was sparked after watching his wife organize her closet where he observed many designer dresses and finding out that she purchased them early in her career as an intern when she was receiving a paycheck that did not support her wardrobe needs. Sandeep got to work solving the problem of how to provide great clothes for professional women who have a limited budget and often, little time for shopping.

Choltry which means a place to rest is empowering women to look and feel their best without having to leave the comfort of their own home. Offering over 25 styles, the site eases the stress of the working woman at a price point that would cost less than the weekly dry cleaning bill.

So how on earth is Sandeep able to offer premium and such well-made dresses at such a low price? At Compassionate Leaders Circle, Sandeep is what we would call a "launcher," meaning that his purpose and vision is launching or growing an enterprise. Building the right partnerships has been crucial to his success and the "secret sauce" for how he keeps his shockingly low price point. "It all comes down to team".

Prom Dresses UK

Why The Fashion Industry Needs To Turn On To Hemp

On the surface, the fashion industry had a good year in 2018, with Americans spending $391.5 billion on clothing and footwear. That was a 4% increase year-over-year and the highest level of growth since 2011 when spending increased 5.1%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis NIPA table 2.3.5.

But digging into the data further, Americans have steadily decreased their share of disposable income on clothing and footwear, sliding from 3.8% in 2007 to 3.0% in 2019, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey. Even more alarming though is at the turn of the century fashion's share of Americans' spending was 4.9%.

In simple terms, American consumers are losing their interest in what fashion brands have on offer. Otherwise they'd be devoting a greater share of their wallets to updating their wardrobes. The fashion industry needs some radical new ideas to get back on American's shopping lists.

Hemp may be one of those radical new ideas. Hemp would give fashion brands a new story to tell their customers, one that is first and foremost sustainable and good for the planet.

                                                Vestidos de Festa

Fashion Designer Edeline Lee Discusses Her Namesake Brand, And Playing Fashions Long Game

Edeline Lee is the Canadian-born, British designer behind her eponymous brand which she launched in 2013. Exuding intelligent, modern femininity, her line is loved by the stylish, from Alicia Vikander, Karen Elson, and Taylor Swift to Livia Firth and Solange Knowles.

And she has just launched her Spring/Summer 2020 collection this month, which was all about performance. For the script, the designer partnered with the award-winning actor, writer, and producer, Sharon Horgan. The performance itself lasted 15 minutes (it was on repeat), featuring both models and actors donning the joyous, playful and vibrant collection. Fresh from her London Fashion Week catwalk show, Lee discusses her brand and what we can expect next.

selskabskjoler

How Can A Fashion Brand Create Social And Environmental Impact

I recently spoke at the Social Enterprise Conference in Birmingham. One of the positive messages that were highlighted at this tw0-day event is the rise in socially aware brands that are creating change through sustainable and ethical practices. The recent Pulse of the Fashion Industry 2019 update report highlighted that 75 percent of consumers believed sustainability was either ‘extremely’ or ‘very important’ to them. Over 33 percent of shoppers revealed they switched brands to support those that back environmental change. 50 percent of consumers reported their intention to switch brands in favor of those embracing eco-friendly practices. People are questioning how things are produced and how they affect the world's ecosystem. Fashion is still one of the most polluting sectors in the world and so sustainable fashion is not a trend to highjack but a practice that should be at the foundation of any brand.

At the moment, the footwear industry doesn’t have a great reputation when it comes to being ethical or sustainable. Here are just a few statistics that highlight the scale of the problem:

* Less than 5 percent of waste from post-consumer shoes is recycled.

* Just 2 percent of the final price of a shoe goes to the workers who made it.

* 85 percent of the world’s leather is tanned using chromium, which is considered to be the fourth worst pollutant in the world.

Modern footwear is surprisingly damaging in various ways. As the pace of fashion has quickened people have begun buying more shoes and throwing them away more easily. Traditional shoe-crafting has given way to mass-production, eating up resources and sending an average of three pairs of shoes per person to the landfill every year. The quest for cheaper and faster production has also encouraged the exploitation of vulnerable workers through long hours, low pay and dangerous working conditions.

How can one address this?

One of the ways that the practices in the footwear industry are being addressed is through an increasing focus on vegan shoes. The vegan trend has quadrupled in the five years between 2012 and 2017.  It now gets almost three times more interest than vegetarian and gluten-free searches in Google. If the world went vegan, it could save 8 million human lives by 2050, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two thirds and lead to healthcare-related savings and avoid climate damages of $1.5 trillion. In 2018, the UK launched more vegan products than any other nation. Over half (56 percent) of British people adopted vegan-buying behaviors and checking if their toiletries are cruelty-free, as per the research carried out by Opinion Matters for The Vegan Society between 14 and 16 July 2017 involving a sample of 2,011 UK adults.

The sociology of country music lyrics

With its lilting banjo, cowboy theme and lyrics like "Ridin' on a tractor" and "Wrangler on my booty", not to mention an extremely catchy refrain, Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" should be a country-music hit. Yet it was kicked off the Billboard country-music chart for not embracing "enough elements of today's country music". Billboard later told Rolling Stone magazine that its decision to take the song off the chart "had nothing to do with the race of the artist". Lil Nas X, the 20-year-old African-American who blended hip-hop, rock and country in his earworm of a song, does not look like the typical country star. Those tend to be white, and most are male.

One of country music's greatest strengths is its ability to celebrate working folk in America. But that has also "been its greatest liability", says Charles Hughes, a historian and author of "Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South". A recent paper in Rural Sociology, an academic journal, examined how men talk about themselves in mainstream country music. Its author, Braden Leap of Mississippi State University, analysed the lyrics of the top songs on the weekly Billboard country-music charts from the 1980s until the 2010s and found that the near-routine depiction of men as breadwinners and stand-up guys has changed.

Over the past decade, more songs objectify women and are about hooking up. Mr Leap's examination of lyrics also found that masculinity and whiteness had become more closely linked. References to blue eyes and blond hair, for example, were almost completely absent in the 1980s. In the 2000s, they featured in 15% of the chart-topping songs.

Country radio is the genre's powerful gatekeeper. Country stations have not played Lil Nas X much until recently. Nor are they playing as many women as before. Jada Watson, of the University of Ottawa, recently found that in 2000 a third of country songs on country radio were sung by women. In 2018 the share was only 11%. Even the top female stars get fewer spins. Carrie Underwood had 3m plays between 2000 and 2018; Kenny Chesney received twice as many. A report from the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that 16% of all artists were female across 500 of the top country songs from 2014 to 2018.

A few black artists, such as Charley Pride, Darius Rucker and Kane Brown, have been successful. Some popular white artists have rapped on country ditties. Yet a young black man using similar imagery and sounds to those that dominate country radio stations gets little play. Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" remix, which features Billy Ray Cyrus of "Achy Breaky Heart" fame, has topped Billboard's Hot 100 for eight weeks. Mr Hughes, the historian, says the fact that Lil Nas X "has had to force his way in is a real commentary on country music's long-term racial politics, which has always had a very uneasy relationship with blackness."

How music listening effects the climate

In 1977 consumers were willing to pay roughly 4,83 percent of their average weekly salary for a vinyl album. In 2013, this number is down to roughly 1.22 percent of the equivalent salary for a digital album in 2013.

"Consumers now have unlimited access to almost all recorded music ever released via platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, Pandora and Amazon," Devine says.

While his colleague in Glasgow has concentrated on studying the economic costs, Devine has looked into the environmental cost of music consumption from the 1970s to today.

As downloading and streaming took over the music industry, the amount of plastics used by the US recording industry dropped dramatically.

"Intuitively you might think that less physical product means far lower carbon emissions. Unfortunately, this is not the case," Devine says.

Storing and processing music in the cloud depends on vast data centers that use a tremendous amount of resources and energy.


Devine has translated plastic productions and the electricity use to store and transmit digital audio files into greenhouse gas equivalents (GHGs). He has then compared the GHGs from recorded music in the US in 1977, 1988, 2000 and 2016.

The findings are clear. The GHGs caused by recorded music are much higher today than in the past. In 1977 the GHGs from, recorded music were 140 million kg.

By 2016, they were estimated to somewhere between 200 million kg and over 350 million kg.

"I am a bit surprised. The hidden environmental cost of music consumption is enormous," he says.

Feb 25, 2019, 06:53pm Troubling Trends Towards Artificial Intelligence Governance

This is an age of artificial intelligence (AI) driven automation and autonomous machines. The increasing ubiquity and rapidly expanding potential of self-improving, self-replicating, autonomous intelligent machines has spurred a massive automation driven transformation of human ecosystems in cyberspace, geospace and space (CGS). As seen across nations, there is already a growing trend towards increasingly entrusting complex decision processes to these rapidly evolving AI systems. From granting parole to diagnosing diseases, college admissions to job interviews, managing trades to granting credits, autonomous vehicles to autonomous weapons, the rapidly evolving AI systems are increasingly being adopted by individuals and entities across nations: its government, industries, organizations and academia (NGIOA).

Individually and collectively, the promise and perils of these evolving AI systems are raising serious concerns for the accuracy, fairness, transparency, trust, ethics, privacy and security of the future of humanity -- prompting calls for regulation of artificial intelligence design, development and deployment.

While the fear of any disruptive technology, technological transformation, and its associated changes giving rise to calls for the governments to regulate new technologies in a responsible manner are nothing new, regulating a technology like artificial intelligence is an entirely different kind of challenge. This is because while AI can be transparent, transformative, democratized,  and easily distributed, it also touches every sector of global economy and can even put the security of the entire future of humanity at risk. There is no doubt that artificial intelligence has the potential to be misused or that it can behave in unpredictable and harmful ways towards humanity—so much so that entire human civilization could be at risk.


While there has been some -- much-needed -- focus on the role of ethics, privacy and morals in this debate, security, which is equally significant, is often completely ignored. That brings us to an important question: Are ethics and privacy guidelines enough to regulate AI? We need to not only make AI transparent, accountable and fair, but we need to also create a focus on its security risks.

2019 Brit award nominations topped by Anne-Marie and Dua Lipa

Dua Lipa has become the most-nominated artist at the Brit awards for a second year in a row, underlining her status as one of the UK's biggest pop stars this decade.

After being nominated for five awards in 2018 and winning two, for British female and British breakthrough artist, the British-Kosovan singer is nominated four times in 2019 – though admittedly just for two hit songs. IDGAF, taken from her self-titled debut album last year but still eligible for this year's awards, was nominated for British single and British video, with One Kiss, her summer smash hit with Scottish producer Calvin Harris, also nominated in the same categories.

Like Lipa, whose breakthrough came after a few years of fitful popularity, Essex-born Anne-Marie began guesting on dance tracks back in 2013, but she has steadily developed into a chart-dominating solo star. She sang the 2016 Christmas No 1, Rockabye, produced by Clean Bandit (the pop group who are nominated twice this year for their song Solo) and earned her first Brit nomination in 2017, for British breakthrough. Other major collaborative hits followed, including Friends with US EDM producer Marshmello, and she was nominated for her second Brit in 2018 for her song Ciao Adios. Her album Speak Your Mind became 2018's biggest-selling debut in the UK (though only the 26th highest seller overall).

George Ezra, whose album Staying at Tamara's was the second-biggest selling of 2018 after The Greatest Showman soundtrack, has three nominations, for British album, British male, and British single for Shotgun, which spent 12 weeks in the Top Three over the summer. As the only artist with one of the ten biggest-selling albums of the year in the male and album categories, his sheer success and cross-generational appeal means he will be a strong favourite to win both.

Also with three nominations is versatile neo-soul singer Jorja Smith, who won the Critics' Choice award in 2018, as voted for by a panel of industry experts – this year's winner has already been announced as Tyneside singer-songwriter Sam Fender. Smith's debut album Lost & Found is nominated for the British album award, and she also picks up nominations for British female and British breakthrough.

Guitar-pop group the 1975 scored two prominent nominations, for British group and British album, though Arctic Monkeys were snubbed in the latter category and only scored one nomination.

A strong year for north American music, particularly rap, meant that only two of the 15 international category nominees were not from the US or Canada: First Aid Kit and Christine and the Queens. Rap superstars including Drake, Eminem, Travis Scott and Cardi B were all nominated – as was Jay-Z with wife Beyoncé in the group category – but there was also room for cosmic jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington.